5. Can Capitalism Go Green?
The most obvious way out [of the climate crisis] is a new round
of growth-a giant burst of economic activity designed to replace
our fossil-fuel system with something else that will let us go on
living just as we do now (or better!), but without the carbon.
Even, or especially, as our economy has tanked, we've seized on
the idea of green growth as the path out of all our troubles.
-BILL McKIBBEN!
Some people who recognize the ecological and social problems
that capitalism brings still think that capitalism can and should
be reformed. According to Benjamin Barber: "The struggle for
the soul of capitalism is ... a struggle between the nation's economic body and its civic soul: a struggle to put capitalism in its
proper place, where it serves our nature and needs rather than
manipulating and fabricating whims and wants. Saving capitalism means bringing it into harmony with spirit-with prudence,
pluralism and those 'things of the public' ... that define our civic
souls. A revolution of the spirit."2 William Greider has written a
book entitled The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral
Economy. There are books that tout the potential of"green cap-
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
italism" and the Natural Capitalism of Paul Hawken, Amory
Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. Green to Gold, a book by Daniel
Esty and Andrew Winston-"printed on acid-free paper made
from 100% postconsumer recycled pulp with soy ink"-is subtitled How SmaTt Companies Use Environmental Strategy to
Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage.3 So
we can get rich, continue growing the economy, increase consumption without end, and save the planet-all at the same time!
How good can it get?
There is, however, a big problem with such thinking. A system that has only one goal, the maximization of profits in an endless quest for the accumulation of capital on an ever-expanding
scale, and which thus seeks to transform every single thing on
earth into a commodity with a p1·ice, is a system that is soulless;
it can never have a soul, never be green. It can never stand still,
but is driven to manipulate and fabricate whims and wants in
order to grow and sell more ... forever. Nothing is allowed to
stand in its path.
There are a number of important "out of the box" ecological
and environmental thinkers and doers who are highly critical of
the status quo and identifY with the environmental resistance to
the system, but who have nevertheless found ingenious ways to
reconcile themselves with capitalism. For example, Hawken and
the Lovinses argue that capitalism is not really capitalism unless it
fully embraces so-called "natural capital," which means that all
will be well if capitalism internalizes everything in nature, bringing the external world under its laws, reducing everything in existence to the status of a commodity-with a price. Consequently,
these seemingly nonconformist environmental thinkers do not
differ much from a more establishment figure like Al Gore, with
his aspirations for a "sustainable capitalism."4
Hawken and the Lovinses and many others in the broad tradition they represent-people seeking progressive solutions but
finding it impossible to get out of the capitalist framework-are
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
97
no doubt genuinely good and well-meaning people who are sincerely concerned with the health of the planet. Most are also concerned with issues of social justice. Some truly admirable figures
like WesJackson and Wendell Berry are working toward concrete
low-tech solutions, emphasizing local sustainability and community, while understanding that there is no real silver bullet cure for
what ails the planet. We ourselves have been inspired at times by
the ideas of such out-of-the- box thinkers.
But there is one box from which it is impossible to escape
without confronting it directly: the capitalist economic system.
Many, if not most, influential environmental thinkers in the
world's rich countries still shy away from such a direct confrontation. Even the increasing numbers of green thinkers who criticize
capitalism and its market failures, frequently settle in the end for
what they regard as practical solutions directed at creating a
tightly controlled humane, green, and non-corporate capitalism,
instead of actually getting outside the box of capitalism. Some call
for reinventing "the purpose and design of business," or using tax
policy to better direct investment and consumption to green
ends, or for trade policies that might promote the goods of more
sustainable economies.s Others suggest eliminating the myriad
government subsidies to businesses and taking into account
social and ecological consequences of production ("externalities") so as to give rise to "honest prices" that reflect the real
costs, including those to the environment. 6 The contradictions
and complexities of actually implementing a new way to price
commodities, in a system in which the profit is the only god, and
power rests in the hands of people who have no interest in doing
this, makes all of this an insurmountable task. As David Harvey
has said: "If capitalism is forced to internalize" all of the social
and environmental costs it generates "it will go out of business.
This is the simple tmth."7
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
The Mystique of the Market
The remedies proposed by environmental reformers often
include maintaining a strong role for private ownership of businesses as well as the role of markets. In many people's minds markets (especially so-called free markets) are an important positive
aspect of capitalism because they provide cues telling businesspeople what to invest in, and whether more or less of some product or service should be produced. Markets are also, in this view,
the only efficient way of distributing goods. Thus markets are
supposed to make sure that what's needed gets produced and
what people don't need or want doesn't get produced.
Such claims with regard to market efficiency are frequently
based on mystical notions of what markets are-and what the market system is. Indeed, much of this has its basis in a form of circular
reasoning: market prices are described as efficient, while efficiency
itselfis whatever arises from a system of market prices. Widespread
market inefficiencies and market failures are downplayed as peripheral issues no matter how pervasive. Negative effects, resulting from
the externalization of costs on people and the environment, are
often ignored even if they threaten the existence of most human
beings and the planet itself.s The fact that markets in a capitalist
society serve the narrow interest of the accumulation of capital and
reinforce the power of the wealthy is frequently hidden, since the
power relations that lie behind most real markets are not transparent. Often we are told that markets should be self-regulating, and
hence "free," which means governments should not intervene. Yet,
markets in the real world are dominated by giant corporations,
which intervene in numerous ways in their functioning, employing
enormous monopoly power. Indeed, economists commonly speak
of the market power of such giant corporations, in order to refer to
their monopoly power over the market.
