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Capitalism Links – Index Capitalism Links – Index.................................................................................................................1 Link: “Economic Collapse” Discourse............................................................................................2 1.Rhetoric of economic collapse escalates into a crisis where politicians turn to capitalism as an illusionary hope of survival...................................................................................................................................2

Link: “Increases Competition” Discourse ......................................................................................3 2.The focus on competitiveness is founded on the geo-political aspects of capitalism.........................3

Link: Space......................................................................................................................................4 3.The economics of space flight is driven by capitalism......................................................................4

Link: Hegemony .............................................................................................................................5 4.The hegemonic expansion of the United States is rooted in capital and the drive for profits. This imperialist expansion points us on towards “global barbarianism -or worse.”..................................5

Link: Hegemony .............................................................................................................................7 5.Continual hegemonic permeation is inherently a part of the continual spread of capitalism and organizations based off of capital........................................................................................................7

Link: Hegemony............................................................................................................................10 6.The aim of hegemony is to replace whatever is currently in place with capitalism .......................11

Link: Incentives (Generic).............................................................................................................11 7.Incentives sustain capitalism. They are premised on the assumption that markets and capitalism are the best way to save the planet. .............................................................................................................12

Link: Incentives (Alt Energy)........................................................................................................12 8.Government encouragement by way of incentives only increases capitalism’s prevalence in alternative energy................................................................................................................................................13

Link: Incentives (Renewables) .....................................................................................................13 9.Renewable energy makes capitalism WORSE. The plan simply guarantees that we have the fuel to continue destroying the planet. .......................................................................................................................14

Link: Regulations...........................................................................................................................14 10.Reform articulated within capitalism is subverted by capitalism itself.........................................15

Link: Regulations...........................................................................................................................16

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11.The affirmative’s reform serves to maintain our current capitalist lifestyles without engaging in any fundamental change or criticism.......................................................................................................17

Link: Regulations...........................................................................................................................17 12.Working within the capitalist system fails to understand capitalism’s role in environmental destruction. The affirmative’s ecological restructuring’s effect on degradation is nil..........................................18

Link: Regulations...........................................................................................................................18 13.Capitalism views nature as a gift of natural resources, necessitating exploitation. Attempts at environmental reform ignore the need for a new struggle to challenge the capitalist system............19

Link: Regulations...........................................................................................................................19 14.Capitalism thrives on a never-ending quest for growth – environmental reforms and increased efficiency are used to promote ever-more growing consumption.......................................................................20

Link: Regulations...........................................................................................................................21 15.AFF’s attempt to make capitalist corporations environmentally friendly fails – “greening” companies only means a dangerous compromise with capital’s destruction of the environment........................22

Link: “Economic Collapse” Discourse 1. Rhetoric of economic collapse escalates into a crisis where politicians turn to capitalism as an illusionary hope of survival Slavoj Žižek [Senior Researcher, Institute for Social Studies, Ljubljana], “Multiculturalism or the cultural logic of multinational capitalism?” 1997, http://libcom.org/library/multiculturism-or-thecultural-logic-of-multinational-capitalism-zizek (HEG) The Logic of CapitalSo, back to the recent Labour victory, one can see how it not only involved a hegemonic reappropriation of a series of motifs which were usually inscribed into the Conservative field —family values, law and order, individual responsibility; the Labour ideological offensive also separated these motifs from the obscene phantasmatic subtext which sustained them in the Conservative field—in which ‘toughness on crime’ and ‘individual responsibility’ subtly referred to brutal egotism, to the disdain for victims, and other ‘basic instincts’. The problem, however, is that the New Labour strategy involved its own ‘message between the lines’: we fully accept the logic of Capital, we will not mess about with it. Today, financial crisis is a permanent state of things the reference to which legitimizes the demands to cut social spending, health care, support of culture and scientific research, in short, the dismantling of the welfare state. Is, however, this permanent crisis really an objective feature of our socio-economic life? Is it not rather one of the effects of the shift of balance in the ‘class struggle’ towards Capital, resulting from the growing role of new technologies as well as from the direct internationalization of Capital and the co-dependent diminished role of the Nation-State which was further able to impose certain minimal requirements and limitations to exploitation? In other words, the crisis is an ‘objective fact’ if and only if one accepts in advance as an unquestionable premise the inherent logic of Capital—as more and more left-wing or liberal parties have done. We are thus witnessing the uncanny spectacle of social-democratic parties which came to power with the between-

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the-lines message to Capital ‘we will do the necessary job for you in an even more efficient and painless way than the conservatives’. The problem, of course, is that, in today’s global socio-political circumstances, it is practically impossible effectively to call into question the logic of Capital: even a modest social-democratic attempt to redistribute wealth beyond the limit acceptable to the Capital ‘effectively’ leads to economic crisis, inflation, a fall in revenues and so on. Nevertheless, one should always bear in mind how the connection between ‘cause’ (rising social expenditure) and ‘effect’ (economic crisis) is not a direct objective causal one: it is always-already embedded in a situation of social antagonism and struggle. The fact that, if one does not obey the limits set by Capital, a crisis ‘really follows’, in no way ‘proves’ that the necessity of these limits is an objective necessity of economic life. It should rather be conceived as a proof of the privileged position Capital holds in the economic and political struggle, as in the situation where a stronger partner threatens that if you do X, you will be punished by Y, and then, upon your doing X, Y effectively ensues.

