ECO-APOCALYPSE: A CLASS ACT
BY MICHAEL PARENTI
Excerpted from "Anything But Class: Avoiding the C-Word,
"Chapter 9 of "Blackshirts and Reds"
In 1876, Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels, offered a prophetic caveat:
"Let us not . . . flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human
conquest over nature. For each such con-quest takes its revenge on us. .
. . At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like
a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature-but
that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its
midst. . . ."
With its never-ending emphasis on exploitation and expansion, and its indifference
to environmental costs, capitalism appears determined to stand outside nature.
The essence of capitalism, its raison d'etre, is to convert nature into
commodities and commodities into capital, transforming the living earth
into inanimate wealth. This capital accumulation process wreaks havoc upon
the global ecological system. It treats the planet's life-sustaining resources
(arable land, groundwater, wetlands, forests, fisheries, ocean beds, rivers,
air quality) as dispensable ingredients of limitless supply, to be consumed
or toxified at will. Consequently, the support systems of the entire ecosphere-the
planet's thin skin of fresh air, water, and top soil-are at risk, threatened
by such things as global warming, massive erosion, and ozone depletion.
Global warming is caused by tropical deforestation, motor vehicle exhaust,
and other fossil fuel emissions that create a "greenhouse effect,"
trapping heat close to the earth's surface. This massed heat is altering
the atmospheric chemistry and climatic patterns across the planet, causing
record droughts, floods, tidal waves, snow storms, hurricanes, heat waves,
and great losses in soil moisture. We now know that the planet does not
have a limitless ability to absorb heat caused by energy consumption.
Another potential catastrophe is the shrinkage of the ozone layer that shields
us from the sun's deadliest rays. Over 2.5 billion pounds of ozone-depleting
chemicals are emitted into the earth's atmosphere every year, resulting
in excessive ultraviolet radiation that is causing an alarming rise in skin
cancer and other diseases. Increased radiation is damaging trees, crops,
and coral reefs, and destroying the ocean's phytoplankton-source of about
half of the planet's oxygen. If the oceans die, so do we.
At the same time, the rise in pollution and population has given us acid
rain, soil erosion, silting of waterways, shrinking grasslands, disappearing
water supplies and wetlands, and the obliteration of thousands of species,
with hundreds more on the endangered list.1
In 1970, on what was called "Environment Day," President Richard
Nixon intoned: "What a strange creature is man that he fouls his own
nest." With that utterance, Nixon was helping to propagate the myth
that the ecological crisis we face is a matter of irrational individual
behavior rather than being of a social magnitude. In truth, the problem
is not individual choice but the system that imposes itself on individuals
and prefigures their choice. Behind the ecological crisis is the reality
of class interest and power.
An ever-expanding capitalism and a fragile, finite ecology are on a calamitous
collision course. It is not true that the ruling politico-economic interests
are in a state of denial about this. Far worse than denial, they are in
a state of utter antagonism toward those who think the planet is more important
than corporate profits. So they defame environmentalists as "eco-terrorists,"
"EPA gestapo," "Earth Day alarmists," "tree huggers,"
and purveyors of "Green hysteria" and "liberal claptrap."
Some environmental activists in this country have been the object of terrorist
assaults conducted by unknown assailants, with the implicit tolerance of
law enforcement authorities.2 Autocrats in countries like Nigeria, in bed
with the polluting oil companies, have waged brutal war upon environmentalists,
going so far as to hang popular leader Ken Saro Wiwa.
In recent years, conservatives within and without Congress, fueled by corporate
lobbyists, have supported measures that would (1) prevent the Environmental
Protection Agency from keeping toxic fill out of lakes and harbors, (2)
eliminate most of the wetland acreage that was to be set aside for a reserve,
(3) completely deregulate the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that
deplete the ozone layer, (4) virtually eliminate clean water and clean air
standards, (5) open the unspoiled Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil
and gas drilling, (6) defund efforts to keep raw sewage out of rivers and
away from beaches, (7) privatize and open national parks to commercial development,
(8) give the remaining ancient forests over to unrestrained logging, and
(9) repeal the Endangered Species Act. In sum, their openly professed intent
has been to eviscerate all our environmental protections, however inadequate
these are.
Conservatives maintain that there is no environmental crisis. Technological
advances will continue to make life better for more and more people..3 One
might wonder why rich and powerful interests take this seemingly suicidal
anti-environmental route. They can destroy welfare, public housing, public
education, public transportation, social security, Medicare, and Medicaid
with impunity, for they and their children will not thereby be deprived,
having more than sufficient means to procure private services for themselves.
But the environment is a different story. Wealthy conservatives and their
corporate lobbyists inhabit the same polluted planet as everyone else, eat
the same chemicalized food, and breathe the same toxified air.
In fact, they do not live exactly as everyone else. They experience a different
class reality, residing in places where the air is somewhat better than
in low and middle income areas. They have access to food that is organically
raised and specially prepared. The nation's toxic dumps and freeways usually
are not situated in or near their swanky neighborhoods. The pesticide sprays
are not poured over their trees and gardens. Clearcutting does not desolate
their ranches, estates, and vacation spots. Even when they or their children
succumb to a dread disease like cancer, they do not link the tragedy to
environmental factors-though scientists now believe that most cancers stem
from human-made causes. They deny there is a larger problem because they
themselves create that problem and owe much of their wealth to it.