Most discussions of markets ignore not only corporate power
but also class power and other forms of social and economic
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
99
inequality. Market economies are mystifying in that they disguise
these vastly unequal relations, generating results that appear accidental-the violence of things rather than the violence of property.9 The "highest and best use" of a resource or a commodity in
a market system is not what benefits the population as a whole,
but what benefits those with the greatest purchasing power.
The neoliberal idea of the smoothly operating and efficient
self-regulating market society-nothing more than a self-serving
myth-dominates much of current policy, and is used to beat
down any barriers to economic interests.I 0 Rather than a self-regulating market, what we increasingly have today is a society in
which private interests increasingly reg;ulate the state. For example, in the financial crisis of 2007-2009 the first priority of all of
the mature capitalist states was to bail out big capital and big
finance, to the tune of trillions of dollars. The population was
simply told that the market demanded it, since certain firms were
"too big to fail." At the same time that the riches of the wealthiest
members of society were being preserved millions of people lost
their homes and jobs and slipped into poverty.
The whole notion of the market has become so abstract, and so
removed from reality in every way, as economist james K. Galbraith
has stated, that "when you come down to it, the word market is a
negation. It is a word to be applied to the context of any transaction
so long as that transaction is not directly dictated by the state." 11
The Neoliberal Concept of Democracy
The commonplace notion of the opposition between state and
market, between public and private, is important. The state represents the realm of political action, in which democracy-the
rule of the people, by the people, and for the people-is theoretically possible. In contrast, the market under capitalism represents
the rule of capital, by capital, and for capital.
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
Today, rather than a true democracy we have a plutocracy
(rule by moneyed interests) in which some of the formal elements of democracy nonetheless remain. Needless to say a real
democracy, as this was classically understood in egalitarian
terms, is impossible where income, wealth, and power are concentrated and where inequality is growing, that is, in the normal
way of things under capitalism. Hence, ever since the publication in 1942 of Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy, in which the neoliberal concept of democracy
as a market relationship was first introduced, attempts have
been made by defenders of the system to redefine "democracy"
in economic terms, transforming it into something nearly opposite its original meaning. In ancient Greece democracy was associated with the rule of the demos, i.e., the common people. In
contrast, democracy has now been redefined in the United
States and some other countries as a system in which individuals simply vote periodically for political entrepreneurs, who
seek out their votes much like commercial interests seek out
dollars in the marketplace. 12 The essential content of democracy has therefore been eviscerated. So politically corrupted is
the U.S. political system that instead of one person, one vote
being the rule, an individual's political influence is weighted
according to his/her wealth, which determines how responsive
politicians are to that individual's interests. Big money, as is well
known, provides access to politicians and opens doors. At the
same time, corporations themselves "vote" with their dollars,
feeding the financial campaign chests of politicians and hiring a
phalanx of lobbyists to forward their interests. Politicians frequently end up paying their financial donors back "with interest" for what they receive. As in any business transaction, corporations provide political campaign financing and naturally
expect "value added" in return.I3
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
101
The Inversion of the Real
The capitalist system, since it worships what Rachel Carson
called "the gods of profit and production" rather than real
needs, is unable to supply all people with the essential requirements of a decent life, or, in some cases, life itself. 14 This derives
from the fact that capitalism is inherently an alienated system, in
which those on the receiving end of the system measure themselves by their distance not only from the rest of the world's
population but also from nature itself, glorying in the "conquest
of nature." It is a world turned upside down: one that places
abstract value above human beings, making it, and not the living, creative forces of nature and humanity, the measure of what
is material and productive.
It follows that the various ways of "reforming" capitalism that
are promoted by often well-meaning, practical people, who are trying to change things within the parameters of what is allowed by
the system, are little more than intellectual contortions: people trying to get around or smooth over basic features of the system
because in their eyes a real alternative is unthinkable. In what
Derrick] ens en and Aric McBay call the "inversion of what is real,"
capitalism is seen as more real than the environment; and hence it
is capitalism that needs to be saved in the context of the environmental crisis, as opposed to the earth's environment itself. 15
Not surprisingly, then, the dominant strategies with respect to
global warming to be found in environmental circles are concerned not with preserving the planet but with preserving capitalism, the very system that is destroying the earth as we know it. In
a speech calling for "urgent action to fight global warming," UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said: "We must be actively
engaged in confronting the global challenge of climate change,
which is a serious threat to development everywhere." 16 In this
view, it is not capitalist development, that, by promoting global
warming, constitutes a threat to the earth's environment and its
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
inhabitants, but rather global wa~ming that constitutes a threat to
capitalist development. What nearly all mainstream solutions to
the global environmental problem have in common, as Jensen and
McBay write, is that
they all take industrial capitalism as a given, as that which must
be saved, as that which must be maintained at all costs (including the murder of the planet, the murder of all that is real), as the
independent variable, as primary; and they take the real, physical world-filled with real physical beings who live, die, make
the world more diverse-as secondary, as a dependent variable,
as something (never someone, of course) that (never who) must
conform to industrial capitalism or die .... Within this culture,
the world is consistendy less important than industrial capitalism, the end ofthe world is less to be feared than the end ofindustrial capitalismP
The "out of the box" environmental thinkers, who often
parade as the most radical and critical green thinkers, but who all
too often fall prey to the mystique of capital, are thus unable even
to envision, let alone promote, an economic system that has fundamentally different goals and decision-making processes than those
that are currently dominant. As cultural theorist Fredric Jameson
has said, for many people in this society, "it is easier to imagine the
end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.'' 1B
The Morality of "Green Capitalism"
Today green is good. "Being green" has become very fashionable as well as profitable, and corporations are outdoing each
other to portray themselves as green and socially responsible.