Link: “Increases Competition” Discourse 2. The focus on competitiveness is founded on the geo-political aspects of capitalism Timothy W. Luke [Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA], “The (Un)Wise (Ab)Use of Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized Consumerism?” Published by The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) [began as college-level center at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University during 1998 in the College of Arts and Sciences. The CDDC provides one of the world's first university based digital points-of-publication for new forms of scholarly communication, academic research, and cultural analysis], Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, March 18-22, 1997, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF (HEG) Discourses of "geo-economics," as they have been expounded more recently by voices as diverse as Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, or Edward Luttwak, as well as rearticulations of "geo- politics" in an ecological register, as they have been developed by President Bill Clinton or Vice President Al Gore, both express new understandings of the earth's economic and political importance as a site for the orderly maximization of many material resources.6 Geo-economics, for example, often transforms through military metaphors and strategic analogies what hitherto were regarded as purely economic concerns into national security issues of wise resource use and sovereign property rights. Government manipulation of trade policy, state support of major corporations, or public aid for retraining labor all become vital instruments for "the continuation of the ancient rivalry of the nations by new industrial means."7 The

relative success or failure of national economies in head-to-head global competitions typically are taken by geo-economics as the definitive register of any one nation-state's waxing or waning international power as well as its rising or falling industrial competitiveness, technological vitality, and economic prowess. In this context, many believe that ecological considerations can be ignored, or given at best only meaningless symbolic responses, in the quest to mobilize as private property as many of the earth's material resources as possible. This hard-nosed response is the essence of "wise use." In the on-going struggle over economic competitiveness, environmental

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resistance even can be recast by "wise use" advocates as a type of civil disobedience, which endangers national security, expresses unpatriotic sentiments, or embodies treasonous acts. Geo-economics takes hold in the natural resource crises of the 1970s. Arguing, for example, that "whoever controls world resources controls the world in a way that mere occupation of territory cannot match," Barnet in 1979 asked, first, if natural resource scarcities were real and, second, if economic control over natural resources was changing the global balance of power.8 After surveying the struggles to manipulate access to geopowerassets, like oil, minerals, water, and food resources, he did see a new geo-economic challenge as nation-states were being forced to satisfy the rising material expectations of their populations in a much more interdependent world system.9 Ironically, the rhetorical pitch of Reich, Thurow and Luttwak in the geo- economics debate of the 1990s mostly adheres to similar terms of analysis. Partly a response to global economic competition, and partly a response to global ecological scarcities, today's geo- economic reading of the earth's political economy constructs the attainment of national economic growth, security, and prosperity as a zero-sum game. Having more material wealth or economic growth in one place, like the U.S.A., means not having it in other places, namely, rival foreign nations. It also assumes material scarcity is a continual constraint; hence, all resources, everywhere and at any time, are private property whose productive potentials must be subject ultimately to economic exploitation. Geo-economics accepts the prevailing form of mass market consumerism

as it presently exists, defines its many material benefits as the public ends that advanced economies ought to seek, and then affirms the need for hard discipline in elaborate programs of productivism, only now couched within rhetorics of highly politicized national competition, as the means for sustaining mass market consumer lifestyles in advanced nations like the United States. Creating economic growth, and producing more of it than other equally aggressive developed and developing countries, is the sine qua non of "national security" in the 1990s. As Richard Darman, President Bush's chief of OMB declared after Earth Day in 1990, "Americans did not fight and win the wars of the twentieth century to make the world safe for green vegetables."10 However, not everyone sees environmentalism in this age of geo-economics as tantamount to subversion of an entire way of life tied to using increased levels of natural resources to accelerate economic growth.

Link: Space 3. The economics of space flight is driven by capitalism Robert Roy Britt [Senior Science Writer for Space.com], "The Top 3 Reasons to Colonize Space", October 8, 2001, http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/colonize_why_011008-4.html (HEG) But ultimately, many scientists say, finding signs of life on Mars might require human missions. The gargantuan cost of sending people to Mars, however, has prevented any firm plans from taking shape. Meanwhile, many space enthusiasts have given up hope that NASA will get us there. They think the economics of human space flight will be driven by capitalism rather than science. Sid Goldstein thinks any effort to get a Kmart on Mars should also help cure social, environmental and economic woes back home. Yet he worries that if some decisions aren't made quickly to put humans permanently in space, we may never go. "I believe that humans living independently in space will be achievable in 10 to 15 years, but only if we are serious," Goldstein says. And he's got some ideas about how to get serious.

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Link: Hegemony 4. The hegemonic expansion of the United States is rooted in capital and the drive for profits. This imperialist expansion points us on towards “global barbarianism -or worse.” John Bellamy [Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon and Dennis, researcher with the Neoliberal Globalism and Its Challengers Project at the University of Alberta, where he also teaches part-time in the sociology department, Ecology, capitalism, and the socialization of nature], “Naked imperialism”, © copyright 2005 Monthly Review, Volume 57, Number 4, September 2005 (HEG) To be sure, the shift toward a more openly militaristic imperialism occurred only gradually, in stages. For most of the 1990s the U.S. ruling class and national security establishment had waged a debate behind the scenes on what to do now that the Soviet Union's disappearance had left the United States as the sole superpower. Naturally, there was never any doubt about what was to be the main economic thrust of the global empire ruled over by the United States. The 1990s saw the strengthening of neoliberal globalization: the removal of barriers to capital throughout the world in ways that directly enhanced the power of the rich capitalist countries of the center of the world economy vis-í -vis the poor countries of the periphery. A key development was the introduction of the World Trade Organization to accompany the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as organizations enforcing the monopoly capitalist rules of the game. From the standpoint of most of the world, a more exploitative economic imperialism had raised its ugly head. Yet for the powers

that be at the center of the world economy neoliberal globalization was regarded as a resounding success -notwithstanding signs of global financial instability as revealed by the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98. U.S. ruling circles continued to debate, however, the manner and extent to which the United States should push its ultimate advantage -using

its vast military power as a means of promoting U.S. global supremacy in the new "unipolar" world. If neoliberalism had arisen in response to economic stagnation, transferring the costs of economic crisis to the world's poor, the problem of declining U.S. economic hegemony seemed to require an altogether different response: the reassertion of U.S. power as military colossus of the world system. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union the Defense Department under the administration of George H.W. Bush initiated a reconsideration of U.S. national security policy in light of the changing global situation. The report, completed in March

