What are the dynamics of capitalism that destroy the environment?

It seems that the roots of most global environmental changes and degradation are linked to capitalism. I think it is interesting to look at the dynamics of capitalism because it helps notice how the core tenets of capitalism are inherently bad for the environment. The main traits of capitalism that makes it the biggest enemy to the environment are endless growth (driven by productivism and consumerism), accumulation of capital and profit-maximisation, and the constant need for raw materials and resource extraction.

The capitalist system, defined as an economic system based on production for profit in a competitive market, must expand and grow in order to remain stable. To do so, it relies on the production of goods and services in order to make profits and accumulate capital (through saving and investment), which drives endless growth. In such a system, consumption is key: indeed, insufficient consumption leads to decrease in demands for production; decrease in production leads to decrease in profit; economic growth slows down as a result and such a situation, in turn, increases unemployment. Thus, endless growth of production and consumption is paramount in a capitalist system to maintain stability, produce employment (1). The capitalist system actively promotes consumerism in order to maintain the system and considers individuals as consumers. 

The goal of capitalism is to maximise profits and that can be achieved not only by expanding production, but also by minimising costs (labour and resources) and maximising production (achieved by increased efficiency thanks to technological innovation) (2). In order to minimise costs, there is a constant search for cheaper sources and cheaper labour. In order to grow, capital seeks to expand markets and access to natural resources for raw materials to maintain the rate of production. Historically, capitalism has used colonisation for natural resources exploitation and industrial development was based on cheap fossil energy and cheap raw materials. Despite decolonisation, capitalism still manages to rely on exploitation of global south natural resources (3). We use today 50% more natural resources than 30years ago and use 60 billion tonnes of raw material per year. Because of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, overall resource use is still increasing despite resource efficiency (4). 

Endless growth and minimising costs for greater profit is destroying the environment. Endless growth in a finite planet is not sustainable. Infinite growth means always greater consumption and production levels, which put a strain on the environment. Growth in industrialised countries has been associated with increased and unsustainable level of greenhouse gases emissions, depletion of natural resources and pollution of many sorts. The Earth is made of resources that are limited forever to the supply that currently exists (oil, gas and minerals) and resources that are finite but can be renewed by natural processes (such as forests and fisheries). The water, soil and air of the biosphere can carry on functioning well if pollution doesn’t exceed their limited capacity to deal with the pollutants. The problem is that capitalism exhausts irreversibly those natural resources and the pollution and overexploitation it generates is greater than what the ecosystem can assimilate. The scale of capitalism now overshoots the fundamental planetary boundaries (5). Continued endless growth in industrial output requires more and more use of resources and produce more waste and pollution. Since the start of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide emissions (primarily due to the combustion of fossil fuels) have risen dramatically (6). Now that capitalism is our current global economic system and that Global South countries have also adopted growth-based development, it has brought even higher unsustainable levels of carbon dioxide emissions that are responsible for unprecedented fast climate change (7). 

In such a system, nature is also viewed as unlimited and priceless in such a system: when nature is considered invaluable, attributing a price to it is tricky and therefore it is often considered free (8). In addition, capital works on a short-term vision and in this way is not adapted to long-term vision of nature and sustainability goals.

It seems that capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature, as it is predicated on endless growth with high level of consumption, production and the constant expansion of markets (9). As Kenneth E. Boulding has said, “anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.

Ecological unequal exchange and ecological debt

The notions of Ecological unequal exchange and ecological debt are central to understanding the Capitalocene. Indeed, those notions show the extend of the exploitation of nature by the capitalist system. They also help in explaining how the western industrialised countries hold responsibility for the profound global environmental changes.
The concept of ecological unequal exchange is built on the notion of ‘unequal exchange’, developed in the 1960s and 1970s by authors such as Samir Amin and Arghiri Emmanuel as part of underdevelopment theories. The argument of ‘unequal exchange’ is that, in the capitalist world-system, there is an exploitation of underdeveloped countries by developed countries taking place through international trade and the exchange of commodities (1). The exchange is unequal because rich countries have created an international division of labour in which they exploit the labour force of underdeveloped countries where wages are lower. Underdeveloped countries generally export commodities that contain more labour time than the goods that developed countries export, but as trade is mainly focused on monetary value such a difference is often not taken into account. This theory of ‘unequal exchange’ showed the disparity between the market price of a commodity and its hidden contained amount of labour resource. This exploitation has taken two forms: originally during colonialism and then as part of unequal exchange of free trade.