After all, who doesn't want to be considered sustainable? You
can buy and wear your Gucci clothes with a clean conscience
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
103
because the company is helping to protect rain forests by using
less paper.I9 Newsweek claimed that corporate giants such as
Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, and IBM
were the top five green companies of2009. This was because of
their use of renewable sources of energy, their reporting of
greenhouse gas emissions (or their lowering of them), and their
implementation of formal environmental policies.2° Some environmentalists and business leaders say that you should "vote
with your wallet," by purchasing green products.
Environmental problems can be and in some cases are being
ameliorated by better production practices (for example, growing organic food or using renewable inputs instead of nonrenewable ones). The business offensive along these lines just
prior to the Copenhagen Climate Change meeting was
described by the Guardian (UK): "Climate change catastrophe
can be averted by 'greening' consumer behaviour rather than by
curbing economic growth and mass consumerism, leaders of
some of the world's biggest businesses including Tesco, CocaCola and Reckitt Benckiser argued today."2 1
The mainstream emphasis on corporate responsibility as the
solution to the environmental problem can be examined by looking at the case ofBP. On April22, 1999, Sir John Browne, CEO
of BP, received an award for Individual Environmental
Leadership from the UN Environmental Programme for his leadership in promoting environmental causes. Under Browne's leadership BP had adopted the slogan "Beyond Petroleum," and had
acknowledged that greenhouse gases might cause global warming. In 2000 Browne was also awarded FIRST Magazine's FIRST
Award for Responsible Capitalism for his advances in social
responsibility. Browne and BP became symbols of a new green
corporate world. "Can business be about more than profits? We
think it can"-went a Browne-inspired BP ad. Browne promised
growth with environmental cleanliness. Browne was a leading
advocate of the "precautionary principle," in which business
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
would refrain from economic activities that might be environmentally destructive.22
However, despite BP's "Beyond Petroleum" slogan the company continued its aggressive expansion of oil drilling, even in
environmentally sensitive and hazardous areas, such as the Arctic
Circle and the deep ocean. Browne argued that there was no conflict between green values and cars that emphasized performance
over fuel efficiency. Nor, he insisted, was BP's opposition to government regulation with regard to the environment a contradiction, since socially responsible corporations would police themselves.23 Under Browne's leadership BP entered an era of extreme
cost cutting with regard to safety, which generated greater profits
but also greater environmental hazards.
In March 2005 fifteen workers were killed and another 180
injured in chemical fires and explosions at BP's plant in Texas
City-later shown to be the fault of drastic cuts in safety personnel.24 Although Browne resigned as CEO of BP in 2007, BP's
practice of putting profits before safety and the environment continued, leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, after
an explosion that killed eleven workers. Oil flowed for three
months into the Gulf of Mexico, in the biggest accidental marine
oil spill in the history of the oil industry. The spill itself was the
result of numerous, egregious reductions in safety standards by
BP, associated with a business culture of cost cutting to improve
its bottom line,25
The fact that BP's celebrated status as a leading "green" company was shown to be mere corporate "greenwashing" should of
course hardly surprise us. When noted conservative economist
Milton Friedman was asked in 2004 whether John Browne as
CEO could go so far with his supposed green convictions as to
sacrifice BP's economic interests, Friedman flatly answered:
"No .... He can do it with his own money. [But] if he pursues
those environmental interests in such a way as to run the corporation less effectively for its stockholders, then I think he's being
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
105
immoral. He's an employee of the stockholders, however elevated
his position may appear to be. As such, he has a very strong moral
responsibility to them."26 In other words, it is the fiduciary
responsibility of any CEO to pursue the highest profits or the
maximum increase in stockholders' equity. If a CEO were so
deluded as to think that other values could in some way intrude
upon this objective, such tlmt profits would be diminished-say
by an oil company cutting back on its drilling or by putting safety
and the environment first-then that CEO would soon be out of
a job. Quite clearly,John Browne knew the corporate bottom line
in this respect, and never let his talk about environmental values
and corporate social responsibility interfere with BP's real,
exploitative relation to the environment.
The corporate green movement has also reached into consumption, leading to endless hype on "green consumers" and
"green markets." All the emphasis in media stories and advertising on sustainable consumption has created would-be green consumers, who feel that by purchasing "sustainable" commodities
they can pursue their same consumerist lifestyles and feel virtuous at the same time. However, many so-called green products
have been shown to be no better for the environment than their
non-green counterparts,27 As environmentalist Heather Rogers
informs us:
What I learned [while doing research for Green Gone Wrong] is
that the outcome of industrial organic [food], commodity hiofuels, and C0 2 offsetting isn't authentic protection and stewardship of the environment. What's transpiring is a tailoring of environmental crises so they can be dealt with in ways today's economic and political structures deem least threatening to the status quo. 28
The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs,
although supported by some genuinely concerned individuals,
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
have mainly become marketing opportunities, and somewhat successful as such:
Companies use CSR programs to build brand loyalty and make
personal connections with customers. There can be a payoff: 70
percent of consumers say they would pay a premium for goods fi:om
socially responsible companies, according to a recent poll of I ,00 I
adults .... Of that group, 28 percent said they would pay at least $I 0
more for a product because of the social responsibility link. 29
An expert consultant on issues such as "social responsibility"
has some doubts about it: "There's often more spin than substance when it comes to social responsibility. ... Companies want
to take credit for things that they ought to be doing anyway."3o
One of the companies leading the movement, as we have seen, has
been BP, one of the least socially responsible companies on Earth.
