What is the relationship between capitalism and the ecological crisis?
Environmental damage has reached alarming proportions. Almost daily there are new upwardly revised estimates of the severity of global warming, ozone destruction, topsoil loss, oxygen depletion from the clearing of rain forests, acid rain, toxic wastes and pesticide residues in food and water, the accelerating extinction rate of natural species, etc., etc. Almost all scientists now recognise that global warming may soon become irreversible, with devastating results for humanity. Those few who reject this consensus are usually paid by corporations with a vested interest in denying the reality of what their companies are doing to the planet (such as oil companies). That sections of the ruling class have become aware of the damage inflicted on the planet’s eco-systems suggests that we have only a few decades before they irreparably damaged. Most anarchists see the ecological crisis as rooted in the psychology of domination, which emerged with the rise of hierarchy (including patriarchy, c
in which we indicated that since capitalism is based upon the principle of “growth or death,” a “green” capitalism is impossible. By its very nature capitalism must expand, creating new markets, increasing production and consumption, and so invading more ecosystems, using more resources, and upsetting the interrelations and delicate balances that exist with ecosystems.
