SDF: Do you think "commodifying" the environment is really a solution to the problems of "unsustainable business"? Since every human being has an environmental impact upon the planet, from birth to death, what will it mean to commodify these impacts? Will every baby have to pay for breathing someone else's air and pay for the disposal of her diapers from the moment of birth? Can businesses survive if they can't externalize pollution costs? Will governments compete to attract business by offering cheap pollution rights?SK: I said a 'theoretic' way of solving the problem. The problems with
carrying it out in practice are many, like you show. But is it desirable? If we imagine a world where the right to pollute is something that must be bought like everything else, those who get success is as you correctly state those who allow cheap pollution. If a nation allowed pollution very cheaply, it would attract businesses and ultimately kill itself in a swamp of sulfuroxides. It could be pointed out that it would be in no nation would allow that to happen, but a production that affects the stratosphere would not only be affecting that nation, but the entire world. What you state about every baby having to pay for the disposal of her diapers and breathing of others' air would necessarily have to be factored into such a practice, BUT - as capitalism by its nature does - would contribute to creating social losers and winners. The wealthy can bear having to pay for personal pollution, but the poor become even poorer.
SDF: If the poor are getting poorer even under the OECD's plan for making global capitalism environmentally sustainable, then the tycoon-dictators of the OECD will have to grant us all some slums to live in, and, as Jeremy Seabrook pointed out in his books, the slums of the world are getting ever-bigger each day as a byproduct of industrial capitalism, and this is in fact what constitutes the eco-crisis for most of the world. There won't be the resources out there for the capitalists to endlessly practice and re-practice urban renewal upon the world, when the world is 50% urbanized.
Al Gore is concerned about 1997 being the hottest year for global climate on record; one-sixth of the world's people are concerned about having enough to eat for them to wake up tomorrow morning, still alive, despite all-time records being set each year in global food production. These people have a clue.
The theory that the capitalist governments can just capitalize the commons runs afoul of the industrial necessity to externalize costs, such as the trash they produce and the working class they abuse. The suggestion of the OECD environmentalists, that the OECD "redefine its commitment to 'sustainable economic growth' to mean growth that sustains human and environmental, as well as economic, capital," will probably either create another eco-crisis or drive the businesses out of business. (The proof of this last statement is one of the most urgent tasks confronting theory today.) If the corporations are using environmental concerns as a pretext for sinking the poor further into destitution, this strategy itself is going to create another eco-crisis; the poor.
All this response does for me is to heighten my suspicion that the OECD, the gang at Kyoto, Al Gore, etc. are not serious about environmentalism, that environmentalism is being held up by these people as a sham response to the problem, that they have no solution because they ARE the problem, and that what we will see in the future is some form of attempt at global fascism in the shape of a phony totalitarian response to the environmental crisis.
None.