But BP's obfuscating propaganda was effective as indicated by its
stock being held in the portfolios of a number of"socially responsible" mutual funds,3I
Today, mainstream environmentalists, oddly enough, look to
Wal-Mart as the leader in corporate responsibility and green business. Thus Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation in 2009, is
celebrated in the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World, 20 I 0
report as the firm that best exemplifies the move from an exclusive
focus on profits to a sustainable business model as its "primary
fiduciary responsibility." Former Wal-Mart CEO (now hoard chairman) Lee Scott is quoted as committing the company in 2005 to
"100 percent renewable energy, to create zero waste" (while at the
same time admitting he had no idea how Wal-Mart can achieve
such goals). We are told that Wal-Mart is now on a "sustainable
journey" (at little cost to itself), promoting green values among all
of its 1.4 million U.S. employees, who are encouraged to be more
sustainable consumers, recycling and eating more healthy meals.
Among its other measures, Wal-Mart has pledged to market only
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
107
wild-caught fish certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (an
organization viewed dubiously by Food and ~ater Watch and ~y
many environmentalists). Its chief concrete enVIronmental commitment, made in 2005, was to become 20 percent more energy efficient by 2013 through cutting the carbon emissions associated with
its current stores by 2.5 million metric tons. But by 2006 WalMart's carbon emissions had already risen, by its own admission,
another 9 percent. The new stores that were being added in 2007
alone were expected to consume enough electricity to add one million metric tons to its overall greenhouse emissions, exceeding any
efficiency gains. As Wes Jackson put it, "When the Wal-Marts of t~e
world say they're going to put in different lightbulbs and get their
trucks to get by on half the fuel, what are they going to do with the
savings? They're going to open up another box store somewhere.
It's just nuts." In the end, Wal-Mart is an economic juggernaut. of a new, sustam
. able econonuc
. ord er: 32
anything but representative
It is known especially for its harsh policies toward labor and Its
readiness to go to virtually any length (including closing down
.
.
stores) to prevent the unionization of its workers.
The reality is that none of the proposals for reformmg capitalism deal with the essential issue, the bottom line of net gain or
profit. For the sake of the environment and our future as a species,
the economy cannot keep growing forever with more and more
goods and services (green or not) consumed per person. But if the
economy doesn't grow, how are jobs going to he created ~nd
maintained? Experience has shown that slow or no growth m a
capitalist economy is a disaster for working people.
Is Reversing Global Climate Change
Compatible with Capitalism?
Let's put aside corporate greenwashing efforts, the systemic
imperative to growth and environmental exploitation, and the
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
question of the role of technology under capitalism and take a
look at some of the proposed technical ways to deal with global
climate change-currently the most critical problem facing the
earth and its inhabitants-without disturbing capitalism.
TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT,
LESS HARMFUL, AND/OR USE FEWER MATERIAL INPUTS
Some proposals to enhance energy efficiency-such as helping
people tighten up and insulate their old homes so that less fuel is
required for winter heating, and the use of simple rooftop solar
water heaters-are just plain common sense. Machinery, including
household appliances and automobiles, is continually becoming
more energy efficient-a normal part of the system, sometimes
coaxed by government regulations. Nevertheless, it is important to
note that increased energy efficiency usually leads to lower costs of
use, but also increased use, and often increased size as well, as in
automobiles and refrigerators-so that the amount of energy used
is frequently increased, or the energy savings are less than they
would be if product size remained the same. People may drive
their fuel-efficient Toyota Prius more miles and leave on the efficient LED lighting more hours than with more energy-consuming
technologies. They may think that they are doing the earth a favor
by buying hybrid SUVs that are more fuel-efficient than nonhybrids, but still use a lot more fuel than a smaller vehicle.
There are proposals to provide less polluting technologies,
particularly solar, wind, and water power. It is certainly true that
this is the way to go in generating energy, as opposed to fossil
fuels, agrofuels, or nuclear energy. There is also the possibility of
combining hydropower with either wind or solar power by
pumping water uphill during the day when energy from wind and
solar are available and then allowing the water to return through
turbines, generating electricity at night if needed. But these
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
109
sources of energy do not provide a free lunch with respect to the
environment, and hence do not allow for unlimited economic
expansion without cost. They frequently come with their own
problems. There is renewed interest in hydropower, especially in
smaller-scale projects-although large-scale projects continue to
be developed in Asia and South America. The damage to the
environment and to humans caused by large dams-forests inundated, species destroyed, seawater intrusion and the killing off of
mangroves in deltas, and relocation of indigenous peoples-has
generated a movement to try to stop such projects.
