Eco-capitalism

[jake williams]

How does one deal with this? It's a very awkward position. I know at least that our own domestic Green Party (in Canada) has a deep "eco-capitalist" streak, to the point that the most recent federal leader was an ex-Conservative.

This is, of course, deeply disturbing, and it's a big part of the reason I've avoided this particular party. There are really two reasons, actually - on one hand, I don't like their non-environmentalist policies, but on the other hand I just don't like their environmental policies because I think they're totally insufficient, again, of course a lot of it is carbon credits and all this nonsense. It's obvious that capitalism is at the heart of the problem.

That said, it's certainly not all of the problem. Further, while I think democracy, worker control, general socialist principles and institutions, I have strong suspicions, even convictions that all of these things would dramatically improve all sorts of environmental measures... is it sufficient? It's certainly not the only thing that's important in the world, which it's starting to seem may separate me from a few around here, though hopefully not too many.

Increasingly, it's becoming obvious that all sorts of broadly "environmental" issues - most importantly I'd think is resource depletion, but climate change too, and pollution of course, all these things - these are emergencies. It feels like we just must do almost everything conceivable to approach these problems, and I don't think orthodox Marxism'll do it.

Obviously I'll always hate eco-capitalists, even eco-capitalist tendencies, and the truth is I just don't think their approach is valid, I think it's harmful even in the interests of very narrow environmental goals. But to what extent do I bite my tongue? There are inevitably going to be some currents within the environmental movements with a capitalist bent, among all sorts of other problems (and, more commonly but less dangerously, piles upon piles of bull, really nonsense, but anyway), but to what extent do I say, "Okay, I can put up with this, it's horrible but this is an emergency situation and it's the least bad option"?

[Dimentio]

Capitalism and sustainability are incompatible, since capitalism needs to commodify reality in order to grow. Therefore, all nature, according to capitalism, needs to be eventually transformed into linear supply systems to generate profits.

Therefore, ecological schemes espousing capitalism as a solution will inevitably fail because the interests of sustainability and the interests of capitalist growth are incompatible.

http://en.technocracynet.eu

[jake williams]

I agree in the technical sense that long term capitalism whereby magic serum pours out of Growth is obviously unsustainable. And far more mechanical and other properties of a capitalist society and system are obviously adverse to the environment in all sorts of ways.

But if we take the specific case of petroleum - we're basically fucked, there's no other way to put it. And this is an issue, four decades, tops, I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty on either side, but it's extremely that in my life time I won't see serious stuff start to go. And I'm thinking that, like I said, these are emergencies, and I just don't know to what extent that emergency necessitates compromise in the interest of any-means-necessary, because it's at least sort of conceivable that... I mean, none of this about angelic venture capitalists streaming down from the hills to save the day and ensure the Market works everything out like it always does, but it's conceivable that an ultimately mixed-market semi-capitalist environmentalist group would be, maybe the only way in terms of political demography to reach any meaningful goal.

And that's what I'm talking about - in terms of the mechanics of political movements, I mean, this is obviously much less trivial than a whole lot of the standard Left sectarianisms, but it still might be much too much to ask.