Getting to the Root of Environmental Crises

[blindpig]

Rifts and Shifts
Getting to the Root of Environmental Crises
Brett Clark and Richard York

Humans depend on functioning ecosystems to sustain themselves, and their actions affect those same ecosystems. As a result, there is a necessary “metabolic interaction” between humans and the earth, which influences both natural and social history. Increasingly, the state of nature is being defined by the operations of the capitalist system, as anthropogenic forces are altering the global environment on a scale that is unprecedented. The global climate is rapidly changing due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. No area of the world’s ocean is unaffected by human influence, as the accumulation of carbon, fertilizer runoff, and overfishing undermine biodiversity and the natural services that it provides. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment documents how over two-thirds of the world’s ecosystems are overexploited and polluted. Environmental problems are increasingly interrelated. James Hansen, the leading climatologist in the United States, warns that we are dangerously close to pushing the planet past its tipping point, setting off cascading environmental problems that will radically alter the conditions of nature.1

Although the ecological crisis has captured public attention, the dominant economic forces are attempting to seize the moment by assuring us that capital, technology, and the market can be employed so as to ward off any threats without a major transformation of society. For example, numerous technological solutions are proposed to remedy global climate change, including agrofuels, nuclear energy, and new coal plants that will capture and sequester carbon underground. The ecological crisis is thus presented as a technical problem that can be fixed within the current system, through better ingenuity, technological innovation, and the magic of the market. In this view, the economy will be increasingly dematerialized, reducing demands placed on nature.2 The market will ensure that new avenues of capital accumulation are created in the very process of dealing with environmental challenges.

Yet, this line of thought ignores the root causes of the ecological crisis. The social metabolic order of capitalism is inherently anti-ecological, since it systematically subordinates nature in its pursuit of endless accumulation and production on ever larger scales. Technical fixes to socio-ecological problems typically have unintended consequences and fail to address the root of the problems: the political-economic order. Rather than acknowledging metabolic rifts, natural limits, and/or ecological contradictions, capital seeks to play a shell game with the environmental problems it generates, moving them around rather than addressing the root causes.

One obvious way capital shifts around ecological problems is through simple geographic displacement—once resources are depleted in one region, capitalists search far and wide to seize control of resources in other parts of the world, whether by military force or markets. One of the drivers of colonialism was clearly the demand for more natural resources in rapidly industrializing European nations.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/081124clark-york.php<[/div>

much more.....

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Jevons "Paradox"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">Jevons Paradox

We may, indeed, be doomed after all.

--d!

[mix]

2. great read

His discussion of Marx and his analysis of soil and capitalist accumulation is brilliant and chillingly relevant. Soil is a fragile and essential part of human life, and in great danger due to drought, deforestation, and erosion.

Industrial capitalism is absolutely the root of the world's environmental crises. Only systemic change will save us.

[cali]

3. it's industrialization not merely capitalism

not to mention population. the environmental damage in the former U.S.S.R and in China is hardly a mere blip.

[cowcommander]

4. Yep. Author of that article conveniently ignores China's own industrialization today

Not a single mention of the environmental catastrophe that is occuring in China today.

[mix]

9. nonsense, redbaiter

Europe and the US are the historical centers of global capitalism, so the article focuses on their development. Also, the author's point about the global and systemic nature of capitalism, and our present environmental crises, of course includes China, as our country's financial and manufacturing ties show. China is the new center of the system being discussed at the link. This goes without saying.

You missed the point entirely.

[anonymous171]

11. Insulting the glorious "Peoples' Republic" of China =/= redbaiting.

[mix]

12. start making sense nt

[anonymous171]

13. You first. nt

[blindpig]

6. Part and parcel

It's how you use industrialism, is it sheerly for the generation of profits or is it to meet human need, in which environmental considerations would be included.

The problems in the USSR stemmed from accepting the capitalists style of industry too fully and forgetting the extent of human needs. The pressure on Soviet managers to out compete the capitalist also figured into this. This may have been true of China too in the past but I would hardly call China socialist today.

