Green capitalism isn’t even a thing
Apparently it’s capitalism that destroys the natural world. Well, according to a new book it is. Yet the example given is nothing, at all, to do with capitalism. Nor socialism, communism, communalism nor any other possible method of organising who owns what in an economy.
The task of achieving a globally just energy transition is daunting. But it is possible. Achieving it requires understanding supply chains in reverse, starting from what we produce and consume and working backwards to their material inputs and, further still, to the relentless scramble for new extractive frontiers. Policies that promote alternatives to car use, reduce sprawl, encourage more compact batteries and require recycling would all reduce the scale of mining needed for carbon-free transportation.
We can start by demanding supply chains organised around justice for everyone they touch, rather than profits for just a few. Just as any workplace is simultaneously a site of exploitation and locus of worker power, and any mine is at once a setting for extraction and a potential scene of community resistance, the supply chains of green technologies are both a means of domination – of people and of nature – and fertile ground for making the world anew.
The example used is the mining of the Andean salt flats for the lithium contained. And, well, Pinochet nationalised the lithium in Chile, Morales nationalised it in Bolivia so that’s two out of the four which are really not capitalist - or haven’t been at least.
But more than that:
The resulting brine deposits anywhere from four to 200 feet below the Atacama’s salty crust represent a potential bonanza…..
And that’s true. Extracting lithium from these hugely enriched brines is a great source of lithium for the brave new green world. It’s the next words in that quote, “to corporations” that grates. For of course lithium is of value to people who use lithium in this brave new green world.
But this relatively low-cost, low-tech and supposedly low-impact extractive process nonetheless imperils the species and communities that call the Atacama desert home. And it is a microcosm of a planetary phenomenon: the expanding extractive frontiers of green capitalism.
There’s nothing specifically capitalist about this.
Mining always transforms, in many ways irrevocably, the landscapes in which it occurs. In remaking the earth in the image of extractive capital, physically and chemically separating what is deemed valuable from often toxic waste, mining evokes the image of terraforming so central to science fiction.
Capitalism isn’t the defining feature here.
But if terraforming is supposed to make a lifeless planet as verdant as Earth, mining, to the contrary, often leaves parts of Earth itself uninhabitable.
We’re willing to accept that for rhetorical purposes, but it’s still nothing specific to capitalism.
The distinction in capitalism is about “who owns?” We agree that digging holes in the ground to extract minerals, well, it leaves holes in the ground. Accelerating the evaporation of salars, well, it accelerates the evaporation of salars. But this is nothing, at all, to do with who owns the salars, who owns the corporations that dig holes, nor even who owns any other part of the economy. A socialist, a communist, a communal, a workers coop, all would leave exactly the same holes, the same evaporation, behind them. A socialist, communist, communal, battery production system would require just the same amount of lithium. It’s simply not capitalism that’s to blame here.
What’s really happening here is that “capitalism” is being used as the all inclusive word for everything the author doesn’t like. Which does rather strip the word of any useful meaning.
As we’ve noted before anyone who insists that it’s capitalism that destroys the environment can be disabused of that notion by a quick trip to where the Aral Sea isn’t.
Tim Worstall