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BONO HAS TOLD the world’s business elite that capitalism is not immoral, but it is a wild beast that needs to be tamed.
The U2 frontman participated in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos today with Managing Director of the IMF Christine Lagarde, Rwanda President Paul Kagame and others.
“We have to just ask ourselves deeper questions about where we are with the project called capitalism,” he said.
And, you know, capitalism is not immoral – it’s amoral. It requires our instruction. Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than any other ‘ism’, but it is a wild beast and if not tamed it can chew up a lot of people along the way. And in fact those people’s lives that it has chewed up are pushing the politics in our homes towards populism.
Bono made similar comments during a panel discussion with former British Prime Minister David Cameron at the 2014 World Economic Forum, when he said: “Capitalism can be a great creative force but it can be a destructive force. It is not immoral but it is amoral, we need to give it some instructions”.
During the panel discussion today, the singer also spoke about the One campaign, a non-profit advocacy organisation fighting against extreme poverty, of which he is a co-founder.
He said the millenials driving this campaign are not loyal to brands, “they’re loyal to ideas”.
Great businesses are like species and can be extinct if they don’t evolve and adopt.
“Our children are not held hostage to ideology, they look to business or political leaders and they have a question on their hands: Are you a firefighter or an arsonist? And we have to ask ourselves which one we are.”
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Yo Malahide
Climate Change will affect everyone
@David Hughes: it was worse 21 years ago
@David Hughes: ye it’s really hot in the Sahara at the moment
@David Hughes: If every weather event is now climate change, what was is 50,100,200 years ago?
@Verners Tess: 50,098,179 BC
@Verners Tess: 50.1 million years ago was during the tail end of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum, it was a lot warmer than today.
The warm climate caused by oceanic circulation and higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Antarctic continent wasn’t yet cut off from south America (Drakes passage hadn’t opened up yet) and Australia and Antarctica were still part of the same continent. Without a circumpolar ocean circulation, Antarctica did not act like a huge radiator like it does today.
There was also the collision between India collided with Asia 50 million, the beginning of the Himalayas:
https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=298462&WT.mc_id=USNSF_1
This collision increased physical rock erosion and weathering of rock, this resulted in the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere, and in turn caused gradual climate cooling
See: “Equatorial convergence of India and early Cenozoic
climate trend”
“The early Eocene (55 to 50Ma) was the warmest period during the Cenozoic. Various climatic indices suggest that tropical conditions extended 10 to 15 of latitude poleward of their present limits. Eocene tropical assemblages of foraminifera and coccoliths have been found in North Atlantic sediments (Haq et al., 1977). Vertebrate fossils of alligators and flying lemurs have been found from a site on Ellesmere Island, west of Greenland (Dawson et al., 1976).”
@Verners Tess: Basically, the climate did change but the change was a very slow, over millions of years…
https://www.global-climate-change.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screenshot_26-1.jpg
Continents moved by centimeters per year, ock weathering, CO2 extraction and changes in ocean circulation took place over 10 million years. Life was able to adapt e.g. evolution of horses, but we’re changing climate 25,000 to 50,000 times faster now. That is faster than life can adapt, that is catastrophic.
Evolution of the Earliest Horses Driven by Climate Change in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum – https://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6071/959
@Pat Breen: so what’s your point
@Verners Tess: climate not changing
@David Jordan: doubt anyone who liked that comment read ur copy and paste wikipedia job.
@Simon: I did
@David Jordan: thanks for the info!
@David Jordan: tldr so what you’re saying is we need two continents to bash into each other and problem solved.
cant see why this hasn’t been done yet.
@Simon: I’m a geologist.
have your say