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Climate change undermines Oxygen Producing Ecosystems
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by agora | February 1, 2009 at 12:40 pm
111 views | 2 Recommendations | 4 comments
What happens when humans continue to pursue a capitalist economic system, that destroys vital oxygen-producing organisms from phytoplankton, to trees in fragile rainforest ecosystems? That is an easy one, yeh.
The result would be a decreasing supply of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, in relationship to other toxic gases. The greed-driven Petroleum-based economies of the Western World has put humanity and other life much closer to the brink, than what "mainstream" environmental groups would care...
internet site reference:
www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2009/01/23/03057.html
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 19:01 on February 1st, 2009
"capitalist economic system,"- Woah! Are you aware that the biggest polluters in the world have been socialist countries such as the Soviet Union, which, for example, destroyed the Aral Sea and has an entire string of major ecological catastrophes?
Are you aware that China, the "socialist state", is now the biggest producer of carbon dioxide? And that 25% of the mercury in the waters of the Northwest is from coal-fired plants in China, and that the mercury gets carried here from their great socialist homeland?
Read Natural Capitalism, the best book on the subject ever written. Germany has the best program. They have strung together the products of their chemical industry in such as way that the water leaving the last pipe is cleaner than the river water that went in the first one.
As far as oxygen goes, Valcent Technologies, a company that I have already referred to elsewhere, can put all of the US on algae-derived bio-diesel using one-tenth the land of New Mexico, solving any problem of net oxygen use, and it sure as hell is a "capitalist" company.
Greed and sloth and vanity are the problems. Greed for the money, while sloth comes in as ignorance and in the attempt to avoid having to live up to the work of moral control, while vanity insures that you see yourself as already more than perfect.
That is the problem, not "capitalism".
at 19:43 on February 1st, 2009
Yes, the problem is capitalism, despite your apparent partisan defence of capitalism... the Soviet Union was based on "state capitalism".. and China currently brings together 'state' and 'private' capitalism... Ayn Rand embraced capitalism with the statement in defence of capitalism "greed is good".. and the greed that is pivotal to capitalism, focuses on the insatiable pursuit of greed and power. "Natural capitalism" is apparent propaganda.
Capitalism is about 'capital'.. and not the affirmation of the quality of living of people, and the defence of Earth's ecosystem.
at 23:03 on February 1st, 2009
My apparent partisan defense is based on my examples of capitalist society overcoming its pollution problem in general and Germany's technical prowess being used to overcome a pollution problem on an unprecedented level in particular.
Logically, unless you can prove that the examples are not true, you have to logically admit that your premise about capitalism as being at the very heart of the matter is not true because if it were true, then Germany would not have succeeded so well, nor would we have one of the best national park systems in the world nor could we have improved the ecology of the Great Lakes from near death in the sixties.
But, as I said, so-called socialist countries actually have the worst ecological records while advance industrial democracies such as Germany and the US have the best ecological records.
Ayn Rand is not relevant here, and I have already been kicked off the Objectivists Site for asking subversive questions inclined to undermine and overthrow one's belief in her system.
No, Russia's state capitalism is just nonsense. It was a planned economy with the state acting in the name of the people and had no in-built interest in profit other than what helped the people. Yet, they failed to heed any boundaries as far as respecting the environment.
What is this non-capitalist system and what proof do you have that such a system could exist at all and why should a capitalist system that has already proven itself correctable be dropped?
at 23:52 on February 1st, 2009
You show a lack of appreciation by apparently mixing up the former Soviet Union with 'Russia'; and your statements about the so-called "planned economy" is fresh out of a textbook, written by capitalists. It is appparent that you also mix up "markets" with capitalism. A society can be capitalist, while being substantively regulated and also being "planned", i.e. Nazi Germany.. which was a zealously capitalistic and "anti-Soviet". Capitalism can operate without having a substantively "free market".
You don't even seem to appreciate what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is an ideology praticed by both former Soviet Union, and the prevailing Western economic system, that places 'capital' over the affirmation of the quality-of-living of people.
It is apparent that you are simply being a capitalist ideologue. Indeed there are many bloggers paid to spread disinformation on behalf of the Establishment and its sought defence of the status quo. These bloggers are paid to spread or entrench ignorance.