Our wealth and consumption are killing the planet

To the editor: Instances reporter Sammy Roth raises an essential difficulty with respect to the role of capitalism in exacerbating the climate crisis.

Altering capitalism would require extra time than our local weather can afford, thus the revenue motive should be, for the current, a driving pressure in any local weather answer. Nonetheless, in the long term our financial methods should change.

Having big mansions and personal jets as a measure of standing is contradictory to having a sustainable future. The revenue motive and financial growth can’t proceed to be the first drivers of our society if we need to have lasting options to sustaining a livable Earth.

Christmas is a time to remind ourselves that Jesus’ standing didn’t end result from his materials wealth.

Karl Reitz, San Clemente

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To the editor: The free market has run amok with greed.

Whereas the total value of a product is being paid, the vendor just isn’t telling the customer what the total value is.

You aren’t informed by the vendor of plastic baggage that they are going to ultimately choke off all life within the sea. The oil corporations are usually not telling you that you could be die of lung illness in the event you use their product. Elon Musk just isn’t telling you that the lithium he sells in his electrical car batteries causes destruction of the atmosphere.

And economists are usually not telling you that our economic system relies on an ever rising inhabitants and the way that progress just isn’t attainable on a finite planet.

In an effort to deal with the myriad challenges we face, we have to create a brand new language simply to grasp the issues.

Gregg Ferry, Carlsbad

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To the editor: It’s so good to see somebody lastly ask the best query in regard to local weather change. How about utilizing much less?

“Reasonably priced” isn’t very reasonably priced if it continues to result in habitat destruction and poisonous trash when disposed of.

Sara Schmidhauser, Isla Vista, Calif.

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To the editor: Thanks for preserving local weather change entrance and middle with this piece by Roth. However he falls into a standard entice by presenting two sides of a debate with out related information that make one aspect extra compelling.

Sure, infinite financial progress isn’t sustainable, since our planet’s assets are finite. And there’s appreciable overlap between the impacts of progress and people of rising temperatures. However the best way to prioritize what we repair can be to guage how unhealthy the impacts are.

A quote from the article aids the analysis: “Inexperienced vitality will save not the advanced internet of life on Earth however the explicit lifestyle of 1 domineering species.”

That is perhaps true, however failing to decrease the Earth’s temperature with inexperienced vitality might destroy each the advanced internet and the domineering species.

Our planet doesn’t differentiate between capitalist and non-capitalist carbon dioxide. Our precedence needs to be to scale back it. Quick.

Edward Dignan, Lengthy Seashore

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To the editor: Roth’s piece illustrates that environmentalism is lower from the identical material as socialism and communism.

Environmentalism, socialism and communism are all strains of the identical virus. The frequent denominators embrace hostility to non-public property, large propaganda, coercion as a substitute of freedom, austerity as a substitute of prosperity, and huge shortages of the necessities and desirables of life.

Environmentalism is dominated by an elitist class that accuses the struggling productive class of residing too properly, and needs to cheat the productive class out of getting good issues.

Steven Pedersen, Rancho Palos Verdes