The earth's geothermal energy can be safely developed in
some areas (Iceland has done quite a bit with this source of
energy) and holds promise, although appropriate locations are
difficult to find and drilling for such projects in northern
California and Switzerland triggered earthquakes. 33 Resource
extraction needed for some of the "clean" technologies, such as
the rare earths required for wind electric generators and hybrid
car batteries, come with their own environmental issues. 34
While some of the proposals make sense, tl1e misguided push
to "green" agrofuels (biofuels made from agricultural crops such
as corn, soybeans, rapeseed, and palm oil) has been enormously
detrimental to the environment and people. The idea is to replace
oil-derived gasoline and diesel by producing the liquid fuels
ethanol and biodiesel from farmed crops. Not only has the growth
of the agrofuel industry put food and auto fuel in direct competition, pushing food prices higher, but the production of agrofuels
also sometimes actually uses more energy to grow and transport
and process the crop than the energy obtained. In addition, significant air and water pollution is frequently associated with the
growing and processing of crops for liquid fuels. 35
Tropical forests are being cut down to plant oil palms, to supply oil to produce biodiesel (in addition to its customary use as a
cooking oil and in cosmetics), resulting in displacement of indigenous peoples and massive emissions of C0 2 as trees are burned
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
and soils disturbed. Conversion of forests to produce oil palm to
make "green" hiodiesel ends up increasing C02 emissions, even
in the fairly long term. It is estimated that it will take four hundred
years of diesel production of palm oil from these plantations to
"pay hack" the environment for the C0 2 emissions occurring
during preparation and planting of oil palm trees.
Another idea for producing "green" liquid fuels is to convert
plant cellulose to alcohol, although it is not yet economically feasible to do so. One of the potential materials, the crop "waste,"
considered to he one of the important feedstocks for this
endeavor, is not waste at all. The return to the soil of crop
residues is essential for maintaining organic matter, which has
such positive effects on crop yields. Another avenue being
explored is the use of algae that make oil. However, this has its
own potential problems such as the amount of land needed and
the possibility that genetically modified algae will he used, with
unknown consequences if they escape into the environment.
Instead of rethinking the entire system as environmental
problems develop, people look for silver bullets-technologies
such as agrofuels that will "solve" the problem. However, it is not
uncommon to discover later that the silver bullet itself causes
other problems. For example, in order to find a replacement for
ozone-depleting chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners as well as insulating foam, HFCs (hydrofluorocarhons)
were introduced as a substitute in the I990s.36 Though this did
help the protective ozone layer recover, HFCs turn out to have
over 4,000 times the heat-trapping ability of C0 2 , thus worsening global warming. The increase in atmospheric HFCs from
leakage from junked refrigerators and air conditioners is projected to he large enough by 2050 to account for six years' worth
of C0 2 emissions.
There are technologies that allow for some kind of conservation, lessening the throughput of resources and energy, generating
less waste, reducing toxins, etc. But increased efficiency in the use
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
111
of energy and resources tends, as we have seen, to result in the
expansion of the capitalist economic system as a whole, negating
any reductions in energy and resource use per unit of output. This
is known as the Jevons Paradox, after nineteenth-century economist William Stanley Jevons, who first raised the issue in his hook
The Coal Question. ]evons pointed out that every new steam
engine was more efficient in its use of coal than the one before, and
yet the introduction of each more efficient engine led to the consumption of greater amounts of coal due to the expansion of production. The Jevons Paradox is now widely recognized by environmentalists as a key reason why technology alone-outside the
transformation of social relations-cannot solve the ecological
contradictions of capitalism.37 As philosopher Hannah Arendt put
it in The Human Condition: "Under modern conditions, not
destruction hut conservation spells ruin because the very durability of conserved objects is the greatest impediment to the turnover
process [of capital], whose constant gain in speed is the only constancy left wherever it has taken hold."38
HIGH-TECH/HIGH-RISK SOLUTIONS
The fact that accumulation is the single drumbeat of capitalist
society means that ecological systems, and the biological-health
systems of species, are stretched to the limits, leading to everincreasing risk. This has led sociologists to speak of the emergence of a "risk society," as a product of capitalism and modernity.39 Toxic chemicals, radiation, and other hazards pervade our
environment and our bodies, with no attempt to discern the full
effects-or even to test most of the chemicals, despite their frequent carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic effects. It is
enough for the system that such technologies are useful in
expanding the economy at low cost to business. The consequences are dealt with in terms of so-called risk management,
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WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
attempting to discern (while underestimating and playing down)
the number of deaths per million that constitute "acceptable
risk."4o In a society organized in this way it is natural enough to
respond to the threat to the planet represented by global warming
by turning to riskier and riskier technologies, continually upping
the general level of risk. Where "progress" is confused with
higher profit margins, which often means the willingness to take
on greater risk, such a solution may even seem rational.
The risk-society issue is immediately evident when the question of nuclear power as a solution to global warming arises. Some
scientists concerned with climate change, including James
Lovelock and James Hansen, see nuclear power as an energy
alternative and as a partial technological answer to the use of fossil fuels-one that is much preferable to the growing use of coal.
However, nuclear energy at present releases 9 to 25 times the carbon emissions of wind energy, due to uranium refining, transport,
and reactor construction. Although the technology of nuclear
energy has improved somewhat with third-generation nuclear
plants, and although there is now the possibility (still not a reality) of fourth-generation nuclear energy, the dangers of nuclear
power are still enormous-given radioactive waste lasting hundreds and thousands of years, the social management of complex
systems, and the sheer level of risk involved. The 2011 post earthquake/tsunami disaster at Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi facility
once again illustrates the ongoing dangers and immense risks
associated with dependence on nuclear power.
