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Title: Capitalism Eats Greens Author: Anarchist Communist Federation Date: 1997 Language: en Topics: capitalism, environmentalism, Organise! Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130513170946/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue45/recycle.html Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 45 â Spring 1997.
Capitalism has responded in a variety of ways to the criticisms and
opposition of Greens, both reformist and radical. This response has
fallen into two categories: the velvet glove (capitalism is and can be
green) and the iron fist (jailing, physical intimidation and the murder
of green activists).
Many greens have become part of the problem: capitalism, rather than the
solution: green anarchist communism. This is because their lack of
radical class analysis leads them to believe that capitalism can be
reformed and made green through strategies such as technological fixes
e.g. electronic cars, green consumerism and the big myth of
green/sustainable growth. More radical greens are prey to other
theoretical cul-de-sacs such as spirituality or electoral politics.
Technophobia is another pitfall as well as misanthropy, tendencies
exhibited by parts of Earth First, Green Anarchist and Fifth Estate.
One of the greensâ central criticisms of capitalism is the amount of
waste it produces. In order of priority, the best option to tackle waste
is waste reduction, followed by re-use, then recycling, with landfill
burial and incineration off the green scale. Unsurprisingly, capital has
promoted recycling and landfill/incineration because they donât tackle
the fundamental causes of the problem which is that waste is endemic to
a system of production based on the domination, exploitation and hence
destruction of the planet and its people. As far as capitalism is
concerned, the earth and humans only exist in order that they can be
converted from being âuselessâ, non-profit-making into products that can
be sold for a profit. So people are only useful as workers or consumers.
Land must be used for agricultural or industrial purposes rather than
being left as âwastelandâ or âwildernessâ. Capitalist production is
therefore necessarily wasteful in terms of energy and resources because
it needs to continually transform resources into profit-making products.
Reduction and re-use of products consume up to five times less energy
than recycling and involve a lower level of technology. For example,
compare returnable bottles which are 20% energy efficient with bottle
banks which are only 5% efficient. Industry and government also promote
landfill burial and incineration as âgreenâ answers. Burial is obviously
a form of tipping and pollution. Incineration puts dangerous pollutants
such as toxic dioxins into the air and produces toxic ash buried in
landfill sites. Many of the new generation of âclean burnâ incinerators
beloved of many local authorities also produce heat energy; they are not
clean or green, however. Incinerators undermine recycling and waste
reduction because they need so much waste fed into them to generate
electricity efficiently.
Most plastic packaging is obviously wasteful and unnecessary; it is used
once and then discarded. Recycling is too expensive to be a viable
option in that it is cheaper and easier to make plastic from fresh
inputs. The industry seeks to hide this non-green reality by opening up
new markets with ârecycled plasticâ while new plastic production
continues. Plastics that cannot be recycled are incinerated, producing
electricity.
Aluminium is another example of the shortcomings of recycling. It is
generally extracted from bauxite ore which requires huge amounts of
electricity , hence great waste and pollution. Economically, the
industry can only function through being subsidised by energy utilities
and governments. For example, in France it pays a quarter of the price
for electricity as the rest of industry which is an eighth of what the
ordinary French consumer pays. Each ton of aluminium extracted results
in the production of at least a ton of toxic red mud made up of metallic
oxides and other contaminants which pollute ground and surface water.
Recycling is only a partial answer. It takes about six percent as much
energy to produce energy from scrap as it does to make it from ore. In
1990 over five million tons, nearly a quarter of world output, were
produced from recycled aluminium. However, recycling cannot eliminate
primary production and recycling statistics can be very misleading. In
America, for example, drinks cans account for most recycling. Although
half are recycled, the other half are thrown away, constituting a total
which exceeds that of the world use of aluminium by all but the top
seven countries. Therefore, recycling is of limited value. We need to
consider both cutting down the overall use of these products as well as
the re-use of those produced. Refillable drinks containers such as
bottles would use a tenth or less of the energy as cans, even if all
aluminium cans were recycled.
One soft soap tactic used by industry and government is âgreenballsâ:
money spent on PR to extol how âgreenâ they are. One example is Shellâs
famous ad about their invisible pipeline under the Snowdonia National
Park. Another is Scott Paperâs (the Andrex manufacturers) ÂŁ3 million
advertisement claiming that, âfor every tree we harvest we grow one or
more in its placeâ. This farming uses far more energy than paper
recycling and requires pesticides to be sprayed from the air, polluting
a wide area. In addition, the trees they supposedly plant are no
replacement for natural woodlands which are disappearing whilst
unsightly conifer plantations are expanding.
Another soft tactic is to push the line that âweâre all on the same side
reallyâ or âsocial responsibility is good business and good business is
social responsibilityâ, as Bob Reid, chair of Shell said in 1990.
