Reign in Capitalism
Capitalism success is terrible for nature.
Capitalism is a profit-driven economic system. It has been a tremendeous success - on it’s own terms. For the planet it is en route to become a disaster. During the Great Acceleration - the last half century - the scale of the capitalist enterprise has grown far beyond what the Earth can sustain - the current level actually requires 1.6 Earth.
We need a different economic system. Environmental action is about reigning in capitalism - and creating a different economic system.
Some think capitalism can be reigned in through cooperation with the capitalist themselves - turning ‘bad capitalists’ into ‘nice capitalists’:
“In the last four years we have worked closely with policymakers, industry and organisations to explore how the planetary boundaries approach can be used as a framework for sectors of societies to reduce risk while developing sustainably … It is obvious that different societies over time have contributed very differently to the current state of the earth. The world has a tremendous opportunity this year to address global risks, and do it more equitably. In September, nations will agree the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. With the right ambition, this could create the conditions for long-term human prosperity within planetary boundaries” Johan Rockström, Stockholm Resilience Centre
Others are not that optimistic - arguing that “the climate crisis cannot be addressed in the current era of neoliberal market fundamentalism, which encourages profligate consumption and has resulted in mega-mergers and trade agreements hostile to the health of the environment.” Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything
Looking (in 2017) at the fight between Environmental Activists and The International Corporations, an example beeing the Glyphosate (Round Up, Monsanto) stride spilling out in the EU bureaucracy, I tend to side with Klein: The task is to save the environment from capitalism, not within capitalism.
Pesticides
Farmers and governments have been comprehensively conned by the global pesticide industry. It has ensured its products should not be properly regulated or even, in real-world conditions, properly assessed. A massive media onslaught by this industry has bamboozled us all about its utility and its impacts on the health of both human beings and the natural world. The profits of these companies depend on ecocide.
What we need to do:
1 We need a global treaty to regulate pesticides, and put the manufacturers back in their box.
2 We need environmental impact assessments for the farming and fishing industries. It is amazing that, while these sectors present the greatest threats to the living world, they are, uniquely in many nations, not subject to such oversight.
3 We need firm rules based on the outcomes of these assessments, obliging those who use the land to protect and restore the ecosystems on which we all depend.
4 We need to reduce the amount of land used by farming, while sustaining the production of food. The most obvious way is greatly to reduce our use of livestock: many of the crops we grow and all of the grazing land we use are deployed to feed them. One study in Britain suggests that, if we stopped using animal products, everyone in Britain could be fed on just 3m of our 18.5m hectares of current farmland (or on 7m hectares if all our farming were organic). This would allow us to create huge wildlife and soil refuges: an investment against a terrifying future.
5 We should stop using land that should be growing food for people to grow maize for biogas and fuel for cars.