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1992 and known as the Defense Planning Guidance, was written under the supervision of Paul Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of policy in the Defense Department. It indicated that the chief national-security goal of the United States must be one of "precluding the emergence of any potential global competitor" (New York Times, March 8, 1992). The ensuing debate within the U.S. establishment over the 1990s focused less on whether the United States was to seek global primacy than whether it should adopt a more multilateral ("sheriff and posse," as Richard Haass dubbed it) or unilateral approach. Some of the dominant actors in what was to become the administration of George W. Bush, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, were to organize the Project for the New American Century, which in anticipation of Bush winning the White House, issued, at then vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney's request, a foreign policy paper, entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses (September 2000), reaffirming the unilateral and nakedly aggressive strategy of the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992. Following September 11, 2001, this approach became official U.S. policy in The National Security Strategy of the United States of 2002. The beating of the war drums for an invasion of Iraq coincided

with the release of this new declaration on national security -effectively a declaration of a new world war. It is common, as we have noted, for critics to attribute these dramatic changes simply to the seizure of the political and military command centers of the U.S. state by a neoconservative cabal (brought into power by the disputed 2000 election), which, when combined with the added opportunity provided by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to a global imperial offensive and a new militarism. Yet, the expansion of American empire, in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise was, as the foregoing argument has demonstrated, already well advanced at that time and had been a bipartisan project from the start. Under the Clinton administration the United States waged war in the Balkans, formerly part of the Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe, while also initiating the process of establishing U.S. military bases in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union itself. Iraq in the late 1990s was being bombed by the United States on a

[EVIDENCE CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE] [EVIDENCE CONTINUES UNABRIDGED] daily basis. When John Kerry as the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2004 election insisted that he would prosecute the war on Iraq and the war on terrorism if anything with greater determination and military resources -and that he differed only on the degree to which the United States adopted a lone vigilante as opposed to a sheriff and posse stance -he was merely continuing what had been the Democratic stance on empire throughout the 1990s and beyond: an all but naked imperialism. From the longer view offered by a historical-materialist critique of capitalism, the direction

that would be taken by U.S. imperialism following the fall of the Soviet Union was never in doubt. Capitalism by its very logic is a globally expansive system. The contradiction between its transnational economic aspirations and the fact that politically it remains rooted in particular nation states is insurmountable for the system. Yet, ill-fated attempts by individual states to overcome this contradiction are just as much a part of its fundamental logic. In present world circumstances, when one capitalist state has a virtual monopoly of the means of destruction, the temptation for that state to attempt to seize full-spectrum dominance and to transform itself into the de facto global state governing the world economy is irresistible. As the noted Marxian philosopher István Mészáros observed in Socialism or Barbarism? (2001) -written, significantly, before George W. Bush became president: "[W]hat is at stake today is not the control of a particular part of the planet -no matter how large -putting at a disadvantage but still tolerating the independent actions of some rivals, but the control of its totality by one hegemonic economic and military superpower, with all means -even the most extreme authoritarian and, if needed, violent military ones -at its disposal." The unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are revealed in the twin cataclysms to which the world is heading at present: nuclear proliferation and hence increased chances of the outbreak of nuclear war, and planetary ecological destruction. These are symbolized by the Bush administration's refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) Robert McNamara stated in an article entitled "Apocalypse Soon" in the May–June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy: "The United States has never endorsed the policy of ‘no first use,' not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weapons -by the decision of one person, the president -against either a nuclear or nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so." The nation with the greatest conventional military force and the willingness to use it unilaterally to enlarge its global power is also the nation with the greatest nuclear force and the readiness to use it whenever it sees fit -setting the whole world on edge. The nation that contributes more to carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming than any other (representing approximately a quarter of the world's total) has become the greatest obstacle to

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addressing global warming and the world's growing environmental problems -raising the possibility of the collapse of civilization itself if present trends continue. The United States is seeking to exercise sovereign authority over

the planet during a time of widening global crisis: economic stagnation, increasing polarization between the global rich and the global poor, weakening U.S. economic hegemony, growing nuclear threats, and deepening ecological decline. The result is a heightening of international instability. Other potential forces are emerging in the world, such as the European Community and China, that could eventually challenge U.S. power, regionally and even globally. Third world revolutions, far from ceasing, are beginning to gain momentum again, symbolized by Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution under Hugo Chávez. U.S. attempts to tighten its imperial grip on the Middle East and its oil have had to cope with a fierce, seemingly unstoppable, Iraqi resistance, generating conditions of imperial overstretch.

With the United States brandishing its nuclear arsenal and refusing to support international agreements on the control of such weapons, nuclear proliferation is continuing. New nations, such as North Korea, are entering or can be expected soon to enter the "nuclear club." Terrorist blowback from imperialist wars in the third world is now a well-recognized reality, generating rising fear of further terrorist attacks in New York, London, and elsewhere. Such vast and overlapping historical contradictions, rooted in the combined and uneven development of the global capitalist economy along with the U.S. drive for planetary domination, foreshadow what is potentially the most dangerous period in the history of imperialism. The course on which U.S and world capitalism is now headed points to global barbarism -or worse. Yet it is important to remember that nothing in the development of human history is inevitable. There still remains an alternative path -the global struggle for a humane, egalitarian, democratic, and sustainable society. The classic name for such a society is "socialism." Such a renewed struggle for a world of substantive human equality must begin by addressing the system's weakest link and at the same time the world's most pressing needs -by organizing a global resistance movement against the new naked imperialism.