Business tries to convince critics of their sincerityâ by throwing money
at them. In the early 199s Shell was giving ÂŁ200,000 a year to
conservation groups. As a British Coal representative said, âif you
build up good relationships with your neighbours then theyâre much more
tolerant when you have an incidentâ. I think weâve seen that Shell
accomplished that and Exxon hasnât as Shell managed to get off lightly
after it spilt 156 tons of crude oil in the Mersey in 1989. As an
Environmental Council professor put it, âSemantics are terribly
important. Donât talk about âincineratorsâ, call them âhigh temperature
thermal destructorsâ. Donât talk about âwaste dumpingâ, talk about
âwaste managementââ.
The idea that economic growth can be ecological is a myth, merely
dressing up the capitalist ethic of âgrow or dieâ in green clothing.
According to this argument capitalist wealth creation is the cure for
all ills such as global poverty, rather than their cause. Green growth
is no different from any other form of expansion. It also faces the
barrier of increasing negative trade-offs and insurmountable limiting
factors. Savings on waste and built-in obsolescence may provide the
wherewithal for the re-direction of existing resources, but further
expansion can only be attained by putting even more earth under
concrete, open cast excavator, the plough, or impounded water. The
human-constructed economy and the technologies that serve it are totally
dependent on the natural economy whose ecological systems represent the
biophysical foundation of all wealth. Direct benefits include foodstuffs
and medicine whilst indirect benefits include the capture, conversion
and storage of solar energy, the disposal of wastes and the recycling of
nutrients and the generation and maintenance of soil fertility.
There are intrinsic limits to the resources humans can take from the
earth on a sustainable basis. The transformation of energy and raw
materials by people generates wastes which return to the air, soil and
water. There are equivalent limits to what the earth can sustainably
re-assimilate of these, due to the size of the earth, its resources and
entropy. In other words, all energy usage is one-way; afire cannot be
relit from the ashes.
The claim that new growth will be cleaner depends on the efficacy of
clever gadgeting fitted to polluting processes. Technological gadgets
merely shift the problem, often at the expense of greater energy and
material inputs, therefore increasing pollution. Catalytic converters
for cars, for example, cost more money and energy, generate new
pollutants and fail to tackle more serious problems such as carbon
dioxide emissions. The only practical way to prevent the release of
carbon, a main cause of the Greenhouse Effect, is to burn less wood and
coal. Similarly, the only way to control the build-up of methane is to
limit the amount of cattle ranching and rice growing. There are no easy
technological fixes.
Corporations have also organised politically with the Right. The
Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute is a group of
right-wing think tanks with members in America, Australia and Europe.
They oppose state regulation and argue for âfree market
environmentalismâ, i.e. the privatisation of resources. CEI work with
the Wise Use movement which is a coalition of ranchers, miners, farmers
etc. with right-wing activists corporate front groups. Their explicit
aim is the destruction of the environmental movement. They have gained
support in resource-dependent areas around the world. Wise Use have
exploited the environmental movements general neglect of social concerns
and concentration on lobbying the people at the top rather than
prioritising grass roots activism. Business has responded to the Greens
âsuccessâ in getting environmental laws passed; they have bought
politicians, funded âindependentâ think tanks and corporate front groups
and spent huge amounts of money on public relations. OâDwyers PR
Services, the main PR flagship, called environmentalism âthe life and
death battle of the 1990sâ.
Capital has also sought to marginalise and physically attack the
environmental movement. Greens have been labelled extremists,
terrorists, communists, fascists and religious fanatics with a hidden
agenda of âtotalitarian one world governmentâ. In Britain during the
1994 campaign against the dumping at sea of Shellâs Brent Spar oil
platform, the energy minister Tim Eggar accused Greenpeace of
environmental terrorism. The Tories have also labelled anti-roads
campaigners as terrorists and fascist. Such scapegoating justifies
surveillance, harassment and violence by companies and the State. Recent
high-profile murders of greens have included those of Ken Saro-Wiwa and
eight Ogoni in Nigeria and the assassination of Chico Mendes the
Brazilian anti-logging leader.
Environmentalists now commonly face legal intimidation world-wide in the
form of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). They
rarely come to court and are designed to frighten people into silence.
In Britain, the McLibel case is an example of SLAPP that backfired.
Other examples are government legal action against the M11 and Twyford
Down campaigners and provisions in the Criminal Justice Act which
penalise intent rather than action.
The response of companies and governments to environmentalism has shown
that they know it is a life and death issue, part of the class struggle
between Capital and the majority of humanity, the working class. It is
vital that class struggle libertarians and environmentalists argue and
act together in the fight for an equal human society which is in harmony
with the rest of nature. Hopefully this process has started to happen.
For example, Earth First in the US has realised that their fight was not
with logging workers but with companies and government and stopped their
anti-worker tree spiking. In Britain, we have the joint actions of the
Liverpool dockers and the anti-roads campaigners to show us the way.