Often times politicians around the world meet to talk about their goals for reducing climate change; men in suits with cheap plastic water bottles surrounding them as they tell the world how much the environment matters to them. Another round of meetings are scheduled to begin next week in Poland. There countries will pledge to be more eco-friendly, they will extoll their love for their fellow, and our those "in our protection:" the species that make up the biodiversity of our home, Earth.
Capitalism by definition disregards the environment and its worth, its inherent subject-hood. Instead we are simply left to cost-benefit analyses. Beauty itself has become quantifiable and measurable. Some state that due to the short term-ism that plagues Capitalism, that complete environmental collapse would be economically sound. Investments into the future simply do not pay off quick enough and they are deemed invalid by economists.
The article states that by 2020 we should mitigate the damage to Earth to around a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature. Anything past 2 degrees has been found to create self-reinforcing climate change. If this should occur then humanity's prospects look bleak, author and holistic scientist James Lovelock, posits that if we should fall to reinforcing climate change then humanity will be allocated to small oases of hospitable land and a mass majority of our biodiversity will be destroyed. These talks are in no way about saving the planet. The planet will be damaged, yes, but she will live on for eons after the nanosecond in Earth's eyes that was humanity. Humanity on the other hand has the potential to be wiped out. One hopes that these talks will go well. That perhaps the capitalists will push the market into investing into sustainable energy before the almighty "market" demands it so. One hopes... But has no base to stand on.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/5/un-reports-worldfallingbehindonemissionsgoals.html
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