Link: Hegemony 5. Continual hegemonic permeation is inherently a part of the continual spread of capitalism and organizations based off of capital Alex Callinicos [Trotskyist political theorist, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, and is Director of the Centre for European Studies at King's College London, BA and D. Phil from the University of Oxford, former Professor of Politics at the University of York], Publisher: Polity, ISBN-10: 0745629040, ISBN-13: 978-0745629049, April 11, 2003 (HEG)

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6. The aim of hegemony is to replace whatever is currently in place with capitalism Niall Ferguson [Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School, Resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University], “The unconscious colossus: limits of (& alternatives to) American empire.” Published in Daedalus [official journal of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (an international learned society whose Fellows are among the nation's most prominent thinkers in the arts, sciences, and the humanities, as well as the full range of professions and public life)], Vol. 134, March 22, 2005 To the majority of Americans, it would appear, there is no contradiction between the ends of global democratization and the means of American military power. As defined by their president, the democratizing mission of the United States is both altruistic and distinct from the ambitions of past empires, which (so it is generally assumed) aimed to impose their own rule on foreign peoples. The difficulty is that President Bush's ideal of freedom as a universal desideratum rather closely resembles the Victorian ideal of civilization. Freedom means, on close inspection, the American model of democracy and capitalism; when Americans speak of nation building, they actually mean state replicating, in the sense that they want to build political and economic institutions that are fundamentally similar to their own. (12) They may not aspire to rule; but they do aspire to have others rule themselves in the American way. Yet the very act of imposing freedom simultaneously subverts it. Just as the Victorians seemed hypocrites when they spread civilization with the Maxim gun, so there is something fishy about those who would democratize Fallujah with the Abrams tank. President Bush's distinction between conquest and liberation would have been entirely familiar to the liberal imperialists of the early 1900s, who likewise saw Britain's farflung legions as agents of emancipation (not least in the Middle East during and after World War I). Equally familiar to that earlier generation would have been the impatience of American officials to hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi government sooner rather than later. Indirect rule--which installed nominally independent native rulers while leaving British civilian administrators and military forces in practical control of financial matters and military security--was the preferred model for British colonial expansion in many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Iraq itself was an example of indirect rule after the Hashemite dynasty was established there in the 1920s.

Link: Incentives (Generic)

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7. Incentives sustain capitalism. They are premised on the assumption that markets and capitalism are the best way to save the planet. Stan Cox [full-time crop geneticist and part-time writer in Salina, Kansas. His op-ed columns and other articles have appeared in The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, AlterNet.org, and Counterpunch.org], “Can capitalism be harnessed to solve environmental problems, or is capitalism itself the problem?” APR 23, 2004, http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/04/23/cox-economy (HEG) Hawken says that public policy and technology can push each other in the right direction: "For example, running cars on hydrogen is about five times the expense as gasoline. But if the car gets five times the efficiency per BTU, then there is no real cost difference. If you go to factor 10, then society is actually saving money by converting to hydrogen as a primary fuel source for transport. And we can begin to draw down [carbon dioxide] levels." Kovel counters that Hawken's ecologically enlightened capitalists would be as powerless as the more traditional of their breed to control the system's destructiveness, no matter what incentives they're given. Every year, he points out, larger quantities of wealth roam the planet in search of profitable investments. In his book, Kovel uses the image of a universal force field to describe private capital's penchant for spawning destructive growth. If "force field" sounds a bit too scifi, think of capital in terms of the "gopher game" at the arcade: No matter how many gophers you send back into their holes with a whack on the head, more will pop out of other holes. John Bellamy Foster is associate professor at the University of Oregon, coeditor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review, and author of Ecology Against Capitalism and Marx's Ecology. He maintains that any mix of subsidies, taxation, regulation, and efficiency sufficient to harness private capital for ecological ends would find itself in constant conflict with the capitalist economy's primary goal: growth. In discussing global warming -- the one ecological crisis that looms above all others -- Foster says, "Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by automobiles cannot be reduced to an acceptable level unless values other than money are brought decisively to the fore." In America, he says, the sheer economic bulk of automobile production, road and bridge construction, tourism, shipping of goods, and the suburban-commuter lifestyle means that only a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the economy can cut emissions to an acceptable level. For example, we aren't seeing a wholesale conversion to energyefficient mass transit simply because it could never generate as much wealth for the capitalist class as does the personal automobile. Foster's point is illustrated by an anecdote in Keith Bradsher's recent book High and Mighty: SUVs, the World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way. A promise by the Ford Motor Company back in 2000 to reduce the CO2 emissions and improve the gas mileage of its SUVs by 25 percent within five years caused agony among other automakers. They liked their SUVs the way they were -- cheap to make and profitable to sell -- and had no desire to compete in the environmental arena. Their fears vanished when a scandal over the high rollover rate of Explorer SUVs riding on Firestone tires sapped Ford's resources and attention and helped derail its plan for big, "green" vehicles. But at the height of Ford's environmental enthusiasm, one top executive repeatedly pointed out that improving the fuel efficiency of their SUVs would generate waves of good press that, in turn, would easily repay the company's efforts with increased sales. So, had the strategy succeeded, it might actually have increased overall emissions by putting more SUVs on the road.