[HamdenRice]

22. Marx, Lenin, Stalin -- all advocated or as leaders strove for industrialization

Industrialization is neither capitalist nor socialist nor communist -- it is a technological system of production.

And as for China, it is very much socialist. I've read through much of their legal system code, and the emphasis remains on (1) state ownership of urban industrial systems, (2) collective ownership of the means of production outside of cities, (3) private ownership of some means of production within the framework of a socialist market economy, (4) extensive central, provincial and local planning, to which public, collective and private enterprises must conform, and (5) extensive economic regulation. That's socialism.

Anyone who doesn't think China is socialist has bought into a capitalist triumphalism myth: because socialism must fail, and because China is succeeding economically, therefore China cannot be socialist.

That is a point of view you share with Thomas Friedman.

[blindpig]

23. Hogwash

"Industrialization is neither...", no shit, Sherlock. Where did I say otherwise?

As per China, if the people do no control the means of production then it ain't socialism. It appears that China traded rapid industrialization for socialism, the two are anything but mutually exclusive but it appears that bowing to demographic pressure the Chinese leadership elected to allow the capitalism's historic capability for rapid build up to do it's thing. How and if they intend to rid themselves of this incubus is beyond me.

[HamdenRice]

26. Your forced group reading of Das Kapital "over there" apparently isn't doing you much good

It seems to have gone completely over your head. Or perhaps Anarx-whatever hasn't yet said, "Does everyone now understand everything exactly they way I've laid it out and exactly how I interpret it? Can we move on?" and therefore you haven't gotten to the parts where Marx describes industrialization.

:rofl:

What you seem to be saying is that any industrialization you don't like can't be socialist. Well fortunately, you're an unimportant, uninformed kid on a web forum whose opinion of Chinese or Soviet socialism, of Marxist theory and economic historiography, and of the relationship between industrialization, modes of production and pollution ultimately means absolutely nothing to anyone -- except you and three or four other "revolutionaries."

I was checking some old threads from "over there" and it's tragic how dogmatism, fanaticism and intolerance of dissent turned a once vibrant web forum into a kind of pathetic, deluded, little group-think cubbyhole.

[blindpig]

27. It's a matter of ownership of the means of production.

I think you well understand that and oppose the idea. Well and good, but don't try to pass off anything less than the worker controlling the means of production as socialism.

While I am indeed unimportant I am neither uninformed nor a 'kid', so stuff your petty bullshit. Your continual barrage of insult, innuendo and mis-characterization is rather amusing, why should you care so much?

As to what goes on elsewhere, why is that your concern either?

Seems to me that you're trying to goad me into some sort of ban-able offense. Ain't that against the rules here?

[LARED]

5. Except for the authors dogma getting in the way, it was an

excellent article.

The authors blame capitalism as the root of this ecological unbalance, yet capitalism is hardly the lone political system that has the problems identified in the article.

This is a human nature problem rather than a political one.

[blindpig]

7. What is 'human nature'?

First of all, capitalism is a mode of social production, not a political system. For example, the fascist Nazis were capitalists. Capitalism has been the dominant form of production for the past 150 years or so. therefore it 'owns' the problem.

'Human nature' is a product of the social environment and not a fixed, determined thing. Change the social environment and 'human nature will change.

[anonymous171]

14. Human nature is fine. Humans are naturally cooperative.

The marxist view of human nature is terribly outdated. Try reading Peter Singer's "A Darwinian Left." It's a real eye-opener.

[blindpig]

15. That is the Marxist view

which Marx based upon what was known of 'primitive' societies and the historical record in his time. The old man has proven remarkably prescient in any number of cases, but I will take a look.

[mix]

16. Marx has never been so relevant.

Marx thought that "human nature" or consciousness had both essential and existential dimensions. Universal constants like the need for food, shelter, and social organization exist along side historically, culturally and materially determined practices, beliefs, and behaviors like those associated with neoliberal capitalism, that would argue for example that "human nature" is solely greedy, acquisitive, and competitive, therefore society must be organized to accommodate this reality.

