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The UC: America's Most Ecocidal "Green" University, Part II
[Continued from Part I, published on Sunday, April 5.]
Why is industrial capitalism inherently destructive of the earth? Many volumes have been written on the subject. In this space, we intend only to sketch the briefest outline of such an argument.
As with all imperialist systems, capitalist economies are based on material growth. This growth takes place with increasing rapidity over time. Thus, the capitalist system inevitably and inexorably depletes the earth’s so-called “natural resources.” Furthermore, through the scientific and technological revolution’s contributions to capitalist economic imperatives, depleted “natural resources” are often abandoned for newly identified “resources” as new productive processes and emergent technologies allow for the exploitation of what before was seen as raw, useless objects of nature. Thus, capitalism reaps without replacing in an unsustainable drive, and then dynamically moves on to harvest new, previously “useless” elements of the earth. In fact, in the very act of defining the world as a field of “resources” to be exploited, capitalism allows those in power, in their quest for ever-increasing levels of energy production, to cut down entire forests for fuel (early European deforestation), strip mine and deplete coal deposits (early industrial fuel), to tap and soon exhaust petroleum deposits (our current primary form of energy), and so on. In the process, they create ever-greater wastelands. This is the cause, more or less, of the current ecological crisis of planetary proportions we now collectively must face.
Since 1970, the year often cited as the birth of the modern environmental movement, more than 40 percent of the world’s remaining forests have been cut, at an average annual rate of depletion larger than England and Wales combined. Between 1970 and 2003, populations of “terrestrial species” declined by 31 percent. According to the moderate World Wildlife Fund, human societies are now consuming as many “natural resources” every three months as the earth generates in a full year. There are now more than 70,000 industrial chemicals in use, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually and 30,000 never having been comprehensively tested for their possible health risks. Virtually every river and waterway on earth has been polluted with a toxic stew of chemical contaminants. All of this is in spite of the many important victories achieved by environmental activists since the late-‘60s. The social ecologist Murray Bookchin noted:
"To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing."
Moreover, capitalist production passes on environmental costs to all of society, and is unable to consider its impact upon ecosystems and the biosphere at large. Economist James O’Connor explains that the ecological crisis is one of the two major contradictions of reproduction created by capitalism. The first is a crisis of labor: by so exploiting workers capitalism undermines its ideological and political legitimacy, leading to periodic repudiations of capitalism as a system. Workers revolt, organize, and push toward more socialistic systems. Thus far, the capitalist political-economy has been able to recuperate a semblance of balance and a workable regime of domination. Workers in the global north have largely been placated and co-opted while those in the global south have been brutally repressed. But capitalism also produces a second contradiction: It succeeds so well in transforming the earth into “resources” and exploiting them that it undermines the very ecological system that makes human society possible. Capitalism irrevocably (at least in terms of human historical timeframes) destroys nature.
Murray Bookchin concurs, and further explains that capitalism’s systematic thrust is toward a rationalization and simplification of the ecology. Simplification entails a rapid and irreversible destruction of the biodiversity and ecological multiplicity that complex life is based upon. The rapid species extinction that has proceeded concurrent with capitalism’s mass reorganization and expansion of industrial monocrop agriculture and rapacious resource extraction, the extreme climactic shifts taking place because of human-induced global warming, the vast deforestation and habitat destruction brought on by urban expansion and sprawl -- this and more is killing off the vast and incredibly interdependent webs of diverse life upon which we as human beings are reliant. The plutonium bomb is only the distilled version of this process writ large. The industrial mammoth it takes to mine uranium, mill it, refine it into plutonium and other elements, the parallel industrial chemicals and materials necessary for building a nuclear warhead, the industrial infrastructure for missile production, the military plant necessary to deploy the weapons, the barren “sacrifice zones” where tests have occurred -- all of this amounts to an immeasurable ecological scar and has contributed to multiple and interlocking ecological crises our society faces. The UC bears a large measure of responsibility for all of them.
Capitalism’s apologists often treat its expansion as essentially an inexorable force of nature. Because it is inherently a superior system, they say, any free people, when presented with an unconstrained choice between it and a more traditional communal lifestyle will embrace free market economics and its attendant industrial processes. In reality, capitalist expansion has always been, and will invariably continue to be, secured via military conquest; that is, by the means of violence and repression for which research universities are increasingly responsible for developing at the inception and research stages. In recent years, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has helpfully offered this analogy: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without [military-industrial firm] McDonnell-Douglass.” More fundamentally, because industrial capitalism is expansionary by definition, it must uproot and destroy the human communities that stand in the way of the “resources” its seeks to extract, pervert, consume, and dispose of. As this system has grown to encompass virtually the entire globe, its instruments of violent enforcement and coercion likewise have become more total: hence, nuclear weapons.