Link: Incentives (Alt Energy)

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8. Government encouragement by way of incentives only increases capitalism’s prevalence in alternative energy. Matthew Yi [Capitol Bureau Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle], San Francisco Chronicle, Page C – 1, “Alternative energy lighting it up: Big venture capitalists pony up in sizzling market that may get boost from Prop. 87”, November 4, 2006, http://www.sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/c/a/2006/11/04/BUG07M5S481.DTL (HEG) In the heart of Silicon Valley, David Pearce's startup Miasole is in a mad dash to figure out a more costeffective way to manufacture solar cells. So far, he's been getting help from big investors including venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, whose portfolio of success stories includes Google and Sun Microsystems. But fledgling Silicon Valley firms like Miasole that are trying to make breakthroughs in producing energy from alternative sources like the sun, corn or even bio-waste, may end up finding a bigger boost if California voters approve Proposition 87 on Tuesday. The statewide ballot initiative seeks to raise $4 billion by taxing oil production in California and using the funds for research and development, production and distribution of alternative fuels. The ultimate goal is to slash California's petroleum consumption by 25 percent by 2017. Companies like Miasole won't be the only potential beneficiary if the measure passes. The new public money would continue to fuel what has been a surprising increase in venture capital investments in companies that are looking for commercially viable alternative fuels and energy. The trend is causing some industry and financial analysts to liken venture capital flowing into "clean tech" to the Internet bubble. "We've had eight consecutive quarters of significant growth in clean tech (venture capital) funding," said John Balbach, senior consultant for Cleantech Venture Network LLC, which tracks investment dollars in that area. In the second quarter of this year, $843 million was poured into clean tech, a 64 percent increase from the first quarter and 129 percent increase from the same period last year, he said. The Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young, which has a more focused "alternative energy production" category, also has seen a significant uptick in venture capital activity in that group: 31 deals worth a total of $380 million in the first nine months of this year. In all of 2005, there were 18 investments worth a total of $178 million. "There are some who believe there is a bubble sense to it ... but we think this is the beginnings of a long-term trend," Balbach said. "We believe this is one of the biggest economic drivers of the 21st century."

Link: Incentives (Renewables)

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9. Renewable energy makes capitalism WORSE. The plan simply guarantees that we have the fuel to continue destroying the planet. Ted Trainer [Senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW, Australia], “Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society”, Page 125, CHAPTER 10: THE WIDER CONTEXT: OUR SUSTAINABILITY AND JUSTICE PREDICAMENT, Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (September 26, 2007), ISBN-10: 140205548X, ISBN-13: 978-1402055485, italics in original (HEG) It is now necessary to widen the context of this discussion. Energy is only one of several gigantic problems that consumer–capitalist society is rapidly running into. For some forty years a large “limits to growth” literature has been accumulating, documenting the grossly unsustainable and unjust nature of this society. The core “limits to growth” claim is that the huge global problems we are facing cannot be solved in a society that is driven by obsession with high rates of produc- tion and consumption, affluent living standards, market forces, the profit motive and economic growth. The resource demand generated by this society is the direct cause of ecological destruction, Third World poverty, resource depletion, conflict and social breakdown. These problems cannot be solved unless we move to simpler lifestyles, more self-sufficient and cooperative ways, and a very different economy. Chapter 11 will detail what many see as “The Simpler Way.” Again energy depletion is only one of the alarming problems we are running into, and our limits to growth predicament would still exist even if renewable energy sources could provide all the energy we need. Indeed the more energy we get our hands on, the more enthusiastically we will dig up minerals, log forests, mine the sea floors, dam rivers, develop cities, clear land, travel, and buy. There are two major faults built into our society causing the main problems facing the planet. The first is the obsession with affluent living standards and economic growth, i.e., the insistence on high and ever-increasing levels of production and con- sumption. The second fault is allowing competition within the market to be the major determinant of what is done in our society.

Link: Regulations

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10. Reform articulated within capitalism is subverted by capitalism itself Slavoj Zizek [professor of philosophy at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana], “REPEATING LENIN”, 2001, http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm, (HEG) However, the outcome of this crisis of the private property of the means of production is by no means guaranteed - it is HERE that one should take into account the ultimate paradox of the Stalinist society: against the capitalism which is the class society, but in principle egalitarian, without direct hierarchical divisions, the "mature" Stalinism is a classless society articulated in precisely defined hierarchical groups (top nomenklatura, technical intelligence, army...). What this means is that, already for Stalinism, the classic Marxist notion of the class struggle is no longer adequate to describe its hierarchy and domination: in the Soviet Union from the late 20s onwards, the key social division was not defined by property, but by the direct access to power mechanisms and to the privileged material and cultural conditions of life (food, accommodation, healthcare, freedom of travel, education). And, perhaps, the ultimate irony of history will be that, in the same way Lenin's vision of the "central bank Socialism" can be properly read only retroactively, from today's World Wide Web, the Soviet Union provided the first model of the developed "post-property" society, of the true "late capitalism" in which the ruling class will be defined by the direct access to the (informational, administrative) means of social power and control and to other material and social privileges: the point will no longer be to own companies, but directly to run them, to have the right to use a private jet, to have access to top health care, etc. privileges which will be acquired not by property, but by other (educational, managerial, etc.) mechanisms. Today, we already can discern the signs of a kind of general unease - recall the series of events usually listed under the name of "Seattle." The 10 years honeymoon of the triumphant global capitalism is over, the long-overdue "seven years itch" is here - witness the panicky reactions of the big media, which - from the Time magazine to CNN - all of a sudden started to warn about the Marxists manipulating the crowd of the "honest" protesters. The problem is now the strictly Leninist one - how to ACTUALIZE the media's accusations: how to invent the organizational structure which will confer on this unrest the FORM of the universal political demand. Otherwise, the momentum will be lost, and what will remain is the marginal disturbance, perhaps organized as a new Greenpeace, with certain efficiency, but also strictly limited goals, marketing strategy, etc. In other words, the key "Leninist" lesson today is: politics without the organizational FORM of the party is politics without politics, so the answer to those who want just the (quite adequately named) "New SOCIAL Movements" is the same as the answer of the Jacobins to the Girondin compromisers: "You want revolution without a revolution!" Today's blockade is that there are two ways open for the socio-political engagement: either play the game of the system, engage in the "long march through the institutions," or get active in new social movements, from feminism through ecology to anti-racism. And, again, the limit of these movements is that they are not POLITICAL in the sense of the Universal Singular: they are "one issue movements" which lack the dimension of the universality, i.e. they do not relate to the social TOTALITY. Here, Lenin's reproach to liberals is crucial: they only EXPLOIT the working classes' discontent to strengthen their position vis-a-vis the conservatives, instead of identifying with it to the end.52 Is this also not the case with today's Left liberals? They like to evoke racism, ecology, workers' grievances, etc., to score points over the conservatives WITHOUT ENDANGERING THE SYSTEM. Recall how, in Seattle, Bill [EVIDENCE CONTINUES BELOW] [EVIDENCE CONTINUES UNABRIDGED]

