Why "going green" isn't enough

Raul Alonzo Jr. argues that the keys to preventing catastrophic climate change and stopping environmental degradation can't be found under capitalism.

Socialist Worker

July 24, 2012

DEPRESSINGLY, THOUGH very importantly, something all who believe in changing the world and transforming society must come to terms with is the fact that monumental changes rarely come about easily and solutions are seldom simple.

Such is the case with a great deal of the methods being used to curb the ecological crisis--from buying organic or driving a hybrid car to even something as engrained as recycling.

Society must ask itself: Can we truly create a sustainable future through market-based, consumerist conclusions--by "going green?" Can we buy our way to a better future? Or will the task, perhaps, involve a more holistic approach--one that looks at the current, growth-based, capitalist system and a reassessment of where to direct efforts?

Green capitalism: the god that failed

By Richard Smith
Real World Economics Review #56

In rejecting the antigrowth approach of the first wave of environmentalists in the 1970s, pro-growth “green capitalism” theorists of the 1980s-90s like Paul Hawken, Lester Brown, and Francis Cairncross argued that green technology, green taxes, eco-conscious shopping and the like could “align” profit-seeking with environmental goals, even “invert many fundamentals” of business practice such that “restoring the environment and making money become one and the same process.”

This strategy has clearly failed. I claim first, that the project of sustainable capitalism was misconceived and doomed from the start because maximizing profit and saving the planet are inherently in conflict and cannot be systematically aligned even if, here and there, they might coincide for a moment. That’s because under capitalism, CEOs and corporate boards are not responsible to society, they’re responsible to private shareholders. CEOs can embrace environmentalism so long as this increases profits.

Destination Earth (1956)

This cold war retroprop says it all...

Art as a Weapon

Eric Drooker and the persistence of the committed artist

By John W. Stuart 

Art Threat

October 19, 2011

 

There is a particularly cynical groan that comes out of a critic’s voice when the term politics is paired with art or music, especially when the politics in question is current. When politics is buried beneath layers of conceptual academic skulduggery it is much easier to swallow. If it is historical it can also pass – otherwise terms like agit-prop, doctrinaire, and didactic are used with abandon.

This attitude may be a side effect of the post-war boom years, or maybe it was the rise of theory-based art education, which turned its back on craft in favour of lofty intellectual pretensions. Regardless of where it comes from, it is clearly myopically misguided in a world where civil rights are eroding as fast as arable land.

Read more HERE.

The Community of Things

By Jon E Wilson
New Left Project
September 23, 2011

Shopping is usually a collective act. Most of the time it is done in groups, in families or with friends. Much of our consumption is for other people; or we have other people in mind when we’re doing it. In the supermarket, we buy for our families. In the high street, teenagers buy the same clothes and music as their peer group. Consumption by children and adults is driven by a sense of what we need to keep our collective lives together; and by the way in which owning the same things as others gives us status amongst our peers.

In their effort to reformulate progressive politics, many on the left have called for the creation of a `post-consumer society’ in which more noble values than shopping lie at the centre of British life. Neil Lawson, Director of Compass, blames consumerism for most of the ills of modern capitalism, from the decline of democracy to climate change.

A similar point is made in very different language on the right. Conservatives like Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts suggest that our present `orgy of consumerism’ undermines common `Christian values’ and `sensible husbandry’. In public discourse the abstract concept of `consumerism’ almost always describes a bad thing. Consumerism is criticised as a debilitating condition that destroys the sources of solidarity and common life. The critique in each case is that consumption is driven by a selfish desire to infinitely accumulate.

Read more HERE.

At the Heart of the “Crisis of Civilisation”: The Issue of “Living Well”

By Patrice Cohen-Séat
Transform!
August, 2011

The crisis of civilisation and the crisis of capitalism are thus closely linked: on the one hand, because capitalism is the product of western civilisation and even of its conception of progress inseparable from “the Enlightenment” and that of “Reason” (which led Geneviève Azam to say that the “rational” should not be confused with the “reasonable”).

This conception of progress is likewise inseparable from the sense of what a human being is and from the way in which “society is produced”, the concept of work and its ends – and more generally the idea of well-being and of the modes of life, all of which today are in the spotlight. On the other hand, because the “crisis” is essentially due to contradictions which are insuperable between capitalism and the indispensible transformations of the existing order (except by overcoming the system itself), it is possible, thus, to say that the crisis is that of Western capitalist civilisation, gradually imposed on the rest of the world, starting with colonialism and now with financial globalisation.

Consumption crisis

By Max J. Castro
Progreso Weekly
Wednesday, 31 August 2011

In 1966, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, U.S. Marxist economists, published the book Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic Order, in which they predicted that capitalism would suffer from economic crises not because of an inevitable trend toward falling profits, as Marx predicted, but from under-consumption, the inability of capitalists to sell all the goods the economy is geared to produce.

It was a brave thesis, not only because the authors must have known they would be the object of sharp criticism from more orthodox Marxists, and they were, but more importantly because they were writing at a time when the huge, prolonged and broad based post-war economic boom was still going strong.

