Creating an Ecological Society. Chris Williams
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Capitalism versus the Biosphere
As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions.
—FREDERICK ENGELS1
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM in late eighteenth-century England resulted in air and water pollution and degraded soil. Marx and Engels followed the scientific studies and political literature and concluded that negative social and ecological side effects of capitalism, today commonly referred to as “externalities,” are unintentional, but are nevertheless logical outcomes of a competitive economic system predicated on profit maximization. Engels gives this example:
What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of very highly profitable coffee trees—what cared they that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock! In relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of production is predominantly concerned only about the immediate, the most tangible result; and then surprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different, are mostly quite the opposite in character.2
The concept of metabolic interactions between humans and the environment was used as framework to help explain what was happening. In biology, “metabolism” refers to the basic chemical processes that occur within cells and organisms, which require an exchange of materials with the outside environment. For example, we need to eat, drink water, and breathe air to get oxygen into our bodies but we also return materials to the environment in our solid and liquid waste and when we exhale CO2-enriched air. Marx extended the concept of metabolism to refer to all human interactions with the environment: as we go about making clothes, building houses, factories, and machinery, drilling for oil, producing food, and so on. He argued that when capitalists followed their singular goal of making money, some of these interactions created disturbance so great that they caused irreparable rifts “in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.”3
Why do metabolic rifts and disturbances happen? A fundamental assumption of capitalist economics is that there are unlimited sources of natural resources and unlimited “sinks” to absorb the pollution associated with the production, distribution, use, and disposal of products. Environmental and social considerations play only a small role (if any) when making decisions on production and distribution because the overriding goal is to make the highest profit. Thus, “externalities,” the negative side effects of profit-driven production decisions, are inevitable. As new, larger tools and technologies are developed to increase production and more energy is required to run them, damage to nature occurs more frequently and with much longer-term impacts. Individual capitalists (and the system as a whole) are unable to rationally manage human interaction with the rest of the natural world in ways that preserve the integrity and healthy functioning of the biosphere. It is this reality that leads to severe ecological disturbances and rifts, in the natural cycles and processes on which we and other species depend.
THE GREAT ACCELERATION
The United States economy experienced a boom following the Second World War when the productive capacity built for the war effort was repurposed to fulfill the increased demand for domestic commodities resulting from savings built up during wartime austerity and to rebuild war-torn economies abroad. The economy was also greatly stimulated by governmental programs such as the GI Bill, helping war veterans go to college and buy houses with zero down payments, and a huge burst from the increased production and use of automobiles. The building of the vast interstate national system of highways, begun under President Eisenhower in the mid-1950s, led to the growth of suburbs and stimulated new businesses such as restaurants and hotels and gas stations to service highway travelers and stores for the new suburban population. This is period also marks the beginning of the effort to turn the U.S. public into voracious consumers. From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, economic activity more than doubled in the United States, Britain, and Japan and increased rapidly in other already developed countries.
The dramatic expansion of the capitalist system during this period reoriented relations in much of the world toward commodity production of all manner of goods and materials. Global trade increased exponentially, as did energy use, world population, and the global economy as a whole. Production of new and old materials took off: global production of synthetic pesticides went from about one-tenth of a ton in 1945 to about 3 million tons in 1980; plastics jumped from around 2 million tons in 1950 to 52 million tons in 1976, 109 million tons in 1989, and over 300 million tons in 2015.4 The Working Group on the Anthropocene, a committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences, has dated the start of the proposed new geological epoch to the post–World War II period, with its “Great Acceleration” of economic activity and resultant damage to the metabolic interactions needed to maintain healthy and fully functioning ecosystems (see Figure 3.1, pages 78–79).
In capitalism, critical economic decisions are often far removed from where the primary effects will be felt and without input from those who will be directly affected. This makes it especially difficult to fully grasp and combat the extent of environmental degradation. Mark Campanale, founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative and “sustainable investment analyst” of multibillion-dollar projects, illustrates this when describing a meeting “typical of those which happen every day in the City of London”:
Figure 3.1: Social-Economic and Ecological Trends and the “Great Acceleration.”
Source: Graphs created by R. Jamil Jonna based on data in Steffen et al., “Trajectory of the Anthropocene,” 81–98.
A group of Indonesian businessmen organized a lunch to raise £300 million to finance the clearing of a rain forest and the construction of a pulp paper plant. What struck me was how financial rationalism often overcomes common sense; that profit itself is a good thing whatever the activity, whenever the occasion. What happened to the Indonesian rain forest was dependent upon financial decisions made over lunch that day. The financial benefits would come to the institutions in London, Paris, or New York. Very little, if any, would go to the local people…. The rain forest may be geographically located in the Far East, but financially it might as well be located in London’s Square Mile.5
Accelerating changes in our metabolism with the biosphere, generated by the activity of our economic system, have created deep ecological disturbances and rifts, resulting in the global environmental crisis we now face. But even when these disturbances are recognized, after-the-fact attempts to fix the situation frequently go on to cause their own unforeseen negative effects, creating even larger problems.
NUTRIENT CYCLES
In ecosystems relatively undisturbed by human activity such as remote forests and grasslands, the flow of matter and energy tends to remain in a dynamic but relatively stable equilibrium. Essential nutrients such as phosphorus and calcium cycle through this healthy ecosystem with very small amounts lost. Nutrients, though removed from the soil by plants, are maintained within the local ecosystem by their return as animals die and plants shed their leaves or die and decompose. A variety of microorganisms can make nitrogen available to plants and help make the elements in minerals and organic matter soluble and thus usable by plants.
Traditional hunting-gathering communities had relatively small impacts on the cycling of nutrients, not that different from those of other hominid species. Beginning around 10,000 years ago, the invention