This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Part I: Bad Timing

“Because this [climate change] is a crisis that is, by its nature, slow moving and intensely place based.  In its early stages, and in between the wrenching disasters, climate is about an early blooming of a particular flower, an unusually thin layer of ice on a lake, the late arrival of a migratory bird—noticing these small changes requires the kind of communion that comes from knowing a place deeply, not just as scenery but also as sustenance, and when local knowledge is passed on with a sense of sacred trust from one generation to the next.” –Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (pages 158-159)

Last year in discussions about the Anthropocene with faculty across campus, one faculty was particularly ardent in his views that the solutions for climate change will not be solved with the same thinking that caused them and he lay the blame squarely at capitalism and the free market.  Even though he’s a perfectly respectable chap, and very likable, it was hard not to disagree with him at a gut level—I mean capitalism is not all bad and many of the alternatives are not particularly attractive.  While we can agree that excessive consumption—a consumer-based society—is problematic in so many ways, capitalism does create incentives for people to work hard and innovate, and that can be good. We are all invested—literally for those of us with retirement accounts—on an economy that continues to grow.  But as an ecologist, I also know that unlimited growth is not realistic and should not be expected.  How can economies continue to grow when resources are limited and the planet can only support an abundance of so many people on this planet? So, I am reading Naomi Klein’s book with great interest, a bit of alarm, and a bit of skepticism.  But, BUT, but, she makes a compelling case for how our economic system and policies have contributed to the global crisis and our failures to address the problems. 

A free-market without regulatory checks allows for industries and business to do whatever helps the bottom line—things that have economic consequences, like pollution of air and water, which incurs costs that they never have to pay.  How we’ve become a country polarized into thinking regulation is a black and white issue—all bad or all good—is perplexing.  It’s like putting no boundaries on your children and letting them do and have whatever they want—sucking all the resources from your resource base, which may compromise your and their future.  One of my wise parenting friends said that her mother always told her and her siblings “In this family, you do not always get everything you want, but you get what you need.” Boundaries, sensible regulation--they are essential and it completely makes sense to use them for the good of all.  Industries may not want to limit pollution, but we do not need them to want it—we just need them to do it.  Just because they do not pay the costs does not mean there are not costs.  How can citizens of earth support industry and the potential good it can do, when it we fail to set limits to minimize the harm.  There are industries currently where the costs outweigh the benefits, but we are failing to consider all the costs. 

I will also admit that I find parts of this book devastating—Obama’s failure to lead a way forward to more sustainable living and industries in the US when he could have made the argument about the failure of our current economic policy at the beginning of his presidency.  It’s hard to know if Klein is right, but she does make you wonder if that wasn’t a significant opportunity lost.  And she brings up Nauru as an example of “extractivism” without a conservation ethic or long-term planning for the ecological system or the social system.  It does seem like it’s a small scale example of the dangers that lie ahead without using our foresight to anticipate realistic outcomes of our current behaviors. 

The examples of Germany’s rapid switch to renewable energy sources, however, offers hope that with social will to drive political will, rapid change is possible. But, with so much energy invested in obscuring reality, I wonder if these transitions can happen before the devastating consequences begin.  And as Klein suggests (above), the changes we are experiencing are subtle and when we are in many cases very disconnected from our natural systems, then how will we notice?