The breeder nuclear reactor-a third-generation nuclear technology currently available and often presented as an alternativehas similar
problems to those of conventional fission reactors ,
though producing less low-level radioactive waste and able to reuse the spent fuel, thereby alleviating the problem oflimited uranium reserves. However, they also generate nuclear materials
closer to weapons grade that can be more readily reprocessed for
nuclear weapons. This close connection between nuclear power
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
113
and nuclear weapons development is of course a major concern
for all humanity.
Nuclear plants take about ten years to build and are extremely
costly and uneconomic. It has been estimated that to satisfY the
world's electrical power demands through nuclear energy it
would require building a nuclear power plant every day for the
next forty-three years. If a mere 5 percent of these were built it
would double the world's current nuclear power installations
worldwide. The result would be an increased likelihood of what
sociologist Charles Perrow has called "normal accidents," as
these extremely high-risk facilities proliferate. There are all sorts
of reasons, therefore, to be extremely wary of nuclear power as
any kind of environmental solution. To go in that direction would
clearly be a Faustian bargain.41
A number of vast geoengineering schemes have been proposed either to take C0 2 out of the atmosphere or to increase the
reflectance of sunlight back into space, away from Earth. These
include:
•
Finding ways of absorbing carbon more effectively, such as
fertilizing the oceans with iron to stimulate algal growth to
absorb carbon, and reforesting the planet with genetically
altered fast-growing trees.
•
Various proposals to decrease solar energy absorbed by the
Earth by means of enhanced sunlight reflection schemes, such
as deploying huge white islands in the oceans to restore the
albedo effect; creating large satellites to reflect incoming sunlight; contaminating the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide particles that reflect light and promote global dimming.
•
Geoengineering carbon sequestration on a massive scale.
Here the assumption is that physics and economics will allow
the capture of carbon, and the use of large machines distrib-
114
WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
uted around the world will make it possible to scrub C0 2 from
the atmosphere itself instead of from individual industrial
plant emissions. Mter trapping C0 2 on an adsorbing material
it would then be liquefied fot disposal. 42
'
No one knows what detrimental side effects might occur from
such huge schemes-attempts to play God with the planet. The
sheer complexity of the problems raised suggests the enormous
planetary-risk nature of such ventures. For example, stimulatin~
algal growth by applying iron to oceans might just lead to more
"dea~ zones" when the algae die and fall to the lower depths,
harmmg other aquatic life. Dumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to block sunlight could reduce photosynthesis throughout the planet.
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
115
nomic costs-with price increases from the implementation of
CCS technology estimated to be in the range of21 to 91 percent.
The fuel needs of plants employing CCS technology are expected
to go up by 25 percent. A May 2011 report by the American
Physical Society on the physics ofDAC (direct air capture) of carbon dioxide concluded:
With optimistic assumptions about some important technical
parameters, the cost of this system is estimated to be of the order
of $600 or more per metric ton of C0 2• Significant uncertainties
in the process parameters result in a wide, asymmetric range
associated with this estimate, with higher values being more
likely than lower ones. Thus, DAC is not currently an economically viable approach to mitigating climate change . . . Since a
1000-megawatt coal power plant emits about six million metric
tons of C0 2 per year, a DAC system consisting of structures 10
"CLEAN COAL"
One common technological solution proposed is the shift to what
· is referred to as "clean coal" as a way of expanding the production
of fossil fuels-but without carbon emissions. The U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into supporting such clean
coal research. Although clean coal is not a reality (and never can
be), the mere idea is used to defend continued coal production
and the building of more dirty coal plants. The clean-coal technology claim is based on what is called carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. This technology is designed to remove
carbon from the air prior to its being released into the atmosphere
and turn it into a non-harmful substance that can be injected into
geological formations or into the ocean. Even the most optimistic
scenarios, however, do not see CCS technology as available until
2030-way too late to deal with the immediate climate change
problem. The technology, while nascent, has never been used on
an industrial scale. Moreover, it carries with it enormous eco-
meters high that removes
C0 2
this coal plant emits
would require structures whose total
C0 2
from the atmosphere as fast as
length would be about 30 kilometers. Large quantities of construction materials and chemicals would be required. It is likely
that the full cost of the benchmark DAC system scaled to capture six million metric tons of C0 2 per year would be much
higher than alternative strategies providing equivalent decarbonized electricity. 43
The injection of captured carbon into the ocean could
increase the acidity of the ocean with consequences potentially as
large as climate change itself. The ramifications of attempting to
store the captured carbon dioxide in geological formations is still
uncertain, though it is clear that the escape oflarge amounts of the
gas could be dangerous (residents near an African lake were suffocated in 1986 when a natural pocket of carbon dioxide
escaped). For all of these reasons, clean coal is largely a hoax. The
real priority, as James Hansen indicates, is to stop building new
116
WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
coal plants and to retire those that exist. If the coal reserves are
burned climate change will become unstoppable and catastrophic. CCS technology also does not address the many other
environmental damages caused by coal production and coal
plants: mountaintop removal, long-wall mining, plus all the mercmy, arsenic, sulfates, and other air and water pollutants that
come with the coal system. 44
117
Some low-tech solutions may help, but obviously cannot solve
the problem given an expanding economic system, especially
since trees planted now take a long time to sequester meaningful
amounts of carbon, can be cut down later, and carbon stored as
soil organic matter may later be converted to C0 2 if practices are
changed. However, if practiced, widely increasing soil organic
matter might provide a temporary slowing down of the rate of
increase of atmospheric C0 2 •
LOW-TECH SOLUTIONS
CAP-AND-TRADE AND OTHER MARKET SCHEMES
Also proposed are a number oflow-tech ways to sequester carbon
such as increasing reforestation and using ecological soil management to increase soil organic matter (which is composed mainly
of carbon). Most of the management techniques for increasing
soil organic matter-use of cover crops, return of crop residue to
the soil, integrating livestock and crop farming once again, and
using better crop rotations-should be done for their own sake
because organic material helps to improve soils in many ways. As
agricultural soil organic matter content increases and forests grow
(and the soil underneath the forest also increases in organic matter), this keeps at least some C02 out of the atmosphere. Thus
reforestation, by pulling carbon from the atmosphere, is sometimes thought of as constituting negative emissions.
