Growthocene

In my previous article, I wrote about the dynamics of capitalism that lead to environmental destruction. I want to stress that it does not mean that capitalism is the only economic system that harms the environment. I use the notion of Capitalocene because capitalism is our current global economical system and it structures the world we live in. For these reasons, I believe it is still useful to talk about Capitalocene and the dynamics of capitalism because suggesting that it is capitalism and not all of humanity that is responsible for the current ecological and social crisis can help us find more appropriate and pertinent solutions.

However, it actually seems more accurate to talk about Growthocene because it broadens the notion of Capitalocene: Growthocene states that what needs to be challenged and criticised is the growth of biophysical throughput, continuous capital accumulation and productivism as well as the perpetual aim for quantitative expansion of economies (measured in GDP) (1). Such a concept enables us to take into account the environmental destruction made by non-capitalist systems and to understand that productivism (the growth of production) is not sustainable in a finite planet, whatever forms it takes. 

A striking example is the one of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. Even though they were communist and not capitalist systems, they still damaged the environment because industrial production (productivism) was key to their economies. For instance, the Soviet Union is responsible for the drying up of the Aral Sea, that U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described in 2010 as “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters” (2) . 

The size of the Aral Sea has been shrinking since the 1960s (by 2007, it had shrunk to 10% of its original size) as a result of an economic plan by the Soviet Union to divert the rivers feeding the Aral Sea in order to irrigate the desert in Uzbekistan. The aim of that plan was to develop cotton production to boost economic growth. In addition, the Soviet Union also contaminated the region by using it for industrial projects, pesticides and fertilisers dumping as well as biological weapons testing. The Soviet Union that started in the 1920s led to massive environmental destruction because its aim was industrialization at all costs to compete with the western capitalist block. Many of the former Soviet countries have excessive pollution levels (air pollution, earth and groundwater contamination) due to former industrialisation (including chemical-weapons production), mining, petroleum production and radioactive activities. (3)

Thus, it is the notion of productivism and strive to growth in their broad sense, not only limited to the context of capitalism, that have to be challenged when thinking about environmental damages.