Does Eco-Socialism Actually Work? 

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If socialism is better for the enviroment than capitalism. Why is it that the only Carbon Negative nation in the Americas is Costa Rica and it is not a Socialist Nation? Why is it that the country investing most in renewable energy is Piñera's right wing Chile? Let me remind you that Venezuela never had as many oil spills as before it became Socialist or that Mexico's new socialist president is passing a law making renewable sources of energy ILLEGAL to save the national publicly owned oil and carbon company.

@trains and trams 7/4/21, Freedom comes hard to Latin Amer.; "eco/global/climate/warm" is a con.

You should research more the facts you point out in the video before uploading such a video. There are many comments from Bolivians here that will clarify what I’m talking about.

around 10:24 you mention a paper, that seems quite interesting. Could you do a video that dives deep into both the paper and the topic of the paper? I consider that would be a huge contribution (if enough people saw it) to make the average American aware that following US climate targets doesn't make their life as bad as some would think it would do. On the same topic "Project Drawdown" and the solutions they present are very interesting I think, it's almost obligatory to do a video about "Project Drawdown" in my view!

The sooner we accept that no matter what we do, we're all just along for the ride, the better.

@@Iamwolf134 but that's not true. There's an unlimited number of realities in the universe based on all of our choices. There's a parallel universe where earth was destroyed 20 years ago and there's one where earth's inhabitants survives for another 20,000 years. Doing something is better than doing nothing. You can sit there and let the world rot but some of us actually care about the future

@@chazl9531 Again my guy, all along for the ride in the grand scheme of things. I mean yeah sure, as you've said, we can enact change to improve our own limited sphere of existence, yet there are far more powerful forces in the cosmos; so powerful in fact that it is of no bother to any of them.

@@Iamwolf134 we can literally end Capitalism’s Ecological terror reign with a couple revolutions in developing over exploited countries. Conformity has never changed anything.

@@eddie-roo We can also end humanity's freedom with said revolutions, bought and paid for by opposing oligarchs, seeing as while they may be looking out for each other (at least for the time being), they're also actively plotting against each other in the long run.

It's sadly super pro evo morales propaganda. No mention of the high price of lithium or the referendum on his reelection he lost and how he attempted to fake resulsts that would get him reelected a 5th won. 5 terms of a single president = dictstorship

@@sdb2885 He rewrote the entire constitution literally with the specific intention of making term limits you dingdong, he then disbanded the entire supreme court, replaced each member with his own party, and broke his own law by running against the populations will. I am also pretty sure most Presidents dont go on national tv and say "If people want to strike that's fine I will send a siege to their cities and block off food and medical supplies, lets see how long they last" which I can provide the video if you want. THAT would make him a dictator

@@sdb2885 apparently when the people of a country democratically electing a person 5 times, it's called a dictatorship now The politics understander has logged on

@@navalhermawan7504 what kind of youth would vote to perpetrate the only leather they have known? Youth always demands change. No leader will remain forever popular with all generations. That is why Evo morales tried a putch and was ousted after being caught riging the election.

@@navalhermawan7504 we are talking 20+ not 10+. If you are under 20 years of age you never lived centuries of non indigenous rule and therefore Evo Morales does not represent any type of change but rather the status quo. We say in Latin America, "Being young and not revolutionary is a biological contradiction". It's normal that the Bolivians revolt against the only government they have known in decades. Specially when their neighbor Peru is doing a lot better economically without being government by the hard left. It's incredibly convenient for you not to mention the referendum where people voted against his reelection which against the will of his people, he used his majority to pass the unpopular change in the constitution that would allow him to be reelected. If in your opinion the OAS is discredited that is an opinion, not a fact. I would rather put forward the referendum which he lost as evidence that he was not the beloved leader socialists present him to be in the west and had lost the support of the people. Even nowadays his own party does not want him to run again for the presidency, he is an aspirant dictator. I also think you don't grasp the meaning of the term putsch which stands for a failed coup. Attempting to rig an election and have yourself being ousted of power is a putsch. Bolivia before Evo Morales was the poorest country in the region and Still is one of the poorest (only beaten by socialist Venezuela) . Don't you think people are right to be angry about such situation? Also you can't compare the German system to the Bolivian eleciton system. In Germany you vote for parties and they form coalitions who put forward a Chancellor, in Latin America you vote directly for who you want to be a president, no amount of post-elections alliances allows you to change such results.

Honestly we've built up enough, and we've been decling since the 50's (USA) Consumerism and Capitalism has made our people dumb and lazy (coming from navajo nation).