"Human nature" remains constant in many ways across time, as Marx recognized, but it also changes according to material and cultural realities and power structures, i.e "the social environment" as the OP said somewhere.

To claim that "human nature" is entirely and essentially the same today as it was 100,000, 5,000 or even 500 years ago, to claim for example that humans are inherently cooperative or competitive, is not evidenced by the historical record. The truth is somewhere in between. The best form of social organization would balance these forces in an environmentally sustainable way.

[blindpig]

17. While it is certainly mutable...

I think the base line is the the long period between our emergence(roughly speaking) as a distinct species and the adoption of settled agriculture in which egalitarianism was the norm and our species prospered. The current arrangement is a comparative drop in the bucket.

[LARED]

19. Human nature?

Of course human nature has it's malleable components, but it also has components that transcend exposure to, or manipulation by changing social, political, and economic pressures. The assumption from many is that these pressures create only improvements to man's nature in line with Utopian notions. Something that wholly ignores recorded history.

Nazis Germany is but one example. Millions of decent Germans did nothing while they watched their Jewish friends and neighbors disappear. The same pressures that work in a theoretical improvement, helped them believe this was acceptable.

I say supposed good because while Nazi Germany is a clear case of evil, the world the authors envision is nothing more than a socialist wet dream IMHO. How will mankind fair in a world where we live in a society where the "social metabolism with nature <is managed> in an environmentally sustainable manner" I don't know, but one thing I do know is the authors don't know either, but make the assumptions this is a good thing that can only be realized by dissolving capitalism, as capitalism is inherently incapable of operating within nature without destroying it. Another assumption without merit IMHO. What will mankind be forced to go without or limit to be in sync with nature? Medicine? Electricity? MTV? How does one even know the limits to define social metabolism?

But back to human nature.

Do you really believe selfishness and greed are simply human traits managed by scarcity or class struggles? Seriously? Do you believe human are fundamentally good as long they are in the right environment? Do you really think social evolution on it's own can attain social metabolism? If not who gets to decide how we interact with nature. Politicians? Philosopher Kings? Any quick and light review of history shows us that humans are nearly infinitively industrious in manipulating any social, economic or political system to their own benefit.

Humans own the problem, we always have, not capitalism.

[Odin2005]

24. WTF? The notion of humans as blank slates died 30 years ago.

Then again, Marxism is a religion and doesn't care about those pesky facts.

[blindpig]

25. Not a blank slate

However, this 'human nature' argument seems to err to the opposite extreme. There is of course the genome, but it must be recalled that the genome itself is formed and reinforced by it's environment. Primates are capable of a wide variety of behaviors, those which are expressed successfully (successful reproduction) are those which are most suited to the environment, which includes the social environment.

Religion, I got none, just an old materialist.

[mix]

8. Your point is not historical.

Human nature has a part to play, but so do politics and economics. Whereas numerous societies after 10,000 BC exhausted resources and inflicted environmental damage regionally, like the Mayans and the Ancient Puebloans, modern industrial capitalism is a global system that has several hundred years of accumulated environmental destruction. Once anthropogenic environmental crises were regional; they are now global.

Also, world population growth--a key part of the climate change story--begins to spike in the 1700s and has not abated at all, a fact driven by political and economic factors like imperialism, industrialization, and market capitalism.

[blindpig]

10. kick

[maryf]

18. K&R this excerpt is dead on:

"Capitalism is incapable of regulating its social metabolism with nature in an environmentally sustainable manner. Its very operations violate the laws of restitution and metabolic restoration. The constant drive to renew the capital accumulation process intensifies its destructive social metabolism, imposing the needs of capital on nature, regardless of the consequences to natural systems. Capitalism continues to play out the same failed strategy again and again."

Profit over people, nature, life itself...when will folks learn??

[Starry Messenger]

20. kick.

[HamdenRice]

21. Da! Comred! Das Kapital hadt eet ahl feegeered out 150 years agoh!

Vat page is up to now?