Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
Correct, but if you look at the names that dominate the list of energy companies that are a root source of our energy pathways, a few countries dominate. The "really existing" socialism of Russia, China, and India, driven as it was by the development imperative, has a bad record for rapid and reckless environmental degradation (and carbonization). If we want a decent scenario for the world, we have to invent structures and practices never before seen. At least on the scale needed.

But it remains incumbent on Seamus to explain how "incentives" can resolve the contradiction between:

1. Capitalism incentivizes concentration of wealth and power.
2. Capitalism empowers the largest private actors to regulate government regulation of its incentives.
3. The current trend of climate change entails a drastic change in our way of life, certainly not voluntary, not necessarily guided by any particular government plan, not necessarily according to the wishes of eco-primitivists, but simply falling out of future economic and political facts in a warmer world. Our trade and consumption-oriented way of life as we know it WILL vanish on current trends.
4. Given the distribution of energy consumption and population growth, climate change cannot be checked without unprecedented cooperation between the largest firms and most populous nations.

Please Seamus, distinguish between "is", "ought", and "will be" here. For our purposes I'm concerned about causality, not morality; fundamentally the question of whether or not capitalism will or has failed us is distinct from whether or not some other purported system is optimal or superior. What happens if the forces and incentives of modern global capitalism are inherently vicious?
Everyone should play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.