@@shiverarts8284 we really need to concentrate people in taller buildings in my opinion other wise there will be no natural resources left

Hey did anyone here found out the last study he was talking about?

@@railroadforest30 The population of the world can hit ~5,4 times the current number before the global average population density hits that of England, which is even then mostly comprised of rolling hills and little villages

@@imperialofficer6185 and it should never get close to the density of England. That would mean no large forests or jungles that would be a giant garbage can not a planet if it was that dense

Governments definitely need to focus on transitioning people from working in dirty energy industries to clean energy industries

@@bernardo6715 Absolutely! Nobody just wants their jobs to disappear for some far off ‘greater good’! They want a replacement, for good reason!

@@bernardo6715 maybe geothermal energy is a solution to transfer the already available technology and skills of those workers into a sustainable energy industry. No need for "reeducations", they will do what they know best.

@@raduorza8504 Good idea but it would still require re-education, as well as millions of dollars of investment by the government.

Pivot to Plastics and Petrochemicals as well as environmental cleanup, tourism, and hydro/geothermal. Alberta would thrive after moving on from oil. It has a lot of sectors going for it and the majority of energy companies don't really even contribute much more than they get in subsidies. Jobs or otherwise. Alberta's dependency on Fossil fuels is largely a political effort, and the boom and bust cycles not to mention the environmental destruction are going to keep taking their coal. I was dismayed to see how the previous NDP government kept on with oil and gas, but the future has to come eventually.

have you seen that elon musk tweet where he jokingly says that he will coup bolivia just for lithium? it’s insane man

Yes! Bolivia has the world's largest reserve of lithium. It's also the poorest (per capita) country in South America. It's wildly ripe for exploitation.

I dont think lithiun ion batteries are a good solution. Hydrogen os better for Long term storage

@@sthezh I'm afraid carpet bombing would happen there just like the middle east. 😢😢

He convienently left it out as its high prices are the reason evo morales could spend soo much more money than his precedesors.

Also North America makes up only 6% of the global demand for lithium smart guy www.statista.com/statistics/1105113/global-lithium-consumption-distribution-by-region/

@@intihumala9087 still he is getting cheap lithium it doesn’t matter how much it’s if he is, or is not benefiting from politics devastating a nation

@@GreaterBayArea Elon Musk never implied or said he was going to take lithium, your entire claim that bolivia "couped" the government all for lithium was a completely fabricated lie. Before Evo Morales stepped down he signed a 2.5 billion dollar deal with the vulture Chinese

@@intihumala9087 if you wanna test a companies ethics dont listen to what they say look where the money goes

@@GreaterBayArea which is exactly what I just demonstrated to you as Telsa is currently mining for lithium in Nevada.. did you actually read the sources I provided? I am guessing no.

Maybe he meant to say "illiteracy rate", but it was cut off

It’s for the cocaine production in El Chapare.

@@paolakolar437 Sabes que eso no es del todo cierto. Tipnis promovería un mayor crecimiento económico, pero ciertamente en detrimento del medio ambiente. Hay mucha retórica ambiental y poca acción significativa.

Two years later and everything is still on fire. We're getting smoke here from fires in Canada right now.

as a socialist one day that can happen, Socialism while isn't perfect does value society and the people much more than capitalism. While also valuing and focusing on more equality and such etc and rights etc socialism doesn't take away our freedoms it gives us more freedoms. Not to mention that country and it's party has done great to make better more equal wealth to all the people and such which I'm very happy for and I hope this will be a great example for people to see how socialism could replace capitalism in the future.

and yet nobody uses the word "cancel" This is clearly youtube trying to "cancel" this channel lol

Not really alot of this guys videos get alot views it's probably because the title and thumbnail isnt that intresting

They are carbon free, if you allow for carbon offsets. Basicly since they are a mountain country, they build massive hydropowerplants and sell electricity to India. They are carbon neutral, if you use that clean electricity to offset the crabon their cars, planes and a lot of other things produce. They however do a lot to minimise CO2 production in the country and have taken a pretty hard stance to protect their enviroment.

If I am not mistaken Buthan is (or was some years ago) a carbon sink country. Also the only country that managed to be a sink

But overall I agree with the point of your video. Is a tricky thing to try to develop and take people out of poverty while also trying to take care of environmental issues. Is fucked up. Lots of people have no option. Of course cultivating coca gives more money that growing bananas! I think the only thing that could help my country is if americans and europeans stopped doing drugs. But that ain't gonna happen.

