Well that's a nitpicking argument which depends on your definitions. From what i understand, what you call "communism" i call "State capitalism" and what you call "democratic socialism" i call "liberal capitalism". Under all these systems, there's privileges: people who have more and people who have less, while communism is usually defined as a stateless/classless society (including by marxists).
> Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?
Indeed! Yet this formula ignores the ties between the two concepts. Industrialization and capitalism grew hand in hand with extractivism and colonization starting in the 16th century. Without the industry to build boats to exploit the overseas, capitalism could not exist: yet without massive accumulation of wealth, industry as we know it could not be created.
This is not to say pollution is impossible without capitalism. But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment, and because there will always be more areas to exploit and pollute: our overlords are now openly talking of colonizing Mars once they're done fucking things up over here!
If you have intellectual curiosity for critiques of industrial capitalism, i strongly recommend the "End: Civ" documentary.
It's a thought-terminating cliché that has the useful side effect of getting everyone to talk about the sociopolitics of authoritarism or the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything other than the fact that modern industrial society doesn't have to be as polluting as it is.
I'm not saying nobody has done it. I'm saying those actual examples (eg. 1936 revolutionary Spain, until the stalinist then franquist takeovers) are not what people refer to when they talk about "communism" as a scapegoat. Unless of course "communism" refers to dictatorship of the proletariat, which surprisingly both leninists and capitalists agree about.
Self-determination and self-organization on a wide scale. There's much less incentives to affect your environment and community negatively when decisions are taken collectively, than when decisions are taken by a minority reaping benefits but not suffering from negative consequences (pollution, bad working conditions, etc).
If anything, the COVID crisis has shown that health workers care and will go to great lengths of creativity to counteract the bureaucracy and lack of resources (remember the trashbag suits? the homesewn masks?). Now imagine if these people were in charge of organizing healthcare instead of managers? I can only imagine much better outcomes for everyone involved. And the same is true across most (all?) industries and areas of life.
Also where industrial communism was? Where industrial democratic socialism is?
Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?