for: climate crisis - elites, Kevin Anderson - elites, carbon emissions - elites, adjacency - elites - carbon inequality - incentives - luxury - capitalism

title: A Habitable Earth Can No Longer Afford The Rich – And That Could Mean Me And You

date: Nov. 29, 2023

comment

• elites
• capitalism
• free market
• incentives
• double bind
• wicked problem
• inequality
• carbon inequality
• luxury industry

• This article was pulled by "The Conversation" for being too controversial
• It addresses the double-bind / wicked problems that we find ourselves in.
• It's not just that the elites that are the highest per capita polluters, but
  • it is an indictment of the entire philosophy and worldview of capitalism and the market economy which produces winners and losers and
  • the winners reap enormous resource benefits, including being able to afford luxury items as rewards which constitute the largest ecological footprint of all
• while at any one time, there is always a minority of the 1%, who hold the most outsized ecological footprint of all, the logic that produced that 1% also serves as the incentives for the majority of the 99%, who because of the inherent precarity created by capitalism, will fight and struggle to become part of that 1%
• So while one generation of the 1% die off, a new generation is born and created by the incentive structure of scarcity and precarity.
• In this sense, capitalism has its own self-reinforcing, positive feedback loop that keeps the masses of the disenfranchised aspiring to the same high resource and ecological footprint, luxury lifestyle
• Look at the culture industry of sports, entertainment, movies, music, TV, etc. and of business in general. The leaders of these and ALL fields are celebrated as heros and they all reward themselves with an ultra-high carbon intensity, luxury lifestyle.
• Unless we do more than simply demonize the current set of elites, and recognize the root cause and change the incentive structure itself, we will only ever deal with the symptom and not the problem, and continue to generate the next generation of elites
• The luxury lifestyle industry is a important role-player in the self-reinforcing feedback loop