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Clinton himself deftly referred to the protesters on the streets outside, reminding the gathered leaders inside the guarded palaces that they should listen to the message of the demonstrators (the message which, of course, Clinton interpreted, depriving it of its subversive sting attributed to the dangerous extremists introducing chaos and violence into the majority of peaceful protesters). It's the same with all New Social Movements, up to the Zapatistas in Chiapas: the systemic politics is always ready to "listen to their demands," depriving them of their proper political sting. The system is by definition ecumenical, open, tolerant, ready to "listen" to all - even if one insist on one's demands, they are deprived of their universal political sting by the very form of negotiation. The true Third Way we have to look for is this third way between the institutionalized parliamentary politics and the new social movements. The ultimate answer to the reproach that the radical Left proposals are utopian should thus be that, today, the true utopia is the belief that the present liberal-democratic capitalist consensus could go on indefinitely, without radical changes. We are thus back at the old '68 motto "Soyons realistes, demandons l'impossible!": in order to be truly a "realist," one must consider breaking out of the constraints of what appears "possible" (or, as we usually out it, "feasible").

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11. The affirmative’s reform serves to maintain our current capitalist lifestyles without engaging in any fundamental change or criticism John Bellamy [Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon and Dennis, researcher with the Neoliberal Globalism and Its Challengers Project at the University of Alberta, where he also teaches part-time in the sociology department, Ecology, capitalism, and the socialization of nature] “The Ecology of Destruction”, © copyright 2007 Monthly Review, February 2007, Volume 58, Number 8, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0207jbf.htm, brackets not in original (HEG) Most climate scientists, including Lovelock and Hansen, follow the IPCC in basing their main projections of global warming on a socioecnomic scenario described as “business as usual.” The dire trends indicated are predicated on our fundamental economic and technological developments and our basic relation to nature remaining the same. The question we need to ask then is what actually is business as usual? What can be changed and how fast? With time running out the implication is that it is necessary to alter business as usual in radical ways in order to stave off or lessen catastrophe. Yet, the dominant solutions—those associated with the dominant ideology, i.e., the ideology of the dominant class—emphasize minimal changes in business as usual that will somehow get us off the hook. After being directed to the growing planetary threats of global warming and species extinction we are told that the answer is better gas mileage and better emissions standards, the introduction of hydrogen-powered cars, the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere, improved conservation, and voluntary cutbacks in consumption. Environmental political scientists specialize in the construction of new environmental policy regimes, embodying state and market regulations. Environmental economists talk of tradable pollution permits and the incorporation of all environmental factors into the market to ensure their efficient use. Some environmental sociologists (my own field) speak of ecological modernization: a whole panoply of green taxes, green regulations, and new green technologies, even the greening of capitalism itself. Futurists describe a new technological world in which the weight of nations on the earth is miraculously lifted as a result of digital “dematerialization” of the economy. In all of these views, however, there is one constant: the fundamental character of business as usual is hardly changed at all. Indeed, what all such analyses intentionally avoid is the fact that business as usual in our society in any fundamental sense means the capitalist economy—an economy run on the logic of profit and accumulation. Moreover, there is little acknowledgement or even appreciation of the fact that the Hobbesian war of all against all that characterizes capitalism requires for its fulfillment a universal war on nature. In this sense new technology cannot solve the problem since it is inevitably used to further the class war and to increase the scale of the economy, and thus the degradation of the environment. Whenever production dies down or social resistance imposes barriers on the expansion of capital the answer is always to find new ways to exploit/degrade nature more intensively. To quote Pontecorvo’s Burn!, “that is the logic of profit....One builds to make money and to go on making it or to make more sometimes it is necessary to destroy.”

