It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

[Briar]

It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change

Robert Newman

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.
Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

On these pages we have been called on to admire capital's ability to take robust action while governments dither. All hail Wal-Mart for imposing a 20% reduction in its own carbon emissions. But the point is that supermarkets are over. We cannot have such long supply lines between us and our food. Not any more. The very model of the supermarket is unsustainable, what with the packaging, food miles and destruction of British farming. Small, independent suppliers, processors and retailers or community-owned shops selling locally produced food provide a social glue and reduce carbon emissions. The same is true of food co-ops such as Manchester's bulk-distribution scheme serving former "food deserts".

All hail BP and Shell for having got beyond petroleum to become non-profit eco-networks supplying green energy. But fail to cheer the Fortune 500 corporations that will save us all and ecologists are denounced as anti-business. Many career environmentalists fear that an anti-capitalist position is what's alienating the mainstream from their irresistible arguments. But is it not more likely that people are stunned into inaction by the bizarre discrepancy between how extreme the crisis described and how insipid the solutions proposed? Go on a march to the House of Commons. Write a letter to your MP. And what system does your MP hold with? Name one that isn't pro-capitalist. Oh, all right then, smartarse. But name five...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1699956,00.html

[xchrom]

1. great article.

and a great gateway to yet another discussion about the real government in our lives -- the corporation.

[brmdp3123]

2. What an idiotic comment.

[OneBlueSky]

3. not idiotic at all . . . absolutely true, and right on point . . .

"Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet.

what part of this don't you understand? . . . I've been saying for over thirty years that infinite growth on a finite planet is an impossibility -- as have many others . . .

capitalism is driven solely by profit, with neither social conscience nor environmental restraint . . . on a fragile planet with rapidly diminishing resources, that's a sure recipe for disaster . . . which is exactly where we're heading if we don't change, and soon . . .

[brmdp3123]

5. Yep

" . . . I've been saying for over thirty years that infinite growth on a finite planet is an impossibility -- as have many others . . . "

And during those thirty years the Soviet Union has collapsed, China has become more and more a free market, and the American economy has kept on doing what you say it can't do-despite bad presidents, bad congresses-and bad capitalists.

[azureblue]

6. You define Growth capitalism

There is growth capitalism & sustainable capitalism. The former demands increasing profits, while the other generates profits enough to sustain the business. Kind of like the old Mom & Pop store at the corner- M&P won't make a killing, but they will make enough to be happy. Unfortunately it is precisely M&P that WalMart drives out of business.
The article fails to mention the difference, & sustainable capitalism is the future. Businesses cannot expect infinite growth anymore. They will have to realize there is a ceiling to growth & profits, and adjust their model accordingly. The vunerable part of a huge company liek WalMart is their network. All it takes is for their principle suppiers, like China, to say, "we are going to charge you more", and the whole thing crumbles. Almost all big businesses these days focus on the bottom line & the investors, and this is the problem. Cheap isn't good. Better to focus on better products and services and keeping customers, as small businesses do.

[OneBlueSky]

8. corporations will never adopt a "sustainable capitalism" model . . .

unless forced to by strict legislation and regulation . . . and the trend in recent years has been just the opposite, i.e. less regulation, in some cases doing away with it altogether . . . capitalism without strict regulation is completely unsustainable . . .

[Briar]

7. Yes. You can't have infinite growth in a finite system

but very few people are prepared to say this. It is unpatriotic. It is unAmerican! In the west, democracy has been conflated with capitalism (and more recently with consumerism - now it boils down to the word "choice", which covers all forms of democracy and freedom). With millions brainwashed to see nothing more to freedom than the free market, we can't even have an honest debate. The brainwashed squawk their indignation at the mere suggestion that the system they accept as the best possible in the best of all possible worlds might be killing itself and us and refuse to think about the problem at all.

Meanwhile, the ourobus of capitalism continues to consume itself and choke the planet in its ever tightening garrotte.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

4. brmdp3123

What an idiotic comment.

[Vidar]

9. Nicely argued. Thank you.

[Demeter]

10. I Wouldn't Call What We Are Experiencing "Capitalism"

It's piracy, extortion, fraud, theft, and every other economic crime ever invented. But it's not Capitalism.

[PATRICK]

15. We are experiencing, peak capitalism, denial, panic

and looting. it seems almost instinctive considering the vast majority of the purveyors of capitalism are going along with the worst crimes and gutting of infrastructure imaginable. Why is capitalism as practiced such a religion when it just an idea structure to organize exchanges of goods labor and services? We had barter for countless centuries longer than mercantile capitalism because wide contact and travel and the population density was not enough to sustain anything else. Then comes the middle era, like the discovery of temporary cheap energy sources that leaves sustainability behind altogether.

This issue is broader than what the writers above term as "capitalism". We are on the cusp of a sea change in human affairs undeniably wedded to physical reality and extreme peril for a capital bloated population.

If you have ever been at the stage where a circle of friends or co-workers is attacking you and gloating because you won't join the latest "really legal this time" version of the Ponzi scheme, you know the irrational fanaticism, the belligerence against anyone who just doesn't participate(never mind trying to reason with them!), and then the sudden, sullen silence when the truth hits- and hurts. Then they never want to discuss it- or their fear of going to jail. Maybe one person will say "You were right."

The difference being no one can escape the collective fall whether you participate or not(though the wise can make their lives considerably more protected) and the policeman who closes shop on the collapsing fraud is not a belated human regulator but the ecological system itself.

Information can be shared freely, material glutting and looting will collapse. Ironically there is little profit in it when the capitalists jumped on board thinking they could make it part of a new Jurassic Capitalist Park. There is little to no consciousness or thought other than the underlying awareness which causes fanatical denial and belligerence and general arrogant grumpiness- among the champions of Mammon.