Another scheme for increasing stored carbon in the soil is to
incorporate "biochar," the product of relatively low temperature
burning with limited oxygen. This char is very stable and is
believed to be one of the factors responsible for the maintenance
of soil fertility in long abandoned fields in the Amazon basin
(these dark soils are referred to as terra preta de indio). However,
forests must be cut down to produce large quantities ofbiochar,
and croplands will have to be used to grow residue to burn-and
about half of the carbon contained in these materials will end up
in the atmosphere during the combustion process.
II
ii
I
I
Government regulation of polluting industries has worked to
some extent and can in the future if the regulations address the
actual problems and the regulators are not in bed with those
being regulated, which, however, is the normal case in the present
system. A struggle for increased government regulation with
respect to the environment, particularly if structured to respond
to the needs of the actual population as a result of constant public pressure, is a necessary immediate response to the environmental problem.
But many environmentalists, unable to imagine a non-capitalist economy, and responding to what they consider practicalthat· is, what the reigning economic interests are willing to
. " to enVIronmen.
accept-have endorse d market- b ase d " so Iutwns
tal problems. These run the gamut from paying businesses to be
more ecologically sound (such as "green payments" for farmers to
use practices that reduce soil erosion), to the heavy taxation of
fossil fuel use, to giving or selling tradable rights to pollute after
imposing a cap on emissions of the pollutant.
Until the last couple of years, the darling of market-oriented
solutions to carbon emissions was "cap-and-trade." This involves
placing a cap on the allowable level of greenhouse gas emissions
and then distributing, either by fee or by auction, permits that
II8
WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
allow industries to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases. Those corporations that have more permits than they need
may sell them to other firms that want additional permits to pollute. Such schemes invariably include "offsets" that act like
medieval indulgences, allowing corporations to continue to polJut~ as long as they buy good grace through helping to curtail pollutwn somewhere else, perhaps in the third world.
How did cap-and-trade, as opposed to taxing pollution or
simply legally mandating reductions in emissions, go from a theory to a near consensus? According to a 2009 article in the New
York Times:
The answer is not to be found in the study of economics or
environmental science, but in the realm where most policy
debates are ultimately settled: politics. Many members of
Congress remember the painful political lesson of 1993, when
President Bill Clinton proposed a tax on all forms of energy, a
plan that went down to defeat and helped take the Democratic
majority in Congress down with it a year later. Cap and trade,
by contrast, is almost perfectry desig;ned for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific
Congressional districts. 45
Cap-and-trade-originally proposed by conservatives for
red.uc!ng sulfur dioxide (a significant contributor to acid rain)
emisswns from power plants-has gone out offavor in the United
States as a response to carbon emissions because conservatives
now claim it is a new tax, and some of the political liberals in
Congress are aware of its failure in Europe. It is clear that this proposed solution is much less efficient than a straight tax or mandate for lowering pollution, partly because it tends to put a floor
under existing emissions, partly because it promotes offsets that
" re duce " emiSSions
. . onIy on paper, not in reality.
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
II9
In theory, carbon cap-and-trade would stimulate technological innovation to increase energy and commodity output per
amount of carbon dioxide emitted. In practice, however, it has not
led to carbon dioxide emission reductions in areas where it has
been introduced, such as Europe. The main result of carbon trading has been enormous profits for some corporations and individuals and the creation of a subprime carbon market. 46
Carbon offsets are invariably part of cap-and-trade schemes
but also can be stand-alone projects. You can now travel wherever
you want, guilt-free, by purchasing carbon "offsets," such as having a few trees planted somewhere, and thus supposedly cancel
out the environmental effects of your trip. The lack of verification
and long-term commitment of these supposed offsets can result in
fraudulent or poorly designed and carried out projects that will
not be enough to compensate truly for the C0 2 emitted and supposedly offset.47 In addition, there are no prohibitions against
changing conditions sometime in the future that will result in carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere.
