What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781583672730
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Teoria economica

Praise for Foster and Magdoff’s The Great Financial Crisis: In this timely and thorough analysis of the current financial crisis, Foster and Magdoff explore its roots and the radical changes that might be undertaken in response.... This book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing examination of our current debt crisis, one that deserves our full attention.— Publishers Weekly

There is a growing consensus that the planet is heading toward environmental catastrophe: climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, global freshwater use, loss of biodiversity, and chemical pollution all threaten our future unless we act. What is less clear is how humanity should respond. The contemporary environmental movement is the site of many competing plans and prescriptions, and composed of a diverse set of actors, from militant activists to corporate chief executives.

This short, readable book is a sharply argued manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of “green capitalism” or piecemeal reform. Environmental and economic scholars Magdoff and Foster contend that the struggle to reverse ecological degradation requires a firm grasp of economic reality. Going further, they argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solely on new technology to avert catastrophe misses the point. The main cause of the looming environmental disaster is the driving logic of the system itself, and those in power—no matter how “green”—are incapable of making the changes that are necessary.

What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism tackles the two largest issues of our time, the ecological crisis and the faltering capitalist economy, in a way that is thorough, accessible, and sure to provoke debate in the environmental movement.

Preface

Wealth, if limits are not set for it, is great poverty.

—EPICURUS¹

Ecological economist Herman Daly is well known for emphasizing what he has called the “Impossibility Theorem” of unlimited economic growth in a limited environment. Put concretely, an extension of a U.S.-style high consumption economy to the entire world of 7 billion people—much less the 9 billion-plus world population projected for the middle of the present century—is a flat impossibility.² In this book we are concerned with extending Daly’s Impossibility Theorem by introducing what we regard to be its most important corollary: the continuation for any length of time of capitalism, as a grow-or-die system dedicated to unlimited capital accumulation, is itself a flat impossibility.

We are constantly being told by the vested interests—and even by self-designated environmentalists and environmental organizations—that capitalism offers the solution to the environmental problem: as if the further growth of capital markets, green consumption, and new technology provide us with miraculous ways out of our global ecological dilemma. Such views are rooted in an absolute denial of reality, or what John Kenneth Galbraith has called a system of “innocent fraud.”³ In this make-believe, Through the Looking Glass world, the wondrous workings of markets, perhaps tweaked here or there by regulations and incentives, make miracles possible. In the process, the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and ecology—as well as the limits of the earth—are simply conjured away. Fundamental changes in our mode of existence and our lifestyle are not required: another world is not necessary.

All of this raises questions about what constitutes environmentalism. Today, more people than ever are convinced that the degradation of the earth’s life support systems is leading us toward catastrophe. Whether they are environmental activists or not, growing numbers of people are concerned about the environment and are taking small steps, and willing to do much more, in order to protect the planet. For all those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change and other forms of environmental destruction, but also that there is a pressing need to change the basic relationships between humanity and the earth. Put simply, it is essential to break with a system based on a single motive—the perpetual accumulation of capital, and hence economic growth without end. Such a break is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for the creation of a new ecological civilization.

This book grew out of an article with the same title, originally published in the March 2010 issue of Monthly Review.⁴ Interest in our article was so great that we were encouraged to expand it into a short book. This brief work thus is a product of its origins. We have not tried to present a systematic discussion of the entire planetary ecological crisis, though many aspects of that are touched on here.⁵ Rather our goal is to provide a useful introduction to the issue laid out in our title: What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. What every environmentalist needs to know, of course, is that capitalism is not the solution but the problem, and that if 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.

Our personal and intellectual debts in relation to this work are too vast to acknowledge in full. However, we would like to thank especially Hannah Holleman and Jan Schultz, who aided and assisted us in the preparation of the present manuscript at various stages of completion.

We would also like to acknowledge the political and intellectual support of those at Monthly Review, Monthly Review Press, and MRzine, without which this work would have been inconceivable, including: Scott Borchert, Brett Clark, Susie Day, Yoshie Furushashi, John Mage, Martin Paddio, John Simon, Victor Wallis, and Michael Yates.

Some of our close friends, colleagues, and students have contributed to our understanding of ecological issues in ways that have impacted this book: including Matthew Clement, Cade Jameson, R. Jamil Jonna, Brian Tokar, Ryan Wishart, and Richard York.

During the last two years, while working on the ideas in this book, we have traveled to Bolivia, Brazil, China, Venezuela, and Vietnam to discuss ecological issues. We are thus constantly reminded that the ecological movement is a planetary one. We would like to thank the many individuals from many different cultures that we have encountered in these journeys.

Finally, we would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Amy Demarest and Carrie Ann Naumoff, with whom we share our lives on this earth and our struggles for a sustainable future.

JUNE 5, 2011
FLETCHER, VERMONT
EUGENE, OREGON

1. The Planetary Ecological Crisis

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first.

—FREDERICK ENGELS¹

Environmental degradation is not new to today’s world but has occurred throughout recorded history with profound negative consequences for a number of ancient civilizations—most notably Mesopotamia and the Maya, which experienced major collapses due to what are believed to be ecological causes. Problems with deforestation, soil erosion, and salinization of irrigated soils were present throughout antiquity. Commenting on the ecological destruction in ancient Greece Plato (c. 427–347 BCE) wrote in Critias:

What proof then can we offer that it [the land in the vicinity of Athens] is … now a mere remnant of what it once was? … You are left (as with little islands) with something rather like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease; the rich, soft soil has all run away leaving the land nothing but skin and bone. … For some mountains which today will only support bees produced not so long ago trees which when cut provided roof beams for huge buildings whose roofs are still standing. And there were a lot of tall cultivated trees which bore unlimited quantities of fodder for beasts. The soil benefitted from an annual rainfall which did not run to waste off the bare earth as it does today, but was absorbed in large quantities and stored in retentive layers of clay, so that what was drunk down by the higher regions flowed downwards into the valleys and appeared everywhere in a multitude of rivers and springs. And the shrines which still survive at these former springs are proof of the truth of our present account of the country.²

What makes the modern era stand out in this respect, however, is that there are many more of us inhabiting more of the earth; we have technologies that can do much greater damage and do it more quickly; and we have an economic system that knows no bounds. The damage being done today is so widespread that it not only degrades local and regional ecologies, as in earlier civilizations, but also affects the planetary environment, threatening the existence of a majority of species on the planet, including our own. There are therefore sound, scientific reasons to be concerned about the current rapid degradation of the earth’s environment.

