Article by Nicole Atta-Owusu

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

In the first week of July 2023, locations such as China, Mexico and southern Europe recorded breaking their record temperatures, resulting in heat-related fatalities and wildfires. In that same week, Shell announced second-quarter earnings of over $5 billion.  

We are currently facing a global climate crisis. The UN claims that there is an unprecedented rate of warming brought on by human activity resulting from burning fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Concentrations of greenhouse gases are at their greatest points in two million years. Devastating fires, rising sea levels, and dwindling biodiversity are currently among the effects of climate change. Whole towns have been forced to evacuate due to rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion and it is anticipated that there will be more “climate refugees” in the future. But how is this linked to capitalism?

There is broad consensus on the close relationship between climate change and human organisation, given that carbon dioxide levels have increased more than 50% since the industrial revolution. Under capitalism- a two-class system which values private property, the pursuit of profit, minimum government involvement, and competitiveness- in order to continue boosting earnings, there must be further investment in innovative and effective industrial technologies, which create new types of pollution. There is a current attempt to rebrand our capitalist economic system into what is being labelled ‘green capitalism’. Researchers like Gert Spaargaren reject the idea that industrial capitalism is an ‘iron cage’ meaning that the environment will inevitably deteriorate under it. I want to explore arguments in favour of green capitalism and dismantle them.

One of the reasons people embrace ‘green capitalism’ is due to the perception that the profit incentive is the best chance for the quick creation of new renewable energy.  Ecological modernists claim that capitalism economic expansion and environmental preservation are not mutually exclusive, therefore sustainable growth is possible. In reality, this desire for quickly created renewable energy ultimately leads to corporations taking shortcuts to appear sustainable whilst retaining as much profit as possible. This often leads to “greenwashing”- a dishonest marketing ploy where an organisation uses more resources to promote its environmental friendliness rather than to genuinely lessen its influence on the environment. For example, McDonalds in 2019 introduced paper straws, which proved to be non-recyclable. Furthermore, the IPCC has begun to discuss ‘degrowth’ as a potential path ahead and highlights the ecological situation of nations that do not track GDP, like Bhutan which instead measures Gross National Happiness.

Some believe that capitalism can be reformed through means such as laws, controlling the financial industry, and a carbon tax. However, this is proving inadequate as agreements to tackle climate change are failing. For example, in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, 197 nations committed to achieving net zero CO2 by 2050. However these targets are currently not being met, and scientists from the UN predict that global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees. If things continue as they are, we might surpass that threshold by 2027. Capitalism’s concentration of wealth enables wealthy shareholders to have undue political influence thus, in order to bring about real changes, others and I contend that a radical collective response is necessary, in which there is a major reorganization of the political-economic system.

Finally, those in favour of green capitalism argue that millions of people have seen their standard of living rise thanks to capitalism and developing countries are unlikely to give up on their aspirations of Western living standards. However, this ignores the unequal nature of capitalism and its effects on developing countries. Because private companies prioritise their own interests over the needs of their employees, capitalism fosters international rivalry and sustains poverty in developing countries. Additionally, Oxfam discovered in their 2020 report “Confronting Carbon Inequality” that 52 percent of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015 came from the richest 10 percent of the population. It is ridiculous and heavily Eurocentric to believe that those in developing economies wish to adopt the Western capitalist style of living, which sustains poverty and harms their environment disproportionately.

I firmly believe that the climate crisis will continue, and we will have caused too much damage to reverse until we disillusion ourselves of green capitalism and restructure our anthropocentric attitudes in society to those that are ecocentric, with regulatory frameworks, ecological sustainability, resource redistribution, and human welfare prioritised over wealth accumulation.

Related