The elephant in the room: Capitalism and global environmental change (original) (raw)
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A global outlook on contemporary environmental challenges created by capitalism
Nature and capitalism are two incompatible entities and they have always been in opposition to each other. Owing to the capitalist development, nature is exploited and sacrificed. Relentless capitalist development induces irreversible destruction to our nature, which allows people to acknowledge the defects of capitalist system and seek possible measures to tackle this grave problem. A prosperous, growing, and safe country needs water, clean air, forests, and arable land. Under current trends, these components of the natural resource base threaten to decline substantially as population and per capita incomes rise. Food security and human health are all likely to weaken if natural resources are not protected. Owing to the emergence of these environmental catastrophes, people start to notice the failing and unpromising aspects of capitalism and they endeavor to seek measures to alter capitalist system which is fraught with flaws and problems. Capitalism is capable of assimilating the opposing forces and crises so that it can continue to develop. In light of this, the intent of this paper is to expose the challenges of capitalism in the face of ecological crises. Despite these potential challenges, the assimilating power of capitalism reinforces its incessant development. Valid and authentic reports, journals, books and other related material is utilized for the preparation of this research paper. In the concluding part of the paper few suggestions will be provided. Key Words: Capitalism, environment, consumerism, sustainable development, natural resources.
Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 2012
a powerful statement in their latest collaboration, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. The book was conceived after a huge response to their article of the same name, originally published in the Monthly Review March 2010 issue. The book opens with an unapologetic stance by its authors against capitalism. They unequivocally remark that any suggestion that 'capitalism offers the solution to the environmental problem. .. (is) rooted in an absolute denial of reality' (pp. 7-8). The tone for the book is quickly established through early calls for revolutionary action, as seen on page 8: 'Put simply, it is essential to break with a system based on a single motive-the perpetual accumulation of capital. .. Such a break is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for the creation of a new ecological civilisation'; and again on page 9: '(I)f humanity is going to survive this crisis, it will do so because it has exercised its capacity for human freedom, through social struggle, in order to create a whole new world-in coevolution with the planet.' What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism is an important book on many levels. The authors' ability to condense a large number of very complex environmental issues in a short and concise manner is commendable. Large-scale environmental issues provide context to the magnitude of the problem, while localised examples of devastation provide strong arguments for its impact, cause for concern and urgent need to respond. The obvious need to do something about the horrendous environmental impact of our consumption also begs the question why the title restricts the readership to environmentalists when it is obvious that every citizen needs to understand the seriousness of the ecological issues facing our planet. Perhaps instead its subtitle, A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment, is more apt. Equally, the graphic but justified description of the tyranny of capitalism is a reality that all citizens, not just environmentalists, should be exposed to. As the book continues, the enormity of the catastrophic nature of the villainous character of 'capitalism' unfolds. The villain, large in size and power, seeks to conquer all in pursuit of profits. Capitalism is portrayed as forcing powerless workers to work for less on tasks their conscience doesn't agree with, while forcing out socially and environmentally spirited independent companies in the name of expansion and growth. Reports of capitalism's ever-expanding and insatiable appetite to grow by any means are
Introduction: Capitalism and the Environment
Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 2012
Capitalism is the dominant global form of political economy. From business-as-usual resource extraction in the Global South to the full-scale takeover of the United Nations 2012 conference on Sustainable Development in Rio, Brazil by corporations advocating the so-called green economy, capitalism is also one of the two dominant modes of thinking about, experiencing, and apprehending the natural world. Th e other dominant mode is environmentalism. Th ere are many varieties of environmentalism, but the dominant mode we refer to is "mainstream environmentalism. " It is represented by powerful nongovernmental organizations and is characterized by its closeness to power, and its comfort with that position. Th is form of environmentalism is a well-meaning, bolstered by science, view of the world that sees the past as a glorious unbroken landscape of biological diversity. It continuously works to separate people and nature, at the same time as its rhetoric and intent is to unite them. It achieves that separation physically, through protected areas; conceptually, by seeking to value nature and by converting it to decidedly concepts such as money; and ideologically, through massive media campaigns that focus on blaming individuals for global environmental destruction. Contemporary capitalism and contemporary environmentalism came of age at the same time. Th e extensive global decolonization movements in the 1960s and early 1970s altered the ease by which capitalists and corporations could access new sites for natural resources, land, and labor; the three key ingredients for keeping capitalism growing. Th is, coupled with the oil crisis, and the realization that access to cheap and easy oil-the commodity that drives capitalist expansion-could no longer be taken for granted, ushered in the age of fl exible, highly mobile capital that we have today. Th e next decade gave rise to corporations that were lean and seeking deregulated environments from which to draw resources. If they could not have open and free access to natural resources, land, and labor through collusion with colonial oppressors, they would seek to infl uence new, and old, nation-states, to deregulate access to everything. Th e global environmental movement, while having roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth century preservationist writings of Henry David Th oreau and John Muir and conservationist writings of Giff ord Pinchot, also came to maturity in the 1960s and early 1970s. Silent Spring was published in 1962, Th e Limits to Growth was published in 1972, and that same year the crew of the Apollo 17 spaceship took the fi rst clear picture of an illuminated earth from space. Also in 1972, the United Nations held its fi rst conference on the environment, bringing together governments from both the so-called "developed" world and the newly decolonized states. Th ese events ushered in the decade when the United States and other global powers passed environmental legislation at an unprecedented scale (e.g., the clean water act, the endangered species act, and the clean air act in the United States).
The Incompatibility Between Capitalism and Environmental Sustainability
2019
The aim of this work is to show the clear incompatibility between the capitalist system and environmental sustainability. Starting from the Nature-Society dichotomy and its implications for the environment, I explore many of the contradictions that arise with regard to the relationship between capitalism and environment. I draw upon works of different Marxist scholars and contemporary examples of capitalist mechanisms. Moreover, the paper tries to suggest some solutions or alternative pathways: from a biocentrist approach to the radical experiment of Kurdish Social Ecology.
The Ecological Question: Can Capitalism Prevail?
2007
Apocalyptic visions of resource exhaustion forcing capitalism's final crisis rest upon overly narrow understandings of what, exactly, constitute natural resources. Natural resources are posited to be out there, natural things that can be picked up, cut down, mined or otherwise gathered, processed, and used. They are finite, and once used up will be gone. There is some hedging of this position, of course: forests can be re-planted, tin cans and bottles can be recycled. But this view takes resources to be strictly natural, rather than just as much social. That is, it overlooks how things found in the natural world only become useful to human societies in the context of particular socio-technical frameworks. It thus fails to adequately grasp technology and especially the dynamism of technological innovation and change under capitalism. Furthermore, these visions of final crisis tend to confuse particular manifestations of capitalism--that is, particular historical social formations...
Capitalism, Global Change and Sustainable Development
Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, 2020
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