Green Capitalism

A monetary valuation of nature is something new. Pricing nature is viewed as a potentially powerful way of of communicating with broader groups, and also of integrating the value of ecosystems in socioeconomic analyses that form the basis of decision-making. But seeing nature as a living, beautiful web that we are connected to and pricing it for the services that it delivers to us, are incompatible. These two positions reflect values that are very difficult, or impossible, to hold simultaneously. Life is being converted to money.  It implies that humanity is a consumer of nature, instead of a connected part of the living web. And that creates further distance between us and nature. Especially when money is involved, this approach undermines social and environmental motivations. When we are told to care about nature because it is profitable it also diminishes us. We know that we are an integral part of the world, not nature’s customers.

 Capitalism cannot measure or value non-monetised, more human and relational sources of wealth. Were it to attempt to systematically do so by internalising all costs such as the costs of pollution to the environment capitalism wouldn't come close to being profitable and, hence, would be a non-viable system.

 The idea of competition lies at the heart of all capitalist  thinking. The argument says that human beings excel when they are competing with one another for dominance. The free market is the best economic system in the world, we’re told, because private enterprises compete with one another for market share. This is the thinking behind the movement to privatize government services. People who are motivated to act out of self-interest will do whatever it takes to enrich themselves, even if that means damaging the entire society.

In the realm of food production and population, it doesn't matter how many times Malthusian arguments of overpopulation are factually refuted. Those arguments buttress the dominant classes' explanations for hunger and environmental degradation, and refute alternative, less palatable, explanations and, thus, continue to resurface as "truth."

The environmental destruction is the direct result of the crazy, profit-motivated system we live in. And so long as that system is allowed to continue, pollution, global warming and climate change  will continue and increase. The problem is not technology itself but capitalism and capitalist technology.  Many blame droughts for the famines of Sahel and the Horn of Africa  but is capitalist relations of production, distribution and exchange which bring about starvation. Contraceptives, irrigation schemes and alternative technologies do not change the structure and effects of capitalism.  Socialists have always argued the case for alternative production in one sense -  the idea that in a socialist society production will be for need and not for profit. Socialists will go to war against the enemies of Mother Nature in defense of the environment against defilement by profiteering special interests and the the waste of the natural resources by these same forces. The purity of air, water, soil, are vital to humanity. More than 8 million acres of China's farmland is too polluted with heavy metals and other chemicals to use for growing food. It would be about 2 percent of China's 337 million acres of arable land. Some scientists have given higher estimates of as much as 60 million acres, or one-fifth of the total, though it is unclear how much of that would be too badly contaminated for farming. The growth of Chinese industry, overuse of farm chemicals and lax environmental enforcement have left swathes of the countryside tainted by lead, cadmium, pesticides and other toxins.  Authorities launched an investigation of rice mills in southern China after tests found almost half of supplies sold in Guangzhou, a major city, were contaminated with cadmium.

Socialists fight destruction of the forests and resist over-concentration of population in vast industrial centers.  We expose the system that pollute streams, lakes and seas. We must bring to bear every social, political and educational pressure against such farm-husbandry abuses and unscientific crop practices. Socialists raise the whole question of energy at the base of modern industry. When people have mastery of society, we will turn to the great non-depletables, the sun, the tides and the winds. The inexhaustibility, from the view-point of mankind, of three the power resources of sun, water, and wind is indisputable. The problem of the conversion of power from these various re-newable, sustainable energy sources has never been given any serious inquiry in capitalism.