Everything I wanted to point out, is said here. I hope people give it a read, as it is important to see the whole picture.

This actually made me curious to check the re-election thing. To be fair, in Brazil the leftist president that was part of a union left after his 2nd term, but we still had a coup in 2016, so who knows if it would've stopped them.

@@raquelesteves3334 After the coup, the temporary government organized new elections that took place last October. The MAS party won with a big difference after they got a new candidate. They got even more votes that a year before when Evo was running (which shows that there were people who supported the MAS party but were against the re election). The temporary government made a peaceful transition. There were protests claiming fraud but the Añez presidency didn't engaged with them and assured that elections were fair stating that everyone should and will respect the results. The re election thing (and the suspicion of election fraud) was the main reason people were on the streets on November 2019. Without that "the coup" would have been impossible. The thing is in Bolivia there is no big organized opposition party, you could say the MAS party is the only one there is at all. I think Brasil is a different case because of that.

@@nebai I didn't know that(about the major parties thing), it makes sense then, that the other party candidate wouldn't be taken out of power. Thank you for explaining it :)

This government doesn’t care about the environment at all ! Deforestation is now at its worst. Bio diversity is suffering.

That highway was only made for transporting cocaine which is why so many people protested against it. 300 indigenous went missing because of that protest and Evo called them "traitors" which is why he lost so much support

what I do't understand is why it couldn't have been a massive underground tunnel

@@6_blocks_under Because anything you put in the ground comes right up, in Bolivia we dont bury our dead in the ground we put them in tombs because by the next day half the coffin will be sticking out of the ground. Too much moving water beneath the surface and we have major floods.

@@intihumala9087 ah i see

Except that the information provided in this video is wrong. The person who did this video did a very shallow research, and based him/her self on information that was shamelessly manipulated by the government.

@@paolakolar437 I think we´re gonna need some proof and/or examples for that.

@@perfectmoments3876 the video leaves out the fact that Evo Morales rewrote the entire Constitution with the clear intention of making term limits, he then disbanded the entire supreme court, and replaced them with his own party members in 2011. Then broke his own law by running again. After weeks of protests he held a referendum in which 51% of the entire population voted against him running and he ignored his own referendum and ran anyway. On the day he was accused of rigging the elections he went on National TV and threatened protestors stating that he would send groups of people to block cities so that no department would receive food and medical supplies unless they submit which caused even more outrage. Another thing that they leave out in the video is that Evo didn't make Bolivia's economy go up, all of Latin America's economies went up because of the 2000's commodities boom, he never changed the quality of life because public school teachers, doctors, nurses, and social workers, and the disabled have been protesting for well over 10 years now. Nothing in Bolivia changed and it never will.

Nice fake news terrible information. The only thing good is the format. Everything else is a lie

Yup, they got a lot of information wrong. The government of Evo Morales has been anything but friendly to Bolivia’s environment.

"not pitching their work as explicitly Marxist' Yeah well exactly, because why pitch as such when he has to show it in positive vibe. You know, truth sometimes is not what people want to hear. This is a good video, agreed. But I dont agree that "Degrowth is necessary". Especially when author did not even explain what degrowth means or what he meant by it. "must start/be paid for in the imperial core," capitalism is very simple: you remove profit motive = companies leave. You cannot tax private companies extracting and exporting gold, silver and gas from Bolivia to 80-90% levels, it breaks the equation of profit. Which means they will leave, leaving infrastructure to government's hands. Then it is up to gov to run it, if it even can manage. But short term this is damage to people who work there. If you leave whole country in the hands of government to control then they fail, because it is not the job of government to act like a business or run a business. You can research on this by looking into planned economies and their failure to be a successful country.

@@imicca 1st: this video is in the context of the channel. I truly hope he doesn't explain every single concept over again every time. You have plenty of videos in his channel exploring degrowth in various contexts. 2nd, haven't you even seen the video, r done a basic research? In Bolivia they VERY HEAVILY taxed extractive industries and that lead to the best improvement in quality of life that the country has ever seen. Just baffling how it seems you basically didn't understand th video...

@@asier_getxo "r done a basic research?" seriously are you playing the same cliché game of "do your research" nonsense? I have watched fully, and he did not explain ANYTHING about how taxation of extractive industries leading to improvement in quality of life. Or maybe I missed it? Timestamp it please. I legit want to see what you are referring to.