The notion of ecological unequal exchange extends this notion of unequal flows to flows of natural resources, energy and waste. It reveals how there is an unequal exchange happening in the capitalist system in which developed countries disproportionately exploit ecological systems and natural resources of poorer countries for their consumption, use those countries as sinks for the waste of their products and impose negative environmental costs to them (2). Such a use or deterioration of natural resources for the production of commodities is generally not taken into account in the market price of a good and becomes a negative externality that capitalism does not pay for. Generally, it is less developed countries that suffer from such ecological unequal exchanges and they are the ones bearing environmental burdens (such as forest loss, air pollution and water pollution). Thus, developed countries consume a high rate of natural resources and preserve their domestic environmental resources at the expense of poorer countries.

The notion of ecological unequal exchange has led to the idea of ecological debt, stating that the Global North has been accumulated a debt over centuries towards poorer and less developed nations because of the exploitation of their natural resources and ecosystems. It states that they owe an ecological debt in the form of some type of remuneration to poorer countries for the environmental degradation contained in the production of the goods they consume (3).

In the Capitalocene, not all humans are equally responsible for and affected by global environmental changes. The historical development of richer countries and the continuance of their unsustainable way of life is made possible by their exploitation of natural resources of poorer countries and the externalisation of environmental costs to the periphery. Then, the responsibility for global environmental changes should not be attributed to all humans in an undifferentiated way but should be attributed instead to the capitalist economy of the World-system that damages the planet at the expense of poorer countries.

Anthropocene or Capitalocene: Who is responsible for the global environmental changes?

Humans have such a profound and rapid impact on the Earth that it has entered a new geological epoch which will leave the human signature for millennia. According to experts from The International Geological Congress, we have left the Holocene era to enter the Anthropocene, or the Age of Man (1). The 12,000 year long Holocene epoch was an interglacial age that witnessed the growth and development of human species. The consequences of the history of Man are now threatening the wellbeing of the planet, its ecosystem and inhabitants. It is the first time in 4.5 billion years that a single species – humans - are changing the Earth’s climate and geology.

Human activities are responsible for physical, chemical and biological changes to the Earth’s System: changes in erosion and sediment transport; changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere oceans and soils; changes in environmental conditions generated by anthropogenic perturbations of the cycle of elements and changes in the biosphere (both in the land and sea) (2). The main examples of these changes are: increased and unsustainable level of climate-warming CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; loss of biodiversity exceeding natural extinction rate (half of the Earth wildlife has been lost in the past 40 years (3); sea level rise due to the melting of the Arctic ice; biogeochemical flows contracting unsafe level of nitrogen and phosphorus; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; the presence of micro-plastic and radioactive waste and deforestation. The global environmental changes, which humans are inducing on Earth, are so fast and dramatic that they are threatening life itself. Many of the changes might even be irreversible.

The starting point of the Anthropocene is subject to debate. Many considered it to be c. 1800 CE, around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, with the invention of the steam engine and the use of coal. However, the preferred date for experts is 1950 onwards, which is a period known as The Great Acceleration. A period defined by the development of a consumer society, the massive increase in population growth and carbon emissions. It also coincided with the start of the Earth as an experimental laboratory, with the beginning of nuclear bomb tests.

The concept of Anthropocene is not only a scientific decision, but also a political statement to push for a more sustainable relationship between human and nature. Crutzen, the scientist who started the Anthropocene debate, is hoping that the term ‘will be a warning to the world’ (4), which will make us think about the consequences of our human actions and solutions to avoid the worst outcome. But is Anthropocene really the adequate term? If one plans to think about relevant solutions to a problem, it helps to think about the real origins of the issue. Then, we can wonder: are all humans responsible for those profound and dramatic global environmental changes? The term Anthropocene, with its greek root anthropos (man), suggests that all men, or humanity as a whole, are responsible for those changes. We should all be to blame, equally implicated and equally effected by the degradation of the Earth. It could also be associated with neo-malthusian arguments, which state that the real issue is overpopulation and needs to be controlled in order to ensure resources for future generations. 

