“This isn’t really about BP: it’s about capitalism at large, and its inability to respond to the climate crisis in the manner we need.”

“In short, the problem is not BP or indeed any other individual company. The problem is that BP and its fossil-fuel peers operate within a system that *requires* them to invest and operate in ways that are deleterious to the environment.”

- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/03/bp-green-ambitions-climate-emergency-capitalism

#capitalism #climate #climatechange #climateemergency #media @georgemonbiot.bsky.social @ClimateNewsNow @climatecrisis @ExtinctionR

  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    One thinker who would probably have been somewhat sympathetic to BP is Karl Marx, surprising though that may seem.

    I wouldn’t say “sympathetic.”

    Competition, he said, compels companies to maximise profits on pain of succumbing to stronger rivals – or, as in the case of BP, to activist shareholders such as Elliott Management.

    Like it or not, BP doesn’t have the luxury of saying: “Oh, we’ll do something less profitable but better for the planet.” Capitalism chews you up and spits you out if you do that. “Shareholder value” is not a consulting gimmick, or at least not only that; it is a very real disciplinary force.

    All of this, to be clear, is not to absolve BP of responsibility. Rather, it is to make a case about how we should understand the problems we face – that is, not as a problem of greedy individual firms, but a system rigged against positive change.

    A recent book on this topic is Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital. Jacobin interview: Capitalism Makes Everyone Bend to Its Will, Rich and Poor Alike