I know very little about this subject. I had someone I know tell me a few months ago that for socialism to be sustainable, and to solve the climate crisis, U.S.ians are going to need to give up almost all A/C. They pointed out the fact that Amerikans are crybabies and even most of Western Europe does not use A/C.
However, with Greece and Spain recently having caught on fire and with heat waves devouring the nations, as well as stories regarding people in hotter regions in the U.S. dying from heat stroke in their own homes because they couldn’t afford their electricity bills, this read as sort of Maoist-lite, petty-bourgeois radicalism to me shifting blame on individuals when there are so many systemic industries contributing astronomically to the worsening climate. I was wondering, is A/C usage so detrimental as to necessitate its destruction? Should not the focus be on larger, more destructive industries and actually increasing the availability and affordability of A/C to hotter regions? Should scientific focus be moreso on creating a green A/C?
Like I said, almost no knowledge. Feel free to roast my ass (pun slightly intended).
I agree with the “settlers” opinion on the matter. The Ideology of white supremacy combined with being the Imperial core causes a zone of ideological whitewashing. America may never fall, not while it is united and believes itself to be at the top.
I concur with the presentation of the ideological, cultural and some material effects imperialism has on the imperial core. I think we are living in a new era beginning with the 1980s wherein austerity was brought home in the form of neoliberalism and monopolization and furthering the extreme centralization of wealth. There was a joke in an early Simpons episode where an Albanian exchange student noted wealth inequality: “how can you support a nation where 5% of people control 95% of the wealth?” Those were simpler times with a simpler labor aristocracy to point to. Generational wealth within the western “proletariat”, as in labor aristocracy, stolen off of the backs of global south slave laborers is trickling up, not down to their children. New generations are being born into a jobless and propertyless world where academic credentials, work experience, and even social connections mean very little anymore. Lottery systems like Robinhood and crypto as well as achieving celebrity status are some of the only ways the nouveau riche can be born, with the propertied old guard consolidating their and their children’s wealth at an unprecedented scale.
Some macro-benefits of imperialism are still being felt even among the poorest settlers, of course, with things like stolen gas being widely available as well as the mere existence of so many supermarkets with relatively cheap goods… but the price of bread is rising while the breadmakers, foreign and domestic, get screwed and their owners are making more and more and more. I just think that the labor aristocracy is thinning to such an extent that the bourgeois, imperial state is overexerting itself in undying service to capital accumulation and consolidation and that the poorest proletarians in the Imperial core are beginning more and more to live like the poorest proletarians in the global south. We see the power outages nationwide with no government stepping in to deal with people freezing and burning to death, for instance, when vast and trustworthy electrification in Amerika has historically been considered a luxury not afforded to the global south. Even the promise that Amerikan settlerism was founded on, land stolen from natives, is constantly consolidating into fewer and fewer hands. A new generation will know nothing but renting and subservience to petty tyrants – landlords and CEOs – for their entire lives.
This is also all different depending on where you are of course. Imperial extraction in the less neoliberal-minded economies such as the Nordic ones still benefits the average worker there greatly, with their free healthcare, university, and access to goods existing thanks entirely to the slavery of foreign proles. But neoliberal forces are winning in those nations, and austerity is already taking place with growing IMF influence. It won’t be long until their destitute looks like Amerika’s destitute, and Amerika’s destitute looks like the imperialized. The ones who don’t already, like black people and indigenous people living in completely discarded ghettos and slums. Discarded barring the overwhelming fascist police presence, of course.
(I argue these points in good faith. I welcome contradiction, just so everyone’s clear. I’m not an expert.)