​@@imicca This is a climate change video, not an economy's doctoral thesis. He ofc doesn't do a deep dive into the economical forces that were at play for 15 years in Bolivia, nor should he. YOU are the one that started to make the wild, unsubstantiated claims in the first place: " You cannot tax private companies extracting and exporting gold, silver and gas from Bolivia to 80-90% levels, it breaks the equation of profit. [...]But short term this is damage to people who work there." Which you do not support at any single point. Indeed, and funnily enough, YOU are the one who started asking people to do their own research "old cliché": "You can research on this by looking into planned economies and their failure to be a successful country". But I guess the internet's just a free card for hypocrisy and acting offended at every step. But the funniest thing is that what you claim is just false, and explicitly debunked by the video. 2:55 to 3:25 he explains how Morales basically nationalised (or heavily taxed) the fossil fuel industry, and that that money was funnelled into state programs. While in the same video he explains how Morales' Bolivia saw one of the fastest growths in the area, even counter to at-the-time economic trends, while heavily reducing poverty and ilititeracy (1:45 to 2:32) I truly don't know why I even bother tbh, cause if you didn't grasp it the first time you saw and kept making a comment like this, I doubt a second view will change that since it was already very clear in the first place. Guess when you're too deep into the neoliberal brainwash it is hard to break free.

@@asier_getxo Guess when you're too deep into the neoliberal brainwash it is hard to break free. Sounds like what a brainwashed libtard socialist would say. Marxism is very effective at brainwashing people. EDIT: will update once I read and understand your propaganda fully.

True. It's only "socialist" compared to the neoliberal regimes that preceded MAS, and operates as a developing social democracy with some state involvement in the major economic sectors and strong unions, though it still suffers from the many hurdles of being a developing country and one that is reliant on primary resource extraction.

@@jackvac1918 MAS is a neoliberal party, there is only a tiny handful of people who identify as "socialists" and they are part of the cocaleros (narcos).

Where did that come from? CIA propaganda?

thissss! 👏

Yeah, indeed the video sugarcoated Evo Morales too much. Like it starts praising him, then saying that, well, actually nothing was accomplished in regards to environment protection, and then shifting blame to the imperialists.

I thought the same, but the information in this video is wrong. The person did a very shallow research. I am so disappointed and now have trouble believing this channel. :(

@@paolakolar437 what information was wrong?

Unfortunately over time it became clear that Morales was part of the later.

@@LunaDuran He stepped down despite getting an absolute majority of the votes, he's literally the opposite of power-hungry. No, the unelected far-right coup leader who immediately sold Bolivia's litium supply to foreign interests, THAT one surely cares about democracy, freedom amd transparency more than the guy who actually cares for his people

@@mynamejeff3545 He lost the referendum (people voted that) which allow him to run for a new election (you know, democracy), but he ignored that and do it anyway. So is he a hero for stepping down when he shouldnt be there in the first place?

Not sure what he uses, but you should be able to do this kind of animation pretty easily with davinci resolve (free version is fine) or premierepro

​@@Rosa-cr7qcthis is not easy to do, it can be done on resolve or afrer effects tho

I agree he was forced to do that

@@teresadaly7210 he was not, I am Bolivian and I can tell you his intention was never to protect the mother earth

@@sergiorosales8658 It's only because socialism is fundamentally degenerative in that it only benefits those at the very top at the expense of everything else.

Exactly!

This, Evo Morales isn't even indigenous, that's his party's propaganda. I am Bolivian too.

@@LunaDuran he looks very amerindian

I think the video explains the reality of Morales in the section starting at 4:45

@@lil_weasel219 He is mestizo like everyone in my country, if he is not by blood, he is culturally mestizo, not everything is appearance and skin color

True

Exactly. People saying that "socialism doesn't work" is really just people saying that it isn't a utopia where everything works perfectly. That's not the point. It only has to be better than capitalism for me to support it. The inherent contradictions within the capitalist system led me to the conclusion that socialism is a necessary next step in the history of humanity.