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12. Working within the capitalist system fails to understand capitalism’s role in environmental destruction. The affirmative’s ecological restructuring’s effect on degradation is nil. George Liodakis [Professor of Social Science at Technical University of Crete], “The people-nature relation and the historical significance of the Labour Theory of Value, Capital and Class”, Spring 2001, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3780/is_200104/ai_n8940388 (HEG) The overall attempt to respond to the exacerbated ecological crisis, from the side of capital, entails extensive recycling, economising on natural resources, the development of new materials and nonpolluting technologies, and an overall restructuring towards a `green capitalism'. This restructuring of capital encompasses `eco-regulation', which mainly consists of an attempt to formulate `ecologically adjusted prices'. These attempts and regulations, however, are usually proved ineffective insofar as they operate within the system's logic, focus narrowly on the sphere of market exchange, and fail to understand that all relevant phenomena (competition, externalities, etc.) are deeply embedded in capitalist production itself. They also face great difficulties in internalising production cost, enhanced by the competitive contradiction of capital and the contradictory character of state regulation (see Liodakis, 2000). As Marx has stressed, '[a] 11 thought of a common, allembracing and farsighted control' of the production and consumption of raw materials under capitalism is no more than a `pious wish', flatly `irreconcilable with the laws of capitalist production' (1967 III: 118-20). It should be noted though, that capitalism's only

absolute limit is extinction of the human race (i.e., of exploitable labour power), and that the restructuring of capitalism can potentially ameliorate or postpone the crisis, ensuring thus, for a certain time span, the reproduction of the system (see Goodman and Redclift, 1991: 254). Given the law of conservation of matter and energy, however, there are more proximate, both quantitative and qualitative, limits which put the sustainability of capitalism under question (see J. O'Connor, 1988; Benton, 1989; M. O'Connor, 1994; Foster, 1995b, 1997). All attempts at ecological restructuring

basically concern the restructuring of property relations, through the market, the rearrangement of competitive conditions, and the rationalisation of capitalist accumulation, without essentially affecting the impact of capitalist rationality and private property on nature. The key thing for capitalism, however, is not the juridical form of private property, but rather the social separation of labour power from natural conditions and the use of the latter as conditions of capital accumulation. Independently of any restructuring of capital and property relations, or of

any

limited attempt at a valuation of nature, as long as the property of capital as a whole on nature is maintained, the squandering of nature and environmental destruction cannot be prevented. In other words, it is impossible to ensure the sustainability of capitalism and, within its limits, an essential reconciliation of people with nature. On the contrary, the currently proposed further commoditisation of nature and privatisation of natural resources (see Dasgupta, 1990; Chichilnisky, 1994), will most likely lead to an aggravation of the problem (see Liodakis, 1995,2000). Capitalist restructuring implies a certain modification of the law of value and not a qualitative conversion or a radical upsetting of the law itself. This modification derives specifically from the increasing internationalisation of production, the changes in state regulation, the increasing externalities and the ecological restructuring towards internalising these externalities, as well as from the continuous concentration of capital, which implies a greater divergence of prices from commodity values in branches with a pronounced monopolistic character. In other words, this modification concerns the specific manner in which the law of value operates under contemporary conditions. Insofar as natural resources are taken as a `free gift of nature , competition leads to a permanent tendency to increase constant capital, as a crystallisation of alienated labour and natural resources through the labour process, and consequently to a rising organic composition of capital. This tendency, which also serves the needs of capital in increasing the productive power of labour and disciplining it in the context of the production process, creates a crisis-generating pressure through the falling tendency of the rate of profit. This pressure tends toward an increasing externalisation of production cost and, combined with an over-utilisation of natural resources, leads to destructive consequences for the environment. Quantitative changes will be permanently converted into qualitative changes resulting in a degradation of the environment. On the other hand, the qualitative changes deriving from the real subsumption and capitalisation of nature (see M. O'Connor, 1993; 1994), the increasing socialisation (interdependence) of production on a global level and the competitive race for the increase of relative surplus value, will render further quantitative changes necessary, taking the form of technological modernisation and of an increase in the organic composition of capital, and thus reinforcing the above mentioned tendency. The overaccumulation crisis of capital tends, as the crisis unfolding since the mid '70s shows, to a serious environmental degradation, following a dialectical process from the part to the whole, the latter being the global economy and the planetary ecosystem.

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13. Capitalism views nature as a gift of natural resources, necessitating exploitation. Attempts at environmental reform ignore the need for a new struggle to challenge the capitalist system. George Liodakis [Professor of Social Science at Technical University of Crete], “The people-nature relation and the historical significance of the Labour Theory of Value, Capital and Class”, Spring 2001, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3780/is_200104/ai_n8940388 (HEG) If our interpretation of Marx's labour theory of value is correct, it becomes clear that an ecological revision or correction of this theory, contrary to what is often argued, is not necessary, at least in its specific historical context. As I have shown, the problem is not the Marxian approach to value and the people-nature relation, but the character of capitalism, which on the one hand, considering the natural forces as 'a gift to capital, leads to the squandering of natural resources and the degradation of the environment, while value, on the other hand, as the historically specific and dominant reflection of economic calculation in capitalism, is objectively determined by the quantity of necessary 'abstract' labour, disregarding the substantial contribution of nature in production. it has also been shown that the abolition of private property in the means of production and of the law of value in communism implies a dialectical reconciliation of people with nature at a higher level. As economic scarcity cannot be totally eliminated, the ecological compatibility of communism requires, apart from the necessary minimisation of labour-time, an independent accounting for natural resources. Environmental degradation has often been attributed, in the context of the current environmentalism, to the character of technology and of the dominant ethical values. A plea is also made for an alternative (ecological) technology and new ecological ethics. This approach, however, captures only part of the reality and indeed only the surface of phenomena, while in fact neither technology nor ethics can be considered independent from the dominant capitalist relations of production. On the other hand, if the experience of environmental destruction should stimulate further development of Marxist theory, this should be in the direction of a more specific qualitative and class analysis of the productive forces, of science and technology. As accumulated experience shows, the character of these factors is not necessarily emancipatory, and their quantitative growth alone will not automatically lead to the communistic `realm of freedom'. What is more specifically required, from within the contemporary capitalist context, is a conscious struggle for their reorientation, aiming at the meeting of social needs and the protection of the environment, and grounded on a logic tending to supersede the narrow class rationality of capitalist production. There is here, therefore, a great field for collaboration, mutual interaction and common struggle between Marxism and the ecological movement (see also M. O'Connor, 1994; Foster, 1995a; Kovel, 1995; Burkett, 1996a). Although the reconciliation of people with their natural environment constitutes a major strategic political issue, implying the supersession of the capitalist relations of production, the interaction of Marxism, as a science and movement for social emancipation, with the ecological movement constitutes an urgent task, which should aim at the gradual change of the terms of production and of the character of the productive forces, of science and technology. With today's social and environmental data, the movement for the protection of the environment is particularly expedient and must necessarily become a component of the broader struggle of the working class for its full emancipation and complete liberation.