Europe dominates the $144 billion a year (in 2009) greenhouse gas market. A primary offset purchased by many
European companies has been for Chinese firms to destroy
HFC-23, a by-product of producing the gas HFC-22, used as a
refrigerant. One molecule of HFC-23 in the atmosphere has
about ten thousand times the heat retention of one molecule of
C0 2 • It turns out that companies can make a lot of money
destroying HFC-23. There is evidence that some plants in China
have been producing more refrigerant than they can sell in order
to have more HFC-23 that they can be paid to destroy.4s About
half of all offsets approved by the United Nations through the
summer of 2010 are for credits for HFC-23 destruction. As
Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigation Agency has
stated, "It would be far cheaper and more effective to directly
finance the factories to deal with the HFC-23 problem rather
than use this kind ofbyzantine financing."49
120
WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
For James Hansen cap-and-trade is the "temple of doom" and
"worse than nothing" because it prevents effective action directly
limiting carbon through regulations and a properly designed tax,
while giving people the impression that something is being
done. 5° Indeed, the various technofixes discussed above associated with today's green technology and markets-more efficient
and/or cleaner energy production and use, better regulations,
cap-and-trade of greenhouse gases, carbon offsets, etc.-are all
roads to climate catastrophe rather than climate protection.
"Green capitalism," even if products are produced using the
utmost environmental care and designed for easy reuse, offers no
way out of a system that must expand exponentially and thus,
continue to ratchet up its use of natural resources, its chemical
pollution, its contaminated sewage sludge, its garbage, and its
many other toxic substances. Some of these "fixes" will probably
slow down the rate of environmental destruction, but the magnitude of the needed changes dwarfs these approaches.
Indeed, the problem with all of these approaches is that they
allow the economy to continue on the same disastrous course it is
currently following. The economy can keep on growing and we
can go on consuming all we want (or as much as our income and
wealth allow)-driving greater distances in our more fuel-efficient
cars, living in very large but well-insulated homes, consuming all
sorts of new products made by green cmporations, and so on. All
we need to do is support the new green technologies and be
"goo
d"b
. out waste that can be composted or
a out separatmg
reused in some form, and we can go on living pretty much as
before, in an economy of perpetual growth and profits.
The Need for Sustainable Human Development
The seriousness of the climate change problem arising from
human-generated carbon dioxide and oilier greenhouse gas emis-
CAN CAPITALISM GO GREEN?
121
sions has led to notions that it is merely necessary to reduce carbon footprints (a difficult problem in itself). The reality is that
there are numerous, interrelated, and growing ecological problems arising from a system geared to the infinitely expanding
accumulation of capital. What needs to be reduced is not just carbon footprints but ecological footprints, which means that economic expansion on the world level and especially in the rich
countries needs to be reduced, even cease. At the same time,
many poor countries need to expand their economies, requiring
an even bigger cut in the ecological footprints of rich economies
to make room for development in the periphery.
The new principles we should promote under these circumstances are those of sustainable human development. This
means enough for evetyone and no more. Human development
would certainly not be hindered, and could even be considerably
enhanced, for the benefit of all by an emphasis on sustainable
human, rather than unsustainable economic, development. 51
A drastic transformation in global energy use-staying within
the solar energy budget-will be required to overcome the problem of climate change. To give some idea of the incredible effort
needed to keep global warming to onry 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees
F) simply by technical means, about 80 percent of all of the
energy used in the world (1.'3 out of 16 trillion watts) would need
to be replaced by C0 2-neutral technologies. According to a New
Yorker article profiling inventor Saul Griffith, accomplishing this
"would require building the equivalent of all the following: a hundred square metres of new solar cells, fifty square metres of new
solar-thermal reflectors, and one Olympic swimming pool's volume of genetically engineered algae (for biofuels) every second for
the next twenty-five years; one three-hundred-foot-diameter wind
turbine every five minutes; one hundred-megawatt geoiliermalpowered steam turbine every eight hours; and one three-gigawatt
nuclear power plant every week."52 All of this new construction
would of course mean a huge, if temporary, increase in energy
122
WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW
demands. Griffith has explained: "Everyone sees climate change as
a problem in the domain of scientists and engineers .... But it's not
enough to say that we need some nerds to invent a new energy
source and some other nerds to figure out a carbon-sequestration
technology-and you should be skeptical about either of those
things actually happening. There are a lot of ideas out there, but
nothing nearly as radical as the green-tech hype. We've been
working on energy, as a society, for a few thousand years, and
especially for the last two hundred years, so we've already turned
over most of the stones."53 Regardless of whether major advances
in cleaner energy production are coming soon, the magnitude of
the climate change problem calls for drastic reductions in energy
use through conservation and alterations in lifestyle. This
requires radical transformations in human priorities-not just
placing one's hopes in technological fixes.
The reality is that the major environmental problems we face
today-of which climate change is only one-cannot be solved by
means of technological or market-based solutions while keeping
existing social relations intact. Rather, what is needed most is a
transformation in social relations: in community, culture, and
economy, in how we relate to each other as human beings, and
how we relate to the planet. What is needed, in other words, is an
ecological revolution.
6. An Ecological Revolution Is Not
Just Possible-It's Essential
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils,
namely through the establishment of a socialist economy. ... A
planned economy which adjusts production to the needs of the
community, would distribute the work to be done among all those
able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man,
woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to
promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in
him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
-ALBERT EINSTEIN 1
The analysis in earlier chapters, if correct, points to the fact that
.~eologicai-crisis; ~annot.b:e solved within the logic of the pres- .;
en:teconomicfpoliticalfsocial systemJThe various suggestions for
doing so have no hope of success. The system of world capitalism
is clearly unsustainable in: (1) its quest for never-ending accumulation of capital leading to production that must constantly
expand to provide profits; (2) its agriculture and food system that
pollutes the environment and still does not allow universal access
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