Capitalism and the solution to climate change

Not that we are endorsing this specific example of capitalism getting to grips with climate change, rather just a support of the underlying idea. Folks putting their own money where mouths are and getting on with attempting to solve a problem:

A British app that encourages people to give away excess food has raised $43m (£31m) from investors including German takeaway giant Delivery Hero.

Olio, founded in 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One – whose second name was invented by her “hippy entrepreneur” parents – has 5m users who collect and distribute food that is going to waste in their neighbourhood.

The start-up has signed up deals with Tesco and Booker, which pay Olio to collect food near the end of its shelf life to give it away for free.

We’re not entirely sure that this is a particular problem but then that’s why central planning never does work - no one group of people can possibly know what all the problems are, let alone the solutions to them.

Ms Clarke said while she was a “card carrying capitalist”, she sympathised with Extinction Rebellion’s view that “time is running out” to tackle climate change.

We are pretty certain that time isn’t running out and that XR are entirely wrong about everything. However, we still support this base idea.

You’ve got an idea about how to make the world a better place? Go on then, do so. As and when you prove that you are doing so - making a profit being the signal that your output is worth more than your inputs put to alternative uses - then other greedy capitalists (sorry, that should read others following their own enlightened self interest) will copy you and the world will become a better place at an accelerating rate.

Capitalism providing both the incentive and the measuring rod, free markets the ability to try it all out.

Or, as both we and the IPCC have been saying for some decades now, free market capitalism is the way out of climate change assuming that the problem exists in the first place.