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

Monthly Review, Jan, 1993 by John Belamy Foster

The consequences of such short-sighted attention to economic growth and profit before all else are of course enormous, since they call into question the survivability of the entire world. It is an inescapable fact that human history is at a turning point, the result of a fundamental change in the relationship between human beings and the environment. The scale at which people transform energy and materials has now reached a level that rivals elemental natural processes. Human society is adding carbon to the atmosphere at a level that is equal to about 7 percent of the natural carbon exchange of atmosphere and oceans. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere as a result has grown by a quarter in the last 200 years, with more than half of this increase since 1950. Human beings now use (take or transform) 25 percent of the plant mass fixed by photosynthesis over the entire earth, land and sea, and 40 percent of the photosynthetic product on land. Largely as a result of synthetic fertilizers, humanity fixes about as much nitrogen in the environment as does nature. With human activities now rivaling nature in scale, actions that in the past merely produced local environmental crises now have global implications. Moreover, environmental effects that once seemed simple and trivial, such as increases in carbon dioxide emissions, have now suddenly become threats to the stability of the fundamental ecological cycles of the planet. Destruction of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, annihilation of ancient and tropical forests, species extinction, reductions in genetic diversity, production of toxic and radioactive wastes, contamination of water resources, soil depletion, depletion of essential raw materials, desertification, the growth of world population spurred by rising poverty-all represent ominous trends the full impact of which, singly or in combination, is scarcely to be imagined at present. "With the appearance of a continent-sized hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer and the threat of global warming," Barry Commoner has written, "even droughts, floods, and heat waves may become unwitting acts of man. ,,6

The sustainability of both human civilization and global life processes depends not on the mere slowing down of these dire trends, but on their reversal|7 Nothing in the history of capitalism, however, suggests that the system will be up to such a task. On the contrary there is every indication that the system, left to its own devices, will gravitate toward the "let them eat pollution" stance so clearly enunciated by the chief economist of the World Bank.

Fortunately for the world, however, capitalism has never been allowed to develop for long entirely in accordance with its own logic. Opposition forces always emerge--whether in the form of working class struggles for social betterment or conservation movements dedicated to overcoming environmental depredations--that force the system to moderate its worst tendencies. And to some extent the ensuing reforms can result in lasting, beneficial constraints on the market. What the capitalist class cannot accept, however, are changes that will likely result in the destruction of the system itself. Long before reform movements threaten the accumulation process as a whole, therefore, counterforces are set in motion by the ruling interests, and the necessary elemental changes are headed off.