For a long time, and especially in the 1990s when the economy benefitted from low unemployment and slow inflation and economic analysts were proclaiming a “new economy” where even recessions were banished, it appeared that Baran and Sweezy were just plain wrong. But the Great Recession of 2008 and its aftermath have vindicated the authors of Monopoly Capital.

She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for.

Sanctuary Asia

This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today.

The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

Bauman: consumerism coming home to roost

RoarMag.org
August 18, 2011

The famous sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the London riots point us towards a minefield of defective and disqualified consumers.

By Zygmunt Bauman

These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.

Zygmunt Bauman

Revolutions are not staple products of social inequality; but minefields are. Minefields are areas filled with randomly scattered explosives: one can be pretty sure that some of them, some time, will explode – but one can’t say with any degree of certainty which ones and when. Social revolutions being focused and targeted affairs, one can possibly do something to locate them and defuse in time. Not the minefield-type explosions, though.

In case of the minefields laid out by soldiers of one army you can send other soldiers, from another army, to dig mines out and disarm; a dangerous job, if there ever was one – as the old soldiery wisdom keeps reminding: “the sapper errs only once”. But in the case of minefields laid out by social inequality even such remedy, however treacherous, is unavailable: putting the mines in and digging them up needs to be done by the same army which neither can stop adding new mines to the old nor avoid stepping on them – over and over again. Laying mines and falling victims of their explosions come in a package deal.

The deep green meaning of Fukushima

By Don Fitz
Links 
International Journal of Socialist Renewal
June 26, 2011

Humanity must decrease its use of energy. The decrease must be a lot (not a little bit) and it must happen soon. A failure to do so will lay the foundation for the destruction of human life by some combination of climate change and radiation.

How long will the disastrous consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan continue? A good estimate is about 4.5 billion years — the half life of uranium-238. [1] The March 11, 2011, meltdowns sounded alarms that environmentalists have rung for over half a century. There is also a deeper green meaning: the limits of economic growth have long since passed and we need to design a world with considerably less stuff.

Vietnam is Moving...

350.org

06/10/11

There's some rough news from Vietnam this week as the government approves a new coal plant -- one of 90 new plants they envision by 2025. On the other hand, we received this wonderful update from Hong Hoang and the 350 team in Vietnam...

The Green Consumption Campaign launch kicks-off Vietnam’s 350 movement in 2011

 Over 500 students, local residents, journalists and government officials attended the launch of a campaign to promote the consumption of green products in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) on 4 June. This is the first event from Vietnam leading up to Moving Planet to join the global 350 campaign to reduce the CO2 concentrate in the atmosphere for a healthy planet.

This is the second time the campaign has been coordinated by HCMC Department of Industry and Trade, Sai Gon Giai Phong Newspaper, and Saigon Union of Trading Cooperatives (Saigon Co.op), with the objective to inspire the local people to adopt more sustainable consumption practices, and from there encourage the manufacturing corporations to invest and expand their production of green products for the local market.

Why we need to make peace with nature

By Jim Harding
No Nukes
June 3, 2011

If you believed all the ads flaunting “green products” you’d think we were almost on a sustainable path. You might even think that consuming more “green products” is good for the environment, which some of the ads imply. Of course it’s better to buy a car that gets better mileage. But a vehicle that produces one-half the carbon of an older model still produces carbon. Twice the car sales globally and we’d back on the same track.

The green products ethic can be a start, especially if it pushes us towards low-carbon technology, like renewable-energy powered planes, trains, buses and cars. But this shouldn’t be confused with a sustainability ethic, which involves much more. Our collective mind-set has to change for us to want to get on a sustainable track; in particular we need to alter how we see ourselves in nature. Sustainability ultimately requires that we make peace with nature.

Kapitaal: a bad trip through consumer society

By Jérôme E. Roos 

RoarMag.org

June 1, 2011 

This award-winning typo-animation gives a clear impression of the immense visual bombardment we are confronted with in our lives every single day.

Commissioned by Museum De Beyerd (now the Graphic Design Museum) in Breda, the Netherlands, this short video animation takes you on a trip through consumer society, where, on a day-to-day basis, we are confronted by an overwhelming amount of visual stimuli.

What’s particularly striking about this video is how it strips down the content of our world to its bare essentials. Under today’s conditions of ‘cultural capitalism‘, brands have become fetishized, social relations reified and human beings almost entirely depersonalized. Life in such a world can be profoundly alienating.

This visualization very powerfully conveys the nightmarish loss of meaning and purpose that this ‘commodification‘ of society brings about. When all that presents itself to consciousness is brands and marketing slogans, what’s left of the real world is just a gaping void, derived of any meaning or substance.

As the makers of the animation point out, “due to the immense scale of the visual bombardment, the commercial effectiveness has become utterly dubious.” Yet we appear to be stuck in limbo, aimlessly bombarding each other (and ourselves) with information in a futile attempt to accumulate even more meaninglessness.

Watch it and see for yourself!


