Capitalism and Environmentalism
In response to my post on the need to develop an energy policy, a brainy friend of mine sent me this extremely interesting and detailed piece on the relationship between capitalism and our need to preserve our environment. I’m still working my way through it, but, in essence, it “proves” that capitalism and environmentalism are incompatible.
I believe the author is wrong. First of all, if he’s right, we’re doomed, and readers will see why this is true in the first few hundred words, which are spot-on correct. Of course, that, in and of itself, does not mean he’s wrong; in fact, it’s perfectly possible that we actually are doomed; a sense of optimism or hope doesn’t make good things happen or miracles occur.
But I point out that the fact that eco-capitalism hasn’t turned the ship around in the last few decades doesn’t mean that it is a failure.
The author says that we can’t tax out of existence all industries whose core business is any form of pollution. That’s true, but we can (and should) certainly pick the worst one, e.g., coal, and make it extremely unattractive for them, just as they’re making it extremely difficult for us, i.e., people with lungs. Will the economic consequences be dire? Hardly. Such a move will ultimately displace 82,595 workers, approximately 1/2000th of the US workforce, which will need to be retrained for positions elsewhere. I argue that this is a more-than-acceptable cost to our society, given the enormous environmental and health-related gains.
He also doesn’t seem to understand how close we are to grid parity with solar, and wind, and the rest – and I believe he under-estimates the boon to the economy represented by the cleantech industry.
As I see it, these last couple of decades haven’t proved that eco-capitalism is a failure, any more than the first seven weeks of Columbus’s (eight-week) voyage proved that the Atlantic Ocean was infinitely wide.
