Capitalism and Climate Change: How our current economic and social system are detrimental to our future kids

by | Jan 16, 2025 | Climate change and sustainable development | 0 comments

Article by Thijs Jozef Willem Schmidt

image: The BASF factory at Ludwigshafen, Germany, pictured on a postcard in 1881. Courtesy Wikipedia

 

Capitalism’s unfulfilled demand for growth has unleashed environmental forces that are spiraling out of control, threatening the systems that form the foundation of human life. The uncontrolled pursuit of profit has not only fueled the climate crisis, but created a harmful vicious cycle of excess consumption leading to global instability. As Canadian journalist Naomi Klein once wrote in her Capitalism vs the Climate’ book , “Climate change is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet.” Her quote illustrates the need for a systematic change in the way products are produced and consumed. Unfortunately, it will be very hard to achieve this necessary change as long as big companies put profit over sustainability.

Climate change has tremendous impacts on us as a society. Sociologist John Urry has written a sociological analysis about the relation between capitalism and climate change. In his paper he describes how climate change should be regarded as a bigger threat to the human race than terrorism. According to Urry, the average global temperature has increased by at least 0.74°C over the last century, which correlates with higher levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The cause of increasing levels of greenhouse gasses can be traced back down to carbon emissions that are released when fossil fuels are being burned. Fossil fuels are very commonly used to produce materials and products that we consume as a society. Urry describes our economic system as a ‘high carbon economy’, which states that our economy is driven by the use of fossil fuels. What once started as a genius scientific breakthrough during the industrial revolution, is now an uncontrollable danger whose effects are almost irreversible.

But how did we end up here? Our society’s consumption habits have evolved over time, starting from fulfilling basic needs in the agrarian economies to mass consumption driven by industrialization and urbanization in the 19th century. Since the rise of capitalism as an economic system, our consumption levels have drastically changed. Mass consumption is driven by capitalism, as businesses maximize profits by creating demand through advertisements and innovation. We as humans nowadays are continuously exposed to advertisements, think of billboards, posters, tv-ads and influencers on social media. This leads to a constant cycle of purchasing products, which indirectly also means it causes a constant cycle of burning fossil fuels, emitting carbon.

Well, can we actually break that cycle? According to Urry, that is an almost impossible task. He describes capitalism as a ‘genie’ that was let out of a bottle, but is very hard to be put back into that bottle again. This is a very good way to describe capitalism, as businesses will never be satisfied with their current profit. Their aim is to always earn more and more. Adding on to that, we as humans are so used to the current system that it will be very hard to even imagine what a different system would look like. Additionally, human lives in the western world simply require overconsumption to actually participate in society. Therefore, a radical societal shift would be necessary that would change the way business models work and humans consume. This aligns with Naomi Klein’s perspective on capitalism and climate change.

If nothing changes right now, the amount of greenhouse gasses could be tripled by the end of the century. That is a very scary, but likely reality at this point. This will make life for our future children significantly different and scarier. Our kids will witness people fighting over very limited resources, see massive groups of refugees try to escape their salinized estates, and experience very extreme weather conditions. That is certainly not a promising prospect at all.

It is saddening to see that there are currently no significant signs that anything will actually change. Businesses and consumers simply do not care enough yet to actually change their ways. What does there need to happen in order to activate change? The earth is desperately crying for help, but when is enough actually enough? It seems as if we feel like that is a problem to be solved by the future generation. This egoistic approach is the root cause of our inability to break the excessive capitalistic cycle for good. Good luck to our future children with breaking that cycle then, it will probably already be too late for that at that point.

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