What we call the environmental problem today is not reducible to a single issue no matter how large, but rather consists of a complex of problems. One of the latest, most important developments in Earth system science, developed by leading scientists, is the concept of “planetary boundaries,” in which nine critical boundaries/thresholds of the earth system have been designated (or are being considered) in relation to: (1) climate change; (2) ocean acidification; (3) stratospheric ozone depletion; (4) the biogeochemical flow boundary (the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles); (5) global freshwater use; (6) change in land use; (7) biodiversity loss; (8) atmospheric aerosol loading; and (9) chemical pollution. Staying within each of these boundaries is considered essential to maintaining the relatively benign climate and environmental conditions that have existed during the last 12,000 years (the Holocene epoch). The sustainable boundaries in three of these systems—climate change, biodiversity, and human interference with the nitrogen cycle (part of the biogeochemical flow boundary)—have already been crossed, representing extreme rifts in the Earth system, while others—ocean acidification, global freshwater use, changes in land use, and the phosphorus cycle—represent emerging rifts. (Proposed boundaries for atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution have yet to be designated.)³

Although each of these rifts in planetary boundaries constitutes a major threat to life on the planet as we know it, it is climate change that is the biggest, most immediate threat, occupying a particularly central place, since it overlaps with all the others. Human-induced increases in greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) are destabilizing the world’s climate. If humanity does not soon change course, this will probably have horrendous effects for most species on the planet, including our own. Each decade is warmer than the one before, with 2010 tying with 2005 as the warmest year in the 131 years of global instrumental temperature records, and with nine of the warmest years on record in the last decade.⁴

Indications of accelerating problems directly tied to climate change are already beginning to manifest themselves. These include:

• Melting of the Arctic Ocean ice during the summer, which reduces the reflection of sunlight, thereby enhancing global warming. Satellites show that end-of-summer Arctic sea ice was 40 percent less in 2007 than in the late 1970s when accurate measurements began.⁵ The three years with the least Arctic Sea ice cover at the end of summer were 2007, 2008, and 2010.⁶

• A rise in sea level that has averaged 1.7 millimeters (mm) per year since 1875, but which since 1993 has averaged 3 mm per year, or over an inch per decade, with the prospect that the rate will increase further. The eventual disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, set in motion by global warming, may result in a huge rise in ocean levels. Even a sea level rise of one to two meters would be disastrous for hundreds of millions of people in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and various island states. At present, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, the scientific arm of the eight-nation Arctic Council, is projecting rises in sea level by as much as just over a meter and a half this century based on current trends.⁷ A sea level rise at a rate of a few meters per century is not unusual in the paleoclimatic record. At present, more than 400 million people live within five meters of sea level, and more than one billion within 25 meters.⁸

• The rapid decrease of the world’s mountain glaciers, many of which—if business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions continue—could largely be gone during this century. Some 90 percent of mountain glaciers worldwide are already visibly retreating as the planet warms. The Himalayan glaciers provide dry season water to hundreds of millions of people in Asia; their shrinking will lead to floods and acute water scarcity. Already the melting of the Andean glaciers is contributing to floods in that region. In April 2010 some fifty people were injured in Peru as part of a glacier fell into a glacial lake, causing the Hualcan River coming from the lake to overflow its banks.⁹ But the most immediate, current, and long-term problem, associated with disappearing glaciers—visible today in Bolivia and Peru—is that of water shortages, because the glaciers function as water storage reservoirs.¹⁰

• Warming of the oceans, where some 90 percent of the heat added to the planet has accumulated. This has been implicated in a dramatic decrease in the phytoplankton (microscopic plant-like organisms) that are at the bottom of the ocean food chain—with much of the decline occurring in the last fifty years.¹¹ Although other causes besides global warming may be involved (see discussion of ocean acidification below), such a remarkable decline of productivity at the base of the ocean’s food chain will undoubtedly have a profound negative effect on the future overall productivity of the seas.

• Devastating droughts, expanding possibly to 70 percent of the land area within several decades under business as usual. Effects are already evident in northern India and northeast Africa; while Australia experienced a ten-year drought in the opening decade of this century (with the rains only just returning).¹² But even when rains come, they frequently are so intense that flooding and loss of life occurs, as with the 2010 floods in Pakistan and the 2011 floods in Australia. As reported in the Independent (UK) with respect to Pakistan: “The twin hazards of perilously low levels of water for most of the year followed by summer weeks of calamitous flooding illustrate the scale of the problem for countries such as Pakistan. It is often the same countries that suffer limited supplies of clean water that also endure flood devastation.”¹³

• Warmer winter and summer temperatures that have already upset regional ecosystems. One example concerns the white bark pine tree that normally grows to a very old age—with some over a thousand years old—on the upper elevations of the western mountains in the United States. These stands have provided habitat and food for many species of birds and mammals, including bears. The pine bark beetle, now able to reproduce at the higher elevations because of warmer temperatures, is infesting these zones and turning huge areas of white bark pine trees into “ghost forests.” The death of the forests in turn means no food for the animals, forcing them ...