By the
Pond The
endless rationalization of profit
By ARTHUR JONES
This is a nation in which tens of
thousands of people, when they pull out of the driveway, wont leave home
without dragging behind them the toilet bowl and a kitchen sink. Waste, thy
name is RV.
Dont bother defending the self-indulgence of operating a
vehicle that gets six to eight miles a gallon chugging uphill, in order to lug
for thousands of miles, past hundreds of hotels and motels, a double bed or
two, a couple of couches, a shower and kitchen stove.
That said, I toss my teabag into the garbage, rinse the mug, wipe
up the mess Ive made with a paper towel, slip down to the store alone in
the seven-seat rented Ford Aerostar for three days of supplies, return and
stack them away. Ive just brought into the house food supplies that are
40 percent packaging, and before leaving had added without blinking three
ounces of trash -- paper teabag and towel -- to lifes daily dump. Waste,
thy name is I.
What is it were wasting?
We all, but especially the manufacturing corporations, are living
off natural capital that can no longer support our lifestyles. Natural capital
includes all the familiar resources used by humankind: water, minerals,
oil, trees, fish, air and so on. But it also encompasses living systems:
grasslands, savannahs, wetlands, estuaries, oceans, coral reefs, riparian
corridors, tundras and rainforests.
That quotes from just published Natural Capitalism:
Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and
Hunter Lovins, 416 pages, $26.45). It makes thousands of points, including
this: Whether its the oblivious RV owner or me or the manufacturing
corporations, the main obstacles to warding off ecological catastrophe are
no longer technical or economic but cultural.
Including -- though the authors never allude to it (a major flaw
in the book) -- the culture of capitalism.
The authors are blunt: While technology keeps ahead of
depletion, providing what appear to be ever-cheaper metals, they only appear
cheap because the stripped rainforest and the mountains of toxic tailings
spilling into rivers, the impoverished villages and eroded indigenous cultures
-- all consequences they leave in their wake -- are not factored into the cost
of production. Humankind has inherited a 3.8 billion year store of natural
capital. There will be little left by the end of the next century.
These things we think we know. Now where?
The books strength and weakness is to see everything in
terms of improvements in manufacturing systems, technological
turnarounds and scientific innovation. Not seen or apparently understood is
that manufacturing systems are not free agents. They operate at the behest of
and under the control of capitalism. It is the overarching capitalist system
that impels everything forward.
The authors provide a balanced and penetrating investigation into
industry and its related systems. Get those systems under control, make
industrys starting point the same point from which natural capitalism
operates (renewable resources), and all will be better, possibly beautiful.
After Hawkens book The Ecology of Commerce was
published, these three decided what was needed was a framework within which the
entrepreneurial talent of business could be applied to solving the worlds
deepest environmental and social problems. The authors imagine a
clean green world as labor leaders, business leaders, government and
environmentalists create a just transition to phase out coal,
nuclear energy and oil.
What follow are 15 highly detailed chapters that describe an
industrial world where everything is leased. The manufacturers are responsible
for creating and for disposal -- through remanufacture. Waste is banished. Use
all resources more effectively -- illustrations provided -- and planetary
destruction can actually be reversed.
The closest the authors get to tackling the corporate/government
arm lock is saying that Washingtons 150,000 lawyers and lobbyists will
have to stand aside as corporations forgo corporate welfare.
Thats naivety.
The authors have a brave new bioworld, too. Growing
competitive pressures to save resources open up exciting frontiers for
chemists, physicists, process engineers and industrial designers.
Pharmaceutical companies become microbial ranchers, managing herds of enzymes.
Biological farmers manage soil ecosystems.
To the authors, well be protecting the climate at a
profit by weaving all this and more into the new natural capitalism
tapestry.
Fine vision, fine words.
But capitalism is business to make money. Now. Rarely will it
forgo that money for the future. This puts the authors up against the quarterly
report. And on the basis of current practice, they are not going to win, just
gain some improvements at the manufacturing margins.
The authors are too reliant on market forces to redeem us from
environmental perdition, and through such reliance they re-arm the system they
are trying to pacify and redirect. Yet theyre right about one thing.
Given the current antigovernment sentiment in America, if the environment
cant be saved at a profit, it wont be saved at all.
I had earlier invited readers to take part in this
ecology/capitalism debate. Donald Cudihee makes a point thats appropriate
here: Many of us believed in business. It made our world go round. Our
beliefs were supported by good experiences, fair treatment, responsible owners
plus a myriad of myths handed down at the supper table and in the classroom.
Business was and still is equated with what we do as Americans in a
post-agricultural society. However, for longer than any of us really know,
business and capitalism have been undergoing metamorphosis.
Capitalism
is an ideology that holds that everything must be reduced to terms of
money-based value. The confusion comes when we expect something human from the
practice of capitalism and it doesnt seem to happen.
One place where it doesnt happen unless the public pushes
extremely hard -- and this despite the authors great hopes -- is in the
chemical world. Large chemical corporations, writes reader Rebecca S. Biefeld,
fight against the publics knowing the toxicity of their products.
Research librarian Biefeld was diagnosed with toxic encephalopathy
from air conditioning leaks of ethylene glycol. She suspects that prenatal
solvent exposure predisposed her son Aren Joshuas immune system to
failure when at 5 years old he was exposed to toxic solvents in paints, new
carpeting and insulation in a newly remodeled building. After spending several
hours a week in the building for three weeks, he became ill and died.
Biefeld uses her research skills to stay atop issues related to
solvent fumes and poor building ventilation. Building ventilation is not a
current health issue, she said. For example, the state of New York has no law
covering the quality of the inside-the-building air people breath.
More damaging, she argues, is the chemical corporations war
against independent research into the 87,000 chemicals currently on the market
that have never been tested for toxicity to humans.
Dont believe it? She recommends two books: Living
Downstream, by Sandra Steingraber, professional biologist and breast cancer
survivor, on the role of toxic chemicals -- solvents, pesticides, petroleum
products -- in carcinogenesis; and Our Stolen Future, by National
Wildlife Federation head scientist Theo Colborn, on toxic chemicals as
endocrine disruptors -- putting future generations existence at risk
through sexual malformations and low sperm counts.
Congress has inquired into the disproportionate health
damage done to children by the toxins that accumulate in their developing
bodies [from] pesticide residues in their foods; pesticides tracked onto
carpets in their home from lawn care chemicals. Children whose parents use lawn
chemicals have a five-times greater chance of developing leukemia.
Toxins from auto emissions and waste incineration we know about,
but the chemical giants the authors trust dont want us aware of the
health risks from outgassing fumes from fabric softeners, cleaning
products and fragranced household products, she said.
Are the chemical giants rushing to the lab to research these
worries and level with the public?
Not according to Biefeld. The corporations strive through
any means at their disposal to prevent the public from knowing the toxicity of
the ingredients, and control the research grants for the type of
study which would demonstrate the health defects of the relevant
products.
As a Monsanto executive once told Forbes magazine,
our job is making money for our shareholders. Chemicals is how we do
it.
Stimulating and important, Natural Capitalism is a book in
too small a setting. The authors seriously underestimate man-made
capitalisms many-mouthed abilities -- to talk out of all sides of its
mouth to its various audiences simultaneously while pulling in the money any
way it can.
Like the American pulling the toilet and kitchen sink behind him
as he leaves the driveway, the corporations will rationalize their profitable
lifestyle ad infinitum. Ecology be damned, unless theyre forced to
comply.
Arthur Jones is NCR editor-at-large.
National Catholic Reporter, December 10,
1999
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