@@luc6284 hey, I would love to subscribe to that but so far no government has achieved socialism in a way that it led to a nice outcome for the people. Usually the government gets kind of absolute power, which corrupts absolutely 😅 just like the giant companies of these days having too much power. Nothing to argue about the fact that most countries around the world could be more social (by that I mean achieving fairness) and environment-focused. Let's see what the future will bring haha

​@@persiancarpet5234 I mean I understand your fear here no doubt, but I'd recommend you to look into some of the socialist experiments a bit more. Especially how they emerged from history and why... You see, whilst it hasn't ever been some kind of utopia, there have still been massive improvements in life expectancy, literacy, caloric intake, infant mortality, infrastructure, GDP, racial/gender equality etc etc. Take Thomas Sankara, leader of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. He only accepted a modest military wage and prohibited government officials from flying first class or coming to work in a Mercedes (the president came to work by bicycle). In four years of leadership he managed to get 2.5 million people vaccinated, infant mortality became a lot less common, school attendance nearly tripled and literacy rates increased from 13% to 73%. He planted 10 million trees and he insisted on gender equality opposing things like polygamy or forced marriages which are very normal in many parts of Africa. He also supported freedom of the press and opposed the display of his own portrait in public buildings because I'm guessing he probably didn't want to be associated with Stalin and Mao who had their portraits everywhere. He also refused any kind of foreign aid from the west since he knew this was a sneaky strategy of the west to exert influence and power in third world countries. Unfortunately he was a little stubborn when it came to foreign affairs, rejecting cooperation even with neighboring countries as well and he failed to establish a parliament which could secure the progress he made would not be lost, which is exactly what happened when he was assassinated by French colonialist sympathizers and Burkina Faso quickly became just another poor African nation again. Democracy is also very possible under socialism, in fact it is the goal of it. The Paris Commune is considered the world's first socialist society, being governed in part by randomly selected workers from Paris, ensuring that the will of the common man was enforced in the government. Unfortunately, this society was brutally destroyed by the French army two months after it started. It's very possible to run a democratic socialist country, though it isn't the strongest at defending itself against enemy invaders. This is why Lenin and the Bolsheviks chose to keep some level of centralized power in the state in order to protect their citizens against a world that was doing its best to destroy it. In a way, it was an incredible achievement by Stalin that his country was still standing after Nazis had been infiltrating the USSR both from the outside as well as the inside in high government positions (hence Stalin's purges). This is the compromise that the Soviets made to secure the revolution and the safety of their people. Limits on personal freedom - in return for a house, food, clothing, education, healthcare and safety. It was far from perfect, but they got a lot back for it too. If you want to see how Cuban democracy looks like I'd recommend watching Azurescapegoat's video on it. In case you want to read how socialist countries performed in terms of physical quality of life in comparison to capitalist countries at equivalent levels of development check out this study: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf In most cases socialist countries actually performed better than capitalist ones

@@luc6284 well, thanks for the effort of writing this huge message😅 I'm not convinced by how you portrayed the countries (I only have historical knowledge about the USSR, I have no idea what happened in the others), but I'll look into the pdf that you sent!

Exactly! I'm glad I found this comment. "Movimiento al Socialismo", is only a name. MAS has taken some very aggressive capitalist interests in their politics, for example when they have tried to privatize the lithium from Uyuni in 2019, which lead to protests from miners in Potosí (that eventually escalated to the revolution with the referendum fraud suspicions). Those for example, were absolutely no far-right groups.

As a Venezuelan migrant, I appreciate this comment that points out the video was politically skewed. The environmental disaster in Venezuela after decades of seemingly eco-friendly, indigenous-protecting socialism is a warning tale for Bolvia. 46.000 oil spils between 2010 and 2018 alone and the mass destruction of the Amazon due to illegal mining is just the tip of the iceberg.

@@emilianonavarro2858 Yeah i giggled my ass off when he said "far right" where is this far right in Bolivia ?

Lol you think humans existed 2 million years ago

Absolutely agree that a circular economy makes perfect economic sense no matter what the politics are.

It’s impossible for an economy to be non-political. Everything is political, especially something as large as an economy. While socialism doesn’t require sustainability, I believe that sustainability requires socialism. It is impossible to have a sustainable society while a profit motive exists.

The video here does a very poor job on what really happened in Bolivia. Lots of the information provided in this video is simply wrong. The MAS party controls the media, let’s just say that if the media doesn’t play along with the government or criticizes them, people can get killed. I would suggest that you get in contact with real people living in the area.

@@paolakolar437 I have, every Bolivian I asked greatly approves of his leadership. Problem?

This video is very misinformed. The information is wrong. The person did a very shallow research.

Me too. I'm grateful to other patreon user for supporting this great channel.

You can find it in the "further reading and resources" he linked in the description, it's the last article in that list. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512?via%3Dihub

@@Srijit1946 Thanks! Sorry for missing that link.

You can find it in the "further reading and resources" he linked, it's the last article in that list. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512?via%3Dihub