However, it seems to me that the Anthropocene concept is too universalist and western-centric and is not the right term when one wants to think about adequate solutions. It is clear that there are great inequalities among the world’s population and that the wealthy western countries are historically, and remain, responsible for the main global environmental changes, including climate change. If we have a look at ecological footprints, it appears that the western world, or Global North, is consuming natural resources way above sustainable levels and contrasts sharply with the impact of the Global South. The ecological footprint measures human impact and pressure on the Earth’s ecosystems by comparing the biocapacity of the planet to the humanity’s demand on nature to support specific lifestyles. Ecological footprint per capita shows that all western countries are demanding way more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce. US and Australian citizens are demanding more than four times what the planet can regenerate and absorb, countries of western Europe are using at least double, whilst the majority of Global South countries equal or underuse the available biocapacity (5). It appears that the western way of living and consuming is most to blame for the Earth’s degradation. A Friend of the Earth study shows that inhabitants of rich countries consume up to 10 times more than people in the poorest countries (6). This discrepancy between richest and poorest countries can also be seen in the concept of common, but differentiated responsibilities, one of the main principles from the Rio declaration at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. This principle of international environmental law states that, even if all states need to address global environmental destruction, they are not all equally responsible. It recognises that there is a historical correlation between higher level of wealth (or development) and a greater contribution to the deterioration of the planet.

So, what is the common denominator amongst the richest countries which is the main source of environmental degradation? It seems that if our western way of life is unsustainable, the reasons for environmental changes have to be found in our consumption and production model, and these are based on economic growth an capitalist ideology. In addition, it is interesting to note that between the 18^th century and 2008, the world’s population ‘only’ increased tenfold, whilst the capital has increased by a factor of 134. This pushes forward the argument that the significant growth of capital, and capitalist system based on the accumulation of capital, is the one responsible for environmental degradation, not population growth (7).

Some authors have therefore suggested the term Capitalocene is a more holistic and relevant concept to explain the causes of environmental degradation. Capitalocene, the Age of capital, means that it is not the collective human species that is responsible for the current crisis, but it is a specific economic and political system; the one of capitalism. This concept is a more comprehensive one because it is not apolitical, it rejects neo-malthusian thesis and it takes into account historical context. Capitalism is a system in which the means of production, distribution and exchange of wealth are based on private and corporate ownership and where there is competition to maximize profits. This system is based on endless growth and always requires greater quantities of resources. Capitalism relies on accumulation through appropriation of nature and exploitation of human labour to provide food, energy, labour power and raw materials.

The sociologist Jason Moore (8), who coined the term Capitalocene, picks the 16^th century as its start date, because even though it is earlier than the geological evidence, it can be historically significant when thinking about the origins of capitalism. The 16^th century marked the start of capitalism, with the colonisation of America and the development of power relationships, resource wars, and financialisation. The 19^th century and the industrial revolution then brought about industrial and capitalist societies. It was also a turning point for the acceleration of environmental degradation with the increasing burning of fossil fuels and the CO2 emissions it produced. The post 1950 period of The Great Acceleration can be well understood within the Capitalocene concept because it coincides with the explosion of consumer society, advertisement, planned obsolescence, urbanisation and the race for growth in the context of the Cold War. Consumer culture ensures that people keep consuming to stimulate the economy and sustain the capitalist system, but it consequently increases resource depletion and pollution. The endless accumulation of capital is the producer of externalities, negative social and ecological side effects (increasing inequalities and increasing environmental degradation), that the capitalist system does not pay for. At the same time that this model of development based on fossil resources was degrading the Earth, it also increased inequalities. In 1820, 20% of the world’s poorest citizens held 4,7% of the global wealth however, it fell to 2,2% in 1992 (9). Global environmental degradation and rising inequalities seem to go hand in hand as consequences of our capitalist development. To make matters worse, the regions and populations that are currently the most affected by climate change are among the poorest ones. In other words, the people who suffer the most from the ecological crisis are the ones the least responsible for it.

The concept of Capitalocene brings to light the limits of capitalism: endless growth is not sustainable in a planet with finite resources and endless accumulation leads to exploitation and degradation of humans and nature. Thus, the concept of Capitalocene allows us look at the real origins and roots of the issue which then enables us to look for adequate solutions. If capitalism, and not humanity as a whole, is responsible for the dramatic environmental changes, then the answer to the current crisis cannot be found in capitalism and this production model is outdated.  In addition, it forces us to challenge ideas of growth, material wellbeing, technological progress and our relationship to nature. Thanks to the Capitalocene concept, we can assume that the solution to the planet’s crisis won’t lie within green capitalism or quick technological fixes. It helps us think about real alternatives to our current system. It opens the way for a post-capitalist, alternative model centred on climate justice, to put an end to both human and nature exploitation. It can be an opportunity to find more democratic, fairer models of wellbeing, one not based on material consumption, that allow every human to meet its basic needs while living within the planet limits.