Climate Change As Class War

Marx suggests that the value of corn, or any commodity coming from the land, is set by the socially necessary labor time it takes to produce on the least fertile land. Those producing on more fertile lands see the extra profits due to lower costs of production;

While there is much focus on the role of consumption in environmental degradation, the root of these dynamics is in capital’s drive for relative surplus value in the mode of production.

Burning a lot of fossil fuel is not the only reason why cement production generates a lot of carbon. The chemical process of making cement—the calcination of calcium carbonate (CaCO3)—creates carbon dioxide as a waste byproduct, which in turn constitutes between half and a third of emissions.