We have to look much closer at Capitalism to understand how it ties into the climate problem.
Ignore that, and we keep doing the harm.
We obviously exist on energy, we need and use lots of it as a species.
There are two ways we can get it, from the stored energy resources of Earth, or from the energy source that put it all there in the first place, the sun.
So far, we have mostly got our energy from the stored energy resources of Earth.
That is because we handle it always in discrete, stored quantities, because that is what is represented in all bank balances and all transactions - capital; a fixed, static amount of energy.
We never see transactions representing the dynamic joules of energy received in sunlight, because that can’t be represented by a fixed amount of capital, as things stand.
And yet logically, we are continuously monetising sunlight by the thing called Bitcoin, however much or little of that is mined by solar power, an increasing amount of it definitely is, money-as-sunlight, and is being exchanged in markets for an ever increasing mean amount of conventional money-as-debt.
Yet we don’t acknowledge this, like we should, to try to balance with monies issued.
By Austrian Economics, we should be balancing monies issued, with the energy received from sunlight, since that is a contribution to our economy from a source external to our economy.
Should we ignore money which is donated to us, after we accepted it?
Of course not.
If we did, we might not understand how much extra we have, that we should be passing on to others.
Notice how no-one ever wants to give anything away for free? And yet a portion of what we have is donated to us.
With that in mind, we might realise that inflation now has a completely different mechanism behind it, than the things that caused inflation previously.
Before, it was something the money creators and issuers had control over.
They did that by altering the interest rates on things like loans, and bank balances, but more importantly, by controlling the issue of money.
But now they have made all the adjustments possible to try to correct, and still the inflation continues.
Logically, that is because we are receiving free energy which is not being accounted for.
Anything for free dilutes the value of capital.
Why save, if we have guaranteed free income, forever?
Isn’t that the point of saving, for a rainy day?
Energy from the ground is capital.
Therefore capitalism requires energy from the ground.
The free energy of sunlight is continuous, free, forever.
It converts directly to green hydrogen, and proof of work token type money.
Therefore by Austrian Economics, we should be continuously issuing free money to all people, accurately tracking the amount of free energy from the sun which is put to use.
Otherwise, of course money itself will continue to keep losing value, in our eyes, and thus within markets.
Capitalism might not be to blame for all of the problems, but for sure it has to change, to avoid further damage to the value of money.
Money has to move from a capital standard, like the old gold standard, to a new, free energy standard, each dollar, euro, yen etc representing a number of joules of solar power received.
I’ve gone into that in much more detail in the Bitcoin as a Kardashev Hinge" story, if you are interested.
If not yet, then one day.
Hopefully not as part of an obituary to humanity :)