Without any policing except massive dying out one may worry there will be no rational or communal transition to anything, just the contradiction of naked evolution herding us all to God knows where. It why there is no vision or pragmatic plans or wise management that does not have that sense of the insufficient, the self-deceptive, the pathetic and the ultimately powerless. The spirit flags long before the civilization falls and forgive me as a plebeian if I say it starts from the top down- everywhere. But as I said, the sharing of information and the raising up of the people's knowledge and communal awareness is also the possible stable ground of a new order- devoid of almost ALL the leadership and organization that rules our decaying superstructure and is eating away, cannibal fashion our infrastructure and future viability.

The bottom up change cannot just be honest people making the system work, but people putting a top value on reason, progress and the mutability of human institutions- like for survival, hello?
And here we are, locked out from any merciful adaptation, witnessing THE human calamity of our era in its first, deniable throes.

[Clara T]

16. Capitalism is codified slavery

Privatizing the benefits for corps
Placing the burdens on the public

More to the point capitalism is simply the codification of slavery and colossal theft of resources.

For a deeper history investigate the closure of the commons and capitalism.

There is no redeeming aspect of capitalism, which is one of the major aspects of industrialized-commodified existence.

No not even Paul Hawkens tortured writings on "natural capital" bring us to a place any different than the meltdown of the Biosphere.

Too bad we are so culturally conditioned and unimaginative when it comes to ways to organize our means of exchange.

[Ben Ceremos]

21. Kudos.

But it takes honesty and courage to see beyond this "infantile" mode of production. Many humans are generally incapable of either.

[Ben Ceremos]

20. Call it what you want

it still fails on all counts except the production of waste and disposable "products". It's capitalism and it sucks.

[IrateCitizen]

24. What you have just described IS capitalism, Demeter...

Q: What is the number one goal in a capitalist system?
A: To produce profit.

When profit is your foremost consideration, then every single other consideration is subordinate to it. That's why you have "piracy, extortion, fraud, theft, and every other economic crime ever invented." People are simply adopting the values systems on which capitalism is founded. If you can cheat someone and make a profit out of it -- and not be caught or called on it -- such behavior is rewarded. In fact, by committing piracey, fraud and theft you may set yourself up to drive your more honest competition out of business. Just look at Wal Mart as an example.

Of course, the source of this argument is really the Enlightenment and its legacy in Western culture -- and that is an entire other discussion that would take a little more room than what we have here.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

11. k & n. nt.

[Blue_Tires]

12. kicked/recommended n/t

[Gregorian]

13. It's about the number of users. They always leave that out.

This argument bugs me no end. As though capitalism were to blame. It's about the number of people who are involved. Take the extreme- if there were ten people on the planet. However, one cannot deny that there are nearly 7 billion people now. So my argument becomes a bit outdated. However, I like to keep the argument honest. And this is why I spent my time yelling from the rooftops back in the 70's. We had half the population then. And at that point in time, we could have spared the world what it is now about to go through.

In fact, no matter what we do we are in trouble now. Most developed countries stopped using ozone depleting chemicals. But the ozone hole is still not decreasing in size. And may not for many decades due to the transit time of the chemicals. That's just one example. Carbon dioxide stays around for over a century.

So we are forced to discuss this as though it were due to capitalism when it is actually due to overpopulation.

[Pharaoh]

14. Up here in wisconsin

the land of the frozen tundra we've been having record mild winters for ten years............this winter is a total joke............warmest january on record an no snow on the ground.


yes we are all in a world of hurt and sooner than you think , we can't eat most of the fish we catch in our lakes anymore, the frogs have dissapeared, they were the canary.........

the canary is dead folks......

[Ben Ceremos]

22. And overpopulation

is a greatly desired aspect of the consumption economy. Capitalism is the problem as it views even life itself as a commodity. Capitalism has reached it's logical conclusion, namely, IMPERIALISM.

[samhsarah]

17. thanks for posting this.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

18. Good article. I highly recommend his stand-up

especially the most recent album - Apocalypso Now, or, From P45 to AK47, How to Grow the Economy with the Use of War - where he covers some of the above.

Here's a sample from it of Rob talking about Peak Oil:
http://www.robnewman.com/peakoil.mp3 <- 10 megs

Here's a couple of reviews (from the live show):
http://www.thelondonline.co.uk/theline/article.php?articleID=235
http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/9374/robert-newman-apocalypso-now

And finally, buy it here:
http://www.robnewman.com/robertshop.html

(I think you can also import them through Amazon.)

[Briar]

19. Thanks

Viewers in the UK will be able to see his History of Oil on More4 next month, as well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Oh, it is that Rob Newman, is it?

I wondered, but I had been thrown by the change from 'Rob' to 'Robert'. I guess he wants this to be taken seriously, and not seen as part of his comedy.

[IrateCitizen]

23. This article hits the proverbial nail on the head...

And it is responses like, "What an idiotic comment," and denouncements exhorting "sustainable capitalism" that simply re-affirm that analysis for me. There's something about the desire of human beings to rationalize away uncomfortable realities....

Capitalism is an economic system based upon two primary constructs. First, is the primacy of the individual -- a legacy of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The second is borne out of the first, and it is the relentless pursuit of profit.

Profit is essential to capitalism -- it is at the center of its construction. The funny thing about profit, however, is when it is your number one consideration, everything else becomes subordinate to it, and everything is justified in its pursuit. A rational society would look at the current levels of environmental devastation as outlined in the UN Millenial Report on the World's Ecosystems and begin to make serious changes in the way we have organized our living arrangements. However, we are so enthralled with capitalism, individualism and the positivist notions that accompany them that we construct false "truths" like "sustainable capitalism" to comfort us even as the ecosystems collapse around us.