KAPITAAL from STUDIO SMACK on Vimeo.

A Brief History of Plastic's Conquest of the World

Cheap plastic has unleashed a flood of consumer goods

By Susan Freinkel
Scientific American
May 29, 2011

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Susan Freinkel's book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story.

Combs are one of our oldest tools, used by humans across cultures and ages for decoration, detangling, and delousing. They derive from the most fundamental human tool of all—the hand. And from the time that humans began using combs instead of their fingers, comb design has scarcely changed, prompting the satirical paper the Onion to publish a piece titled "Comb Technology: Why Is It So Far Behind the Razor and Toothbrush Fields?"

The Stone Age craftsman who made the oldest known comb—a small four-toothed number carved from animal bone some eight thousand years ago—would have no trouble knowing what to do with the bright blue plastic version sitting on my bathroom counter.

Read more HERE.

What Google and Facebook are hiding

By  Blake Deppe
People's World
May 19 2011

It's a little known fact that the Internet not only hides things from the general public (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not), but that it constantly feeds and accomodates mass consumerism in order to suit corporate interests.

The problem begins with supposedly "better marketing techniques and search parameters" on Google. If someone is signed into Google, whatever search they make is tweaked according to their interests and location. It is much the same with advertisements, via every little ad on the side of a Google search results page, and in every pop-up and pop-under ad they see. If they search a lot for a particular store, for example, Google recognizes this and shows them mostly ads about that store. This is a method of viral marketing that is especially effective when aimed at young and vulnerable kids and teens. But where do people draw the line between having the luxury of websites doing their searching and shopping for them (if indeed that can be considered a luxury) and falling victim to misinformation, or a simple lack of info to begin with?

Food Prices, Food Crisis and the Absurdity of Market Rationality

By Hamid Sodeifi
New Socialist
Thursday, 19 May 2011

Humanity is facing a severe and worsening food crisis. Three billion people, nearly half of the world’s population, are malnourished. Over a billion suffer from “continual and severe hunger” while millions die each year because they lack access to even the most minimal amount of food. Every five seconds a child dies due to hunger or hunger-related diseases.

This would be a great tragedy if it were caused by factors beyond our control. But while production of food is becoming an increasingly serious problem, the reasons for which will be explored below, we can in fact produce enough food to provide an adequate and healthy diet for every woman, man and child on earth. The food crisis and its consequent misery, starvation and deaths are not, therefore, inevitable but are rather the necessary and rational outcomes of a socio-economic system whose sole objective is the creation of profits.

The Green Revolution Backfires

Sweden's lesson for real sustainability

By Firmin DeBrabander
Dissident Voice
May 18th, 2011

Electric cars being recharged in Sweden

What if electric cars made pollution worse, not better? What if they increased greenhouse gas emissions instead of decreasing them? Preposterous you say? Consider what’s happened in Sweden.

Thanks to generous government subsidies, Sweden aggressively pushed its citizens to trade in their cars for energy efficient replacements (hybrids, clean diesel vehicles, and cars that run on ethanol). Sweden was so successful in this initiative that it leads the world in per capita sales of ‘green cars.’ But to everyone’s surprise—and the government’s deep dismay—greenhouse gases from the country’s transportation sector are up!

Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay

By Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi
Fernwood Books
Buy Now!
 

In North America, human beings have become enthralled by the automobile: A quarter of our working lives are spent paying for them; communities fight each other for the right to build more of them; our cities have been torn down, remade and planned with their needs as the overriding concern; wars are fought to keep their fuel tanks filled; songs are written to praise them; cathedrals are built to worship them.

In Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay, authors Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi argue that the automobile’s ascendance is inextricably linked to capitalism and involved corporate malfeasance, political intrigue, backroom payoffs, media manipulation, racism, academic corruption, third world coups, secret armies, environmental destruction and war. When we challenge the domination of cars, we also challenge capitalism. An anti-car, road-trip story, Stop Signs is a unique must-read for all those who wish to escape the clutches of auto insanity.

Surviving car culture

Film Pick: To Costco and Ikea Without a Car

By Ezra Winton
Art Threat
April 15, 2011

This week’s Friday Film Pick is a zesty little short about surviving without a car, whilst surrounded by cars. To Costco and Ikea Without a Car (Peter Tombrowski, Canada, 2007) was chosen from the Hot Docs online library in anticipation of the upcoming 2011 edition which kicks off in Toronto on April 28th (look for coverage of that festival here on Art Threat). The film’s synopsis:

Peter Tombrowski sets off-on foot-pushing his children’s double jogger and carrying a large backpack from his downtown apartment to shop at suburban big box stores. Set to Antonin Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance in C, this short documentary is both an epic journey and a humorous comment on our car-dependent society.

This short was also chosen to commemorate the launch of a new book on car culture by Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler, Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism, On the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay (published by Fernwood). To watch the film, follow the link, press play and enjoy!

The Social Ideology of the Motorcar

By André Gorz
Le Sauvage
September-October 1973

The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one.

That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.