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Video: "The Pros and Cons of Capitalism"

🕑 Added 2020-05-07 12:01:01 +0000 UTC

Comments

Kristen M

This was interesting to listen to. I'm 24 years old and consider myself to be very liberal. The climate crisis is something that started occupying a lot more of my attention about a year ago. I got interested in the zero waste movement late last summer and learned a great deal about the environmental impact of plastic pollution from this. Dr. McAfee is correct in saying that we should stop recycling plastic—developed countries like the US send most of their plastic intended for recycling to smaller Asian countries to handle the plastic (China no longer handles the world’s plastic recycling, as they decided to stop doing this when they wanted to significantly reduce their air pollution levels). Going back to zero waste living though, I’ve found a lot of faults with the movement, though I still support it in many aspects. There is so much emphasis on avoiding or reducing packaging and plastic use in general that I feel like other environmental factors of individual consumption are not considered as much as they should be (for instance, the carbon footprint of ordering all of these zero waste items online and shipping them to our door). There’s also an emphasis on using natural materials over plastics (e.g. cotton grocery bags vs. single-use plastic bags), though the production of these products made with natural materials is going to be higher than the plastic ones (cotton, for instance, requires a lot of resources to grow). Of course, the environmental impact of plastic products once we purchase them is significantly worse than their natural counterparts—plastics last for hundreds of years in our environment, and break down into smaller micro plastics that contaminate our water (and thus our food as well, the health effects of which we still do not know). Anyways, as Dr. McAfee shows in this podcast, there are so many different perspectives on how we as individuals can reduce our environmental impact, and what we may currently think is the best way to live in an environmentally friendly manner may not necessarily be right (which is very frustrating). I wish Dr. McAfee had talked more about carbon emissions, rather than just air pollution in regards to our health and how we’re no longer killing certain animals to make specific products. Many young people are so critical of capitalism because we know that within just a few decades, climate change is going to cause significant catastrophe (catastrophe that may unfortunately make the coronavirus pandemic seem trivial in comparison). Listening to Dr. McAfee made me realize that I may be overly critical of capitalism and corporations in some aspects, and that the way our world currently operates is more complicated than I realize, but I still don’t think I have faith in our current economic system. I think, at the very least, massive policy change needs to go into effect very soon to mitigate the looming effects of climate change.

Lydia Jo Campbell

I agree with Mr. McAfee. I am a libertarian but I am also an Advanced Practice RN. Young healthy people and getting sick and dying as well as us older or less healthy people. For anyone who wants to be out... remember, there are people who love you and would be very sad if you got sick. Even if you get better, you will likely have long term problems.