Soundings a journal of politics and culture |
Several people in this issue (see Mary Mellor in particular) point out
that the environment is regarded as an ‘externality’ in neoclassical
economics. In other words, in market calculations the environment simply
doesn’t figure. This is a prime example of the way markets in capitalism
institutionalise a separation of the economy from all other aspects
of life. This is now an issue about humanity’s collective relationship
to nature. The future of the planet is at stake, and the hidden hand
of the market is not going to make the necessary connections for us
here.
Consumerism also lies at the heart of this issue. Speaking on Radio 4’s
Today programme recently, Julian Little of the Agricultural
Biotechnology Council (a group which represents GM firms) stated that
the first round of the GM battle had been lost partly because its advocates
failed to appeal to consumers (for more on GM see Anthony Jackson and
Nigel Mullan). The second round in the battle for GM is to be based
more on goods which will appeal to the consumer (such as slimming foods
- solve the obesity epidemic with GM foods). Little felt that this would
bring the consumer on board. He may well be right in this. In the individual
consumption of commodities connections are easily hidden or forgotten.
One of the aims of the ecological movement is to remind people about
those connections - where their waste goes, where their oil has come
from, how the chicken in their vindaloo was produced (see Colin Campbell
on oil, Peter Singer and Jim Mason on factory farming).
Over-consumption in the West is powered by unequal global trade (see Juliet
Schor). Cheap fashion in Primark brings huge external costs for the
environment as well as exploitative working conditions for garment-makers.
As Juliet Schor argues, we need a politics that addresses consumerism
as an ideology, and focuses on sustainable consumption. In Soundings
31 Kate Soper argued for the need for a ‘republican’ dimension to
consumption, a way of making a collective politics among consumers.
The link between individual ethics and the politics of consumption is
in need of further exploration. In the recent Compass book The Good
Life, the argument is made that people need to be able to make ethical
consumer decisions as part of a wider group - that the role of politics
here is to enable people to feel that their individual consumer choice
is one that they are also making socially, the collective strength of
many choices being stronger than the individual choice of one person.
In other words the two biggest obstacles to sustainability are companies
that continue to pursue profit oblivious to their impact on the earth,
and people for whom individual consumer choices ultimately also do not
link into the bigger picture. If we don’t take on these key features
of capitalism we are not going to be able to effect the kind of economic
and lifestyle changes that will be necessary to address climate change.
The ecowars of the future will become a fight over dwindling resources
and inhabitable places.
Anyone who thinks voluntary codes and ethics will be enough to control
multinational companies and their allies in government should read the
articles in this issue on DR Congo and East Timor. These are both accounts
of the complex ways in which the West intervenes to secure its interests
in less powerful countries. In public they draw on the commonsense of
the need to intervene in chaotic situations, while in private they stoke
the conflicts and back those who will ensure the flow of goods from
poor to rich. As Bilkis Malek argues in her compelling analysis of dominant
attitudes towards British Muslims, instead of always challenging Muslims
to take wider critical ownership for the defeat of Islamic extremism,
there needs to be a collective taking of responsibility for the cultures
and systems that produce the thinking and actions of those who act in
the name of western civilisation.
To join in the discussion send in your comments to soundings@lwbooks.co.uk