"Let them eat pollution": capitalism and the world environment

Monthly Review, Jan, 1993 by John Belamy Foster

An even more alarming example of the same general argument was provided, again in the May 30, 1992 issue of The Economist, in a special report published in advance of the June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. After examining estimates on the economic costs and benefits of averting global warming and the political obstacles to change under existing capitalist regimes, The Economist declares:

The chances that the climate treaty will significantly change the world's output of fossil fuels over the next century is extremely slender. Does this matter? If the figures...for the costs of damage likely to be done by climate change are accurate, then the honest answer is "no." It would be, of course, wise for countries to take the free lunches available to them...and to price their energy sensibly. It might be wise to go some way beyond that point, in the interests of buying insurance against nasty surprises .... Beyond that, adapting to climate change, when it happens, is undoubtedly the most rational course, for a number of reasons. Most countries will be richer then, and so better able to afford to build sea walls or develop drought resistant plants. Money that might now be spent on curbing carbon-dioxide output can be invested instead, either in preventing more damaging environmental change (like rapid population growth, the most environmentally harmful trend of all) or in productive assets that will generate future income to pay for adaptation. Once climate change occurs, it will be clearer--as it now is not--how much needs to be done, and what, and where. Most of the decisions involved in adapting will be taken and paid for by the private sector rather than (as with curbing greenhouse-gas output) by government. Above all, adapting requires no international agreements.4

The answer then is "let them build sea walls or develop drought resistant plants." And this in response to "very probable" rises in global mean temperature of 1.5 degrees* to 5.0 degrees C (2.7 degrees to 9 degrees F) over the next century if "business as usual" continues, a prospect that scientists all over the world regard as potentially catastrophic for the entire planet!5 The threat of heat waves, droughts, floods, and famines suggests the likelihood of incalculable losses in lives, species, ecosystems, and cultures. Nevertheless, for The Economist the adaptation of the capital accumulation process and thus world civilization to irreversible global warming once it has taken place and many of its worst effects are evident is easy to contemplate, while any attempt to head off disaster--however defensible in social, moral, and ecological terms-besides being difficult to institute under present-day capitalist regimes, would interfere with the dominance of capital and must therefore be unthinkable.

The wait and see attitude promoted by The Economist was of course the general stance adopted by the United States (and to a lesser extent Britain) at the Earth Summit. Through its actions in watering down the climate treaty, refusing to sign the biological diversity treaty, and hindering initiatives on weapons of mass destruction and nuclear waste, the United States signaled in no uncertain terms that it was prepared to take on the task of opposing radical forces within the global environmental movement, adding this to its larger role as the leading defender of the capitalist world. According to the U.S. government's position, the concept of "sustainable development" means first and foremost that any environmental goals that can be interpreted as interfering with development must be blocked. Thus in his defense of U.S. intransigence on global environmental issues at the Earth Summit in June George Bush explained, "I think it is important that we take both those words--environment and development--equally seriously. And we do." No environmental action could therefore be taken, Bush declared, that would jeopardize U.S. economic interests. "I am determined to protect the environment. I am also determined to protect the American taxpayer. The day of the open checkbook is over...environmental protection and a growing economy are inseparable." In what was intended not only as a re-election ploy but also a declaration of U.S. priorities where questions of environmental costs and controls were concerned, Bush declared, "For the past half century the United States has been the great engine of global economic growth, and it's going to stay that way." ( Guardian [London], June 13, 1992)