USA, January 25— Burned-out Los Angeles residents were desperately trying to figure out where to live, how to eat, where to find work, while battling insurance companies last Monday. Meanwhile, the world’s multi-billionaires were attending a pre-coronation dinner ($1 million per head) for the newly anointed leader of the “free world.” A sniveling Indian Express stenographer gushed about the sari Nita Ambani wore that took artisans almost 2000 hours to meticulously embroider and paint.
Global climate change set up southern California for unprecedented firestorms. Last winter’s unusually heavy rain spurred plant growth. This year’s extra-dry winter turned vegetation into kindling. Extremely strong Santa Ana winds dried out air and land while bringing hurricane-force gusts.
This is becoming capitalism’s “new normal.”
As climate change rages around the planet, capitalism spends resources on pomp and glamour. Elections that cost $$billions. Energy to power data centers that help corporations spew nonsensical marketing and advertising copy.
Meanwhile, the masses are violently driven out of their livelihoods and homes by war, drought, floods, fires, hurricanes, landlords, and automation.
Capitalism’s Growth Imperative Keeps Deepening the Climate Crisis
The United Nations climate conference COP 30 will meet in Brazil this year. There, in 2024, close to 30 million hectares burned due to drought-caused fires. That’s the size of Italy.
The World Bank invested $46 billion in climate finance in 2024. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google spent three times that amount on data centers. These centers use huge quantities of energy and water.
Energy is increasingly generated from “renewable” sources. But that mainly addresses long-term carbon emissions. The bigger issue is that a capitalist economy must keep growing. Capitalist competition requires every capitalist enterprise to expand or go under. And growth means consuming more energy and resources.
We are limited by a few principles: the inviolable laws of thermodynamics, the mathematics of exponential growth, and Jevons Paradox.
Jevons Paradox was first described in 1865 by an English economist who focused on coal consumption in England. The paradox is that when technological innovation increases the efficiency of resource use, it leads to an increase in overall consumption of that resource. The increased consumption outpaces the efficiency gains.
This paradox is not just theoretical. It has been observed in practice. It confounds our ability to mitigate climate change simply by making energy use more efficient.
A capitalist economy is supposed to grow exponentially at 3% annually. This means it doubles every 24 years, and so does resource consumption. But the ecosystem operates on much longer intervals. Resources cannot be regenerated every 24 years or even every 50 years.
Lastly, the laws of thermodynamics show that energy can only be changed from one form to another. Even the most delusional capitalist economist or politician cannot change these laws.
Whether electricity is generated by wind, solar, hydro, or nuclear, it is ultimately converted to another form. During that conversion, some energy is lost, typically as heat. While the conversion may get more efficient, Jevons Paradox suggests that capitalism will continue to heat the planet because it will consume ever more energy.
In heating the planet, capitalism makes more of it uninhabitable for humans and other living beings. Those living beings are part of the ecosystems on which we rely for food, water, and air. Some species will go extinct, compounding the problem.
None of this has to happen if we consume only the energy the masses actually need. Under capitalism this is not possible. Capitalism can only organize for profit and war.
We need a political economy that can organize the masses to make the planet thrive. This can only happen in a communist society. Communism will not require continual expansion or exponential growth. Communist planning can avoid Jevons Paradox.
If we can organize communist revolution within the next decade or two, we will begin to reverse capitalism’s climate crisis.