By Graham Matthews
Reading the mainstream media recently, one could be forgiven for believing that the environment movement had achieved a conclusive victory in the battle against global environmental degradation. "In just 10 short years, the ideological battle for the environment has been won", comments Paul Gilding, former head of Greenpeace International, in the Financial Review of July 21. The most advanced sections of the business community, Gilding argues, are now aware that business must become ecological in its outlook. More than that, they are seeking the ways of turning an ecological profit,"merging ecological and economic factors into a theory and practice of business management which seeks to maximise the advantages that this merger can bring".
Gilding's comments are echoed by other columnists. Diana Bagnall, writing in the Bulletin of July 25, in an article titled "The Green Smokescreen", claims that "ideas that even 10 years ago would have been considered extreme left wing are now considered mainstream". Environmentalism is a "triumphant movement", according to Bagnall, but is nevertheless "captive to the disaster mentality".
The fact that Australian industry has been forced to make certain concessions to growing environmental consciousness (such as the phasing out CFC propellants in spray cans), is seen as proof of the environment movement's absolute success. Business is now governed by 482 separate acts of environmental legislation (state and federal) which are forcing it to do the right thing.
Bagnall concludes by demanding that the environment movement "stop crying wolf". The implication is that business is on the right track. All it needs is encouragement, not criticism.
Other writers go even further. Richard D. North, in the March 4 New Scientist, suggests that environmentalism is simply a substitute for religion among its adherents. Pure science, mixed with government regulation, is all the environment needs, North argues. The "hysteria, paranoia, violence or martyrdom" of the environment movement is simply a distraction from getting the job done.
Self-regulation
Nevertheless, the apparent optimism of some environmental columnists is not born out by the facts. Self-regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by industry, for instance, has been a failure in Australia and elsewhere. Toxic chemicals continue to be routinely created and introduced into the environment by industry, both as waste products and as insecticides, herbicides and fertilisers.Industry in the US is currently campaigning vigorously against an Environmental Protection Agency report that suggests that the synthetic chemical dioxin (produced by chlorine bleaching of paper and the burning of certain chemical waste) is more destructive to life than previously believed. In 1990, on the occasion of the renewal of the US Clean Air Act, US oil giants like Chevron spent millions of dollars in an effort to relax provisions restricting emissions from oil refineries.
Nevertheless, many large industries present an apparently environmentally aware public face, investing in "green" marketing strategies and environmental audits and producing annual reports on recycled paper.
Paul Hawken, in The Ecology of Commerce, argues that the contradiction between business practice and the needs of the environment runs deeper than can be solved by recycling or tree planting. "The critical myth", Hawken argues, "is the assumption that we can 'clean up' our environment". No number of land fills, and no amount of incineration, can indefinitely contain or destroy the sum total of pollutants released into the biosphere by industry, Hawken says.
The biosphere is being degraded by the daily practice of business. It is not a question of curbing the most obvious excesses of certain industries; what is needed is a complete restructuring of industry. What is ultimately required is a complete turnaround in the way business produces commodities, he argues.
Hawken's vision of a "green capitalism" rests on the possibilities of small business, localism and the introduction of an environmental tax that would encourage ecological production. The fact that business would simply pass the costs of any environmental tax on to the community at large is not seen as a problem by Hawken. Although criticising the practice of business as it is at the moment, he, like Paul Gilding, sees no contradiction in the development of an ecological commerce based on the profit motive.
'Sustainable development'
A similar strategy is advanced by some proponents of "sustainable development". By giving the environment an economic value, it is argued, business will be forced to pay for its use/degradation. The assumption is that the market will determine a price that maximises social benefit.The tacit assumption of the "sustainable development" argument is that it is possible in all cases to ascribe a monetary value to the degradation or consumption of the environment. It also assumes that "the market" is the best measure of the inherent worth of such environmental qualities as an irreplaceable forest, a wetland, a coastal ecosystem or clean water. By leaving the decision to the market, the "sustainable development" advocates implicitly disenfranchise the community from control over the fate of its environment.
The belief in the ability of capitalism to adapt to ecological imperatives is not shared by Dr Barry Commoner. In The Closing Circle, Commoner asks whether environmentally responsible production is essentially in contradiction with the production for profit system.
Commoner traces the development of technology and the rise of a range of new commodities since the end of the second world war. Soaps have been largely replaced by detergents, cotton and wool by synthetic fibres and wood and steel in the construction industry by concrete and aluminium, Commoner observes. The use of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides has also increased markedly.
It is a consistent fact that each of the new commodities has a greater environmental impact than those it replaced. From 1946 until the 1970s, the rate of increase of environmental pollution in the US was 10 times faster than the rate of growth of the economy as a whole, largely because of this technological displacement. "These pollution problems arise not out of some minor inadequacies in the new technologies, but because of their very success in achieving their desired aims", Commoner argues.
Profit
The basis for the widespread technological displacement, the reason for the huge increase in pollutants, was that the new technologies were more profitable. The new technologies allowed a far higher productivity of labour, reducing costs to the producer considerably, Commoner explains.The environmental costs associated with the new technologies were externalised. Since air, water and land quality have no economic value, the costs to the environment are not calculated in the costs of production. The costs of degradation are therefore passed on to the community at large, not to the producer/polluter.
The drive of capital to maximise profit, and therefore to externalise as much of the cost associated with production to the community at large (social as well as environmental), stymies the "greening" of capitalism in any real sense. Despite the advances of the last 10 years noted by environmental journalists, capital still degrades the environment as a matter of course. The rate of environmental degradation has not significantly slowed.
That is not to say that the system is monolithic and unresponsive to public pressure. Important environmental reforms have been achieved since the beginning of the modern environment movement in the late 1960s. Concentrations of damaging pollutants such as sulfur dioxide have been greatly reduced by regulation. DDT and other organochlorines have been banned, which has halted their build-up in the biosphere. Less has been achieved in areas of production where pollutants are intrinsic to the industrial process.
Had it not been for a mobilised environmental movement bringing consistent pressure to bear on government, it is unlikely even these improvements would have been achieved.
The "ecological society" is still far off, despite its heralding by journalists and others linked to sections of the mass media. Ultimately, such a society would require the breaking of capital's power over production decisions, and pose a fundamental challenge to the right to profit. That will ultimately be achieved only by a strong, active and informed environment movement continuing and extending its work in alliance with the other progressive mass struggles.