As with all imperialist systems, capitalist economies are based on material growth. This growth takes place with increasing rapidity over time. Thus, the capitalist system inevitably and inexorably depletes the earth’s so-called “natural resources.” Furthermore, through the scientific and technological revolution’s contributions to capitalist economic imperatives, depleted “natural resources” are often abandoned for newly identified “resources” as new productive processes and emergent technologies allow for the exploitation of what before was seen as raw, useless objects of nature. Thus, capitalism reaps without replacing in an unsustainable drive, and then dynamically moves on to harvest new, previously “useless” elements of the earth. In fact, in the very act of defining the world as a field of “resources” to be exploited, capitalism allows those in power, in their quest for ever-increasing levels of energy production, to cut down entire forests for fuel (early European deforestation), strip mine and deplete coal deposits (early industrial fuel), to tap and soon exhaust petroleum deposits (our current primary form of energy), and so on. In the process, they create ever-greater wastelands. This is the cause, more or less, of the current ecological crisis of planetary proportions we now collectively must face.
Since 1970, the year often cited as the birth of the modern environmental movement, more than 40 percent of the world’s remaining forests have been cut, at an average annual rate of depletion larger than England and Wales combined. Between 1970 and 2003, populations of “terrestrial species” declined by 31 percent. According to the moderate World Wildlife Fund, human societies are now consuming as many “natural resources” every three months as the earth generates in a full year. There are now more than 70,000 industrial chemicals in use, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually and 30,000 never having been comprehensively tested for their possible health risks. Virtually every river and waterway on earth has been polluted with a toxic stew of chemical contaminants. All of this is in spite of the many important victories achieved by environmental activists since the late-‘60s. The social ecologist Murray Bookchin noted:
"To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing."
Moreover, capitalist production passes on environmental costs to all of society, and is unable to consider its impact upon ecosystems and the biosphere at large. Economist James O’Connor explains that the ecological crisis is one of the two major contradictions of reproduction created by capitalism. The first is a crisis of labor: by so exploiting workers capitalism undermines its ideological and political legitimacy, leading to periodic repudiations of capitalism as a system. Workers revolt, organize, and push toward more socialistic systems. Thus far, the capitalist political-economy has been able to recuperate a semblance of balance and a workable regime of domination. Workers in the global north have largely been placated and co-opted while those in the global south have been brutally repressed. But capitalism also produces a second contradiction: It succeeds so well in transforming the earth into “resources” and exploiting them that it undermines the very ecological system that makes human society possible. Capitalism irrevocably (at least in terms of human historical timeframes) destroys nature.
Murray Bookchin concurs, and further explains that capitalism’s systematic thrust is toward a rationalization and simplification of the ecology. Simplification entails a rapid and irreversible destruction of the biodiversity and ecological multiplicity that complex life is based upon. The rapid species extinction that has proceeded concurrent with capitalism’s mass reorganization and expansion of industrial monocrop agriculture and rapacious resource extraction, the extreme climactic shifts taking place because of human-induced global warming, the vast deforestation and habitat destruction brought on by urban expansion and sprawl -- this and more is killing off the vast and incredibly interdependent webs of diverse life upon which we as human beings are reliant. The plutonium bomb is only the distilled version of this process writ large. The industrial mammoth it takes to mine uranium, mill it, refine it into plutonium and other elements, the parallel industrial chemicals and materials necessary for building a nuclear warhead, the industrial infrastructure for missile production, the military plant necessary to deploy the weapons, the barren “sacrifice zones” where tests have occurred -- all of this amounts to an immeasurable ecological scar and has contributed to multiple and interlocking ecological crises our society faces. The UC bears a large measure of responsibility for all of them.
Capitalism’s apologists often treat its expansion as essentially an inexorable force of nature. Because it is inherently a superior system, they say, any free people, when presented with an unconstrained choice between it and a more traditional communal lifestyle will embrace free market economics and its attendant industrial processes. In reality, capitalist expansion has always been, and will invariably continue to be, secured via military conquest; that is, by the means of violence and repression for which research universities are increasingly responsible for developing at the inception and research stages. In recent years, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has helpfully offered this analogy: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without [military-industrial firm] McDonnell-Douglass.” More fundamentally, because industrial capitalism is expansionary by definition, it must uproot and destroy the human communities that stand in the way of the “resources” its seeks to extract, pervert, consume, and dispose of. As this system has grown to encompass virtually the entire globe, its instruments of violent enforcement and coercion likewise have become more total: hence, nuclear weapons.
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