limits of growth – what Jeff Wacker of the Electronic Data Systems (quoted in Friedman, p 57) calls the ‘eco-logic of capitalism’ which, says Friedman, has become ‘an important, if not the most important, restraint on growth’. The expansion of Americum production and consumption will require the colonisation of three more planets, because, argues Friedman (2008: 55), ‘we are going to make planet earth so hot, and strip it so bare of resources, that nobody … will be able to live like Americans one day’.
Friedman concedes that it would be arrogant for Americans like himself to urge developing countries not to grow, implying that they should remain poor. He quotes an Egyptian cabinet member:
It is like the developed world ate all the hors d’oeuvre, all the entrees, and all the desserts and then invited the developing world for a little coffee ‘and asked us to fit the bill’. That is not going to happen. The developing world will not be denied (Friedman 2008:55).
The solution, he argues, is partly for the rest of the world to leapfrog unsustainable technologies and develop on a green basis (which China is beginning to do, albeit inconsistently, given its rising addiction to private cars and carbon-intensive power plants). Ultimately, he suggests, this will only happen if America itself undergoes a green revolution, and radically re-orients its patterns of production and consumption – so that when others copy America, they will not be carbon copies, but green copies.
GREEN CAPITALISM OR ECO-SOCIALISM?
The above analysis from within the very heart of the US establishment – the eco-logic of capitalism – resonates to some extent with the emerging eco-Marxist or eco-socialist school of thought (Foster 2009; Burkett 2005; Altvater 2006; Albo 2006; Lowy 2006; Kovel 2002). The ecological consequences of hyper-accumulation include, in the words of John Bellamy Foster (2002: 12):
... global warming, the destruction of the ozone layer, removal of tropical forests, elimination of coral reefs, overfishing, extinction of species, loss of genetic diversity, the increasing toxicity of our environment and our food, desertification, shrinking water supplies, lack of clean air, and radioactive contamination – to name a few. The list is very long and rapidly getting longer, and the spatial scale on which these problems manifest themselves are increasing.
If the socio-economic and ecological crises have a common origin – industrial capitalism – can a solution to these crises be found within capitalism, or does the very nature of capitalism need to be transcended for solutions for all of humanity, in harmony with the natural environment, to be found?
The answer to this question depends on the paradigm used. Clapp and Dauvergne (2005) give us four basic paradigms that try to make sense of the current crisis, namely the market liberal, institutionalist, bioenvironmentalist and social green approaches. Of these the first two, which fit broadly into the ecological modernisation frame, do not question the logic of capitalism, based on heightened economic growth, but differ on the degree of state involvement in addressing the problems. Market liberals believe the market will solve environmental problems, while institutionalists believe in the necessity of global (and national) regulation. The last two, by contrast, tend to be more critical of the subordination of the environment and society to economic growth, with bioenvironmentalists placing the natural environment (and population growth) at the centre of concern, while social greens (including Marxist as well as non-Marxist eco-socialists) place human society at the centre, in harmony with the natural environment.
The obvious attempts at ‘greenwashing’, namely using ‘sustainable development’ as a public relations ploy, is arguably the dominant practice of corporations throughout the world, promoted by global institutions such as the World Bank and World Trade Organisation (Peet 2003; Bruno and Karliner 2004; Bakan 2004; Harris-White and Harris 2006; and Rogers 2006). Friedman (2008) argues for a ‘green revolution’ within the logic of regulated capitalism. However, he is critical of the tepid greenwashing that passes for sustainable development and makes a strong case for a fundamental reorientation of our economies, where state regulation and standards need to be imposed in order to spur on innovation towards green solutions to our energy. As such, his approach has shifted from a market liberal to an institutionalist perspective, and is a challenge to those on the eco-socialist left who argue that, because capitalism is the source of the energy crisis, any solution that benefits the entire globe, and not enclaves of privilege, must transcend capitalist relations of production.
Foster (2009) directly engages with Friedman, criticising his devotion to nuclear power and unproven ‘clean coal’ technology, which are also part of US President Obama’s green strategy. Instead, he asserts:
Yet the more radical ecological solution that seeks an immediate closing down of coal-fired plants and their replacement by solar, wind, and other forms of renewable power – coupled with alterations on the demand-side through the transformation of social priorities – is viewed by vested interests as completely undesirable (Foster 2009: 21).
A ‘transformation of social priorities’ that addresses enclave development and ecological destruction at the national and global levels would have to take on those vested interests – implying a class struggle between the power elite at the top of the pyramid, and the subordinate classes at the bottom. The difference between traditional twentieth century Marxist-Leninist (or social democratic) socialist struggles and a new form of twenty-first century ‘eco-socialist’ struggle is that while the former is state-centric, and facilitated by a hierarchical (vanguardist or mass based) political party, the latter is society-centric, and facilitated by mass participatory democracy. The form of struggle has a direct bearing on the outcome, following the Gandhian principle ‘be the change you want to see’. This is a long-term battle that is already taking shape in discussions and activism, for example, at the World Social Forum, as well as in places where the subordinate classes have actually taken power, as in Bolivia and Kerala, India (Williams 2008).
In the wake of the global crisis that has delegitimised the certainties of neoliberal economics, there is a growing literature on what the content of shifted social priorities entails (for example Ransom and Baird 2009; Korten 2009; Eisler 2009; Patel 2009). According to Bolivian president Evo Morales 2009: 168):
It is nothing new to live well. It is simply a matter of recovering the life of our forbears and putting an end to the
