environment

Capital throughout its history has long sought to evade certain costs, to treat them as "externalities" as the economists like to say. Environmental costs and the costs of social reproduction (everything from who takes care of grandmother and the disabled to child rearing) are the two most important categories that capital prefers to ignore. Two hundred years of political struggle in the advanced capitalist world forced corporations to internalise some of these costs either through regulation and taxation or through the organisation of private and public welfare systems...

Since the 1970s, there has been a concerted effort on the part of businesses to divest themselves of the financial and political burdens of dealing with these costs. This was what Reaganism was all about. Simultaneously, the high mobility of capital (encouraged by the deregulation of finance and capital flows) permitted capital to move to parts of the world (Asia in particular) where such costs had never been internalised and where the regulatory environment was minimalist.

Meanwhile, the preferred means for seeking solutions to the key problems of environmental degradation and global poverty – the liberalised markets, free trade and rapid growth and capital accumulation favoured by the IMF, the World Bank and leading politicians in the most powerful countries – are precisely those which produce such problems in the first place. The problem of global poverty cannot be attacked without attacking the global accumulation of wealth. Environmental issues cannot be solved by a turn to green capitalism without confronting the corporate interests and the lifestyles that perpetuate the status quo.

The compound rates of growth that have prevailed over the past two centuries are increasingly difficult to sustain. Is continuous compound growth (at a minimum rate of 3 per cent a year) in perpetuity possible in a world that is already fully integrated into the capitalist dynamic? The environmental and social consequences are bad enough but the potentially deadly geo-economic and geopolitical competition over markets, resources, land and uses of the atmosphere is even scarier.

Zero growth is a necessity and zero growth is incompatible with capitalism. The necessity is, therefore, that we must all become anti-capitalists. Alternative ways to survive and prosper must be found. That is the imperative of our times...

The Ecological Footprint tracks the area of biologically productive land and water required to provide the renewable resources people use, and includes the space needed for infrastructure and vegetation to absorb waste carbon dioxide (CO2). It also shows a consistent trend: one of continuous growth (Figure 2). In 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, the Footprint exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity — the area actually available to produce renewable resources and absorb CO2 — by 50 per cent. Overall, humanity’s Ecological Footprint has doubled since 1966. This growth in ecological overshoot is largely attributable to the carbon footprint, which has increased 11-fold since 1961... However, not everybody has an equal footprint and there are enormous differences between countries, particularly those at different economic levels and levels of development.

[In 2006], as part of a major bombardment of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Israeli planes bombed the fuel tanks for the Jiyeh power plant on the coast near Beirut, releasing 10,000–15,000 tons of oil. A giant oil slick spread northward by Mediterranean currents, contaminated the Lebanese and Syrian coasts, and went as far as Turkey and Cyprus. Meanwhile, large deposits of the densest parts of the heavy oil dropped to the seabed to form black toxic mats, destroying sea life below.

The ongoing Israeli navy blockade of the Lebanese coast made an emergency response impossible in the critical early hours and days of the disaster. Israeli airstrikes in the immediate area kept firefighters and others away from the disaster site, while damaged roads and bridges from other airstrikes prevented crews and equipment from dealing with the growing spill. With the support of both parties in Congress, the Bush administration blocked efforts at the United Nations to impose a ceasefire for another five weeks. Full-scale operations to contain and clean up the spill therefore did not get underway until well into August, by which time the spill had already stretched hundreds of miles. As a result, two months after the spill, only 3 percent of the oil had been cleaned up. Indeed, it took a full six months before the spill was even contained. It took a full year before most of the beaches had been cleaned, primarily by local young volunteers.

Each day, the oceans absorb 30 million tons of CO2, increasing their acidity. The number of dead zones--areas with too little oxygen to support life--has doubled every decade since the 1960s. The oceans are warming about 50% faster than the IPCC reported in 2007. The amount of ice flowing out of Greenland during the summer of 2008 was nearly three times more than that lost during the previous year. Arctic summer ice could be gone by 2030, as could many of the major Himalayan, European, and Andean glaciers. Over 36 million hectares of primary forest are lost every year. Human consumption is 30% larger than nature's capacity to regenerate, and demand on the planet has more than doubled over the past 45 years.