But how can they deny the threat of an ecological apocalypse brought on
by ozone depletion, global warming, disappearing top soil, and dying oceans?
Do the dominant elites want to see life on earth, including their own, destroyed?
In the long run they indeed will be victims of their own policies, along
with everyone else. However, like us all, they live not in the long run
but in the here and now. For the ruling interests, what is at stake is something
of more immediate and greater concern than global ecology: it is global
capital accumulation. The fate of the biosphere is an abstraction compared
to the fate of one's own investments.
Furthermore, pollution pays, while ecology costs. Every dollar a company
must spend on environmental protections is one less dollar in earnings.
It is more profitable to treat the environment like a septic tank, pouring
thousands of new harmful chemicals into the atmosphere each year, dumping
raw industrial effluent into the river or bay, turning waterways into open
sewers. The longterm benefit of preserving a river that runs alongside a
community (where the corporate polluters do not live anyway) does not weigh
as heavily as the immediate gain that comes from ecologically costly modes
of production.
Solar, wind, and tidal energy systems could help avert ecological disaster,
but they would bring disaster to the rich oil cartels. Six of the world's
ten top industrial corporations are involved primarily in the production
of oil, gasoline, and motor vehicles. Fossil fuel pollution means billions
in profits. Ecologically sustainable forms of production threaten those
profits.
Immense and imminent gain for oneself is a far more compelling consideration
than a diffuse loss shared by the general public. The cost of turning a
forest into a wasteland weighs little against the profits that come from
harvesting the timber.
This conflict between immediate private gain on the one hand and remote
public benefit on the other operates even at the individual consumer level.
Thus, it is in one's longterm interest not to operate a motor vehicle, which
contributes more to environmental devastation than any other single consumer
item. But we have an immediate need for transportation in order to get to
work, or do whatever else needs doing, so most of us have no choice except
to own and use automobiles.
The "car culture" demonstrates how the ecological crisis is not
primarily an individual matter of man soiling his own nest. In most instances,
the "choice" of using a car is no choice at all. Ecologically
efficient and less costly electric-car mass transportation systems have
been deliberately destroyed since the 1930s in campaigns waged across the
country by the automotive, oil, and tire industries. Corporations involved
in transportation put "America on wheels," in order to maximize
consumption costs for the public and profits for themselves, and to hell
with the environment or anything else.
The enormous interests of giant multinational corporations outweigh doomsayer
predictions about an ecological crisis. Sober business heads refuse to get
caught up in the "hysteria" about the environment, preferring
to quietly augment their fortunes. Besides, there can always be found a
few experts who will go against all the evidence and say that the jury is
still out, that there is no conclusive proof to support the alarmists. Conclusive
proof in this case would come only when we reach the point of no return.
Ecology is profoundly subversive of capitalism. It needs planned, environmentally
sustainable production rather than the rapacious unregulated kind. It requires
economical consumption rather than an artificially stimulated, ever-expanding
consumerism. It calls for natural, low cost energy systems rather than profitable,
high cost, polluting ones. Ecology's implications for capitalism are too
horrendous for the capitalist to contemplate.
Those in the higher circles, who once hired Blackshirts to destroy democracy
out of fear that their class interests were threatened, have no trouble
doing the same against "eco-terrorists." Those who have waged
merciless war against the Reds have no trouble making war against the Greens.
Those who have brought us poverty wages, exploitation, unemployment, homelessness,
urban decay, and other oppressive economic conditions are not too troubled
about bringing us ecological crisis. The plutocrats are more wedded to their
wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate
of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity.4
The struggle over environmentalism is part of the class struggle itself,
a fact that seems to have escaped many environmentalists. The impending
eco-apocalypse is a class act. It has been created by and for the benefit
of the few, at the expense of the many. The trouble is, this time the class
act may take all of us down, once and forever.
Endnotes
1 Putting an end to the population explosion will not of itself save the
ecosphere, but not ending it will add greatly to the dangers the planet
faces. The environment can sustain a quality life for just so many people.
2 To offer one example: the FBI was quick to make arrests when environmentalists
Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were seriously injured by a car bomb in 1990.
They arrested Bari and Cherney, calling them "radical activists,"
charging that the bomb must have belonged to them. Both have long been outspoken
advocates of nonviolence. The charges were eventually dropped for lack of
evidence. (The bomb had been planted under the driver's seat.) The FBI named
no other suspects an d did no real investigation of the attack.
3 A cover story in Forbes (8/14/95) derides the "health scare industry"
and reassures readers that highly chemicalized and fat-ridden junk foods
are perfectly safe for one's health. The magazine's owners and corporate
advertisers are aware that if people begin to question the products offered
by the corporate system, they may end up questioning the system itself.
Not without good cause does Forbes describe itself as "a capitalist
tool."
4 In June 1996, speaking at a U.N. conference in Istanbul, Turkey, Fidel
Castro noted: "Those who have almost destroyed the planet and poisoned
the air, the seas, the rivers and the earth are those who are least interested
in saving humanity."
Copyright © 1996 Vida Communications and Michael Parenti. All rights
reserved.
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism" is published by City Lights
Books, 1997.
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