Environmentalism and Capitalism -- Let's Try Both!

Mr. Rasmussen of Mt. Blogmore offers the verbal flatulence of the month: a brief, stinky blast of insubstantial noise branding environmentalism a vast one-world communist conspiracy. Whack post, indeed! Mr. Epp, Mr. Wiken, Mr. Fleming, even Mr. Newland jump in on the comments to appropriately pound this simple re-bleating of right-wing hit-counter padding.

Mr. Ellis predictably comes to Mr. Rasmussen's defense, blasting the "nuthouse enviro-hysteria that comprises the modern environmental lobby."

For those of you who need to rationalize your unsustainable economic choices by imagining a massive, evil global conspiracy that's out to destroy all you hold dear, read Paul Hawken on natural capitalism. Far from a Marxist critique, Hawken builds his environmental philosophy very much in the context of capitalism -- real, consistent capitalism, not our current corporate socialism that Rasmussen, Ellis, et al. are all too willing to facilitate with their rhetorical distraction. Hawken suggests that industry and our tax structure need to include in their calculations the real value of things like, oh, forests, rivers, air, and people:

Meanwhile, people whose jobs have been downsized, re-engineered, or restructured out of existence are being told -- as are millions of youths around the world -- that we have created an economic system so ingenious that it doesn't need them, except perhaps to do menial service jobs.

In parts of the industrialized world, unemployment and underemployment have risen faster than employment for more than 25 years. Nearly one-third of the world's workers sense that they have no value in the present economic scheme.

Clearly, when 1 billion willing workers can't find a decent job or any employment at all, we need to make fundamental changes. We can't -- whether through monetary means, government programs, or charity -- create a sense of value and dignity in people's lives when we're simultaneously developing a society that doesn't need them. If people don't feel valued, they will act out society's verdict in sometimes shocking ways. William Strickland, a pioneer in working with inner-city children, once said that "you can't teach algebra to someone who doesn't want to be here." He meant that urban kids don't want to be here at all, alive, anywhere on earth. They try to tell us, but we don't listen. So they engage in increasingly risky behavior -- unprotected sex, drugs, violence -- until we notice. By that time, their conduct has usually reached criminal proportions -- and then we blame the victims, build more jails, and lump the costs into the GDP.

The theologian Matthew Fox has pointed out that we are the only species without full employment. Yet we doggedly pursue technologies that will make that ever more so. Today we fire people, perfectly capable people, to wring out one more wave of profits. Some of the restructuring is necessary and overdue. But, as physicists Amory Lovins and Ernst von WeizsScker have repeatedly advised, what we should do is fire the unproductive kilowatts, barrels of oil, tons of material, and pulp from old-growth forests -- and hire more people to do so [Paul Hawken, "Natural Capitalism," Mother Jones, March/April 1997].

Marxism? Globalism? Where? Sounds more like a pro-life, family-values position to me.

It also sounds like a hard-core capitalist position. Capitalism tells us there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. So why should corporations -- why should anyone -- get to consume resources without paying the full cost of that consumption? As Hawken argues that for every dollar oil companies spend to produce a barrel of oil, they get government (i.e., us, our tax dollars... and Chinese buyers of Treasury bonds) to cover three dollars in military costs of keeping the shipping lanes open. (Oh, those oil companies: real paragons of individualism and self-reliance.)

The accounting does get trickier when we turn from oil to rivers:

While there may be no "right" way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only ask how much it would cost to make a new one. Or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.

Despite the shrill divisiveness of media and politics, Americans remain remarkably consistent in what kind of country they envision for their children and grandchildren. The benefits of resource productivity align almost perfectly with what American voters say they want: better schools, a better environment, safer communities, more economic security, stronger families and family support, freer markets, less regulation, fewer taxes, smaller government, and more local control.

The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive [Hawken, 1997].

This environmentalist sounds like the biggest capitalist in the room. The difference is that Hawken sees the big picture and the true value of everything involved in sustaining our way of life. We don't need global government, but we do need a global -- i.e., holistic, complete -- perspective.

Read Hawken's article. Read Hawken's book. It'll take you more time and brain power than Rasmussen's blurb, but they're worth it.