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14. Capitalism thrives on a never-ending quest for growth – environmental reforms and increased efficiency are used to promote ever-more growing consumption. Terry Townsend, Published by SocialistResistance [Members of Socialist Resistance want to help build a class struggle party that fights for the interests of working class people and that supports workers when they are involved in struggles. It also has to be a party that is opposed to imperialist wars and capitalism], “Individual Versus Social Solutions to Global Warming”, April 17, 2008, http://socialistresistance.org/?p=72 (HEG) Mass movement needed We have to convince millions of people and build a mass movement for emission-reductions that genuinely address the real problem. For Australia, that’s at least 90% by 2030 — not Labor’s anaemic 60% by 2050. A movement that demands that governments impose far-reaching measures that force giant industrial polluters to rapidly and massively slash their emissions, at the risk of massive fines. And if they refuse, they should be nationalized and run in the interests of the workers and consumers. All public subsidies and tax concessions for the giant fossil fuel industries and resource corporations — which amount to billions — should be redirected to research the development of publicly owned renewable energy sources. We could help ordinary people implement individual actions, by supplying free or at a massive subsidy to all households solar waters heaters and water tanks. There should be a massive reorganization of society to move away from private-car-based transportation to free and frequent mass public transport, and, redesign our cities to put people’s homes close to work and shops. We need to think about ways of linking these wider demands with our more immediate campaigns, for example as we fight to stop the Tasmanian pulp mill, oppose power privatization, end coal and uranium mining, and to stop the building of new freeways and toll roads, we have to also convince people that the workings of capitalism itself is both responsible for the crisis and also the main obstacle to its solution. The real source of the problem Through struggles for immediate and broader demands, masses of people can come to understand that the source of the problem lies with capitalism itself. The scientific analysis of capitalism first made by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, illustrates how, despite the assertions of many environmental movement theorists over the years, Marxism not only provides essential insights into the fundamental cause of the environmental crisis ,but also offers a political guide to its solution. Capitalism’s fundamentally anti-ecological trait is captured by Marx’s analysis of the working of capitalism. Capitalists buy or produce commodities only in order to sell them for a profit, and then buy or produce yet more to sell more again. There is no end to the process. Competition between capitalists ensures that each one must continue to increase their production of commodities and continue to expand in order to survive. Production tends to expand exponentially until interrupted by crises (depressions and wars) and it is this dynamic at the very core of capitalism that places enormous, unsustainable pressure on the environment. Capitalism is a system that pursues growth for its own sake, whatever the consequences. This is why all schemes based on the hope of a nogrowth, slow-growth or a sustainable-growth forms of capitalism are pipe dreams. As too are strategies based on a critical mass of individual consumers deciding to go “green” in order to reform the system. People are not “consumers” by nature. A multi-billion-dollar capitalist industry called advertising constantly plays with our minds to convince us that happiness comes only through buying more and more “stuff,” to keep up with endless wasteful fads, fashions, upgrades, new models and built-in [EVIDENCE CONTINUES BELOW] [EVIDENCE CONTINUES UNABRIDGED]

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obsolescence. The desire for destructive and/or pointless goods is manufactured along with them. In 2008, an estimated $750 billion will be spent on corporate advertising and public relations in the US alone. In Australia, such spending is now well in excess of $12 billion a year. Many in the environmental movement argue that with the right mix of taxes, incentives and regulations, everybody could be winners. Big business would have cheaper, more efficient production techniques, and therefore be more profitable, and consumers would have more environment-friendly products and energy sources. In a rational society, such innovations would lower the overall environmental impact of production. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational society. Any energy and money savings made through efficiency are used to make and sell more commodities, cheaper than their competitors. Capitalism approaches technology — in the production process or in the final product — in the same way as it does everything else. What will generate the most profits? Whether it is efficient, clean, safe, environmentally benign or rational has little to do with it. The technologies that could tackle global warming have long existed. Even though research into them has been massively underfunded, renewable energy sources are today competitive with coal and nuclear power (if the negative social and environmental costs are factored in). Public transport systems have been around since the late 1800s. Fundamental to capitalism’s development has been its power to shift the cost of its ecological and social vandalism onto society as whole. More profits can accrue if the big capitalists don’t have to bother themselves with the elimination, neutralization or recycling of industrial wastes. It’s much cheaper to pour toxic waste into the air or the nearest river. Rather than pay for the real costs of production, society as a whole subsidizes corporate profit-making by cleaning up some of the mess or suffering the environmental and/or health costs. Or the whole messy business can simply be exported to the Third World. It is becoming abundantly clear that the Earth cannot sustain this system’s plundering and poisoning without the humanity sooner or later experiencing a complete ecological catastrophe. To have any chance of preventing this, within the 10- to 30-year window that we have in relation to global warming, humanity must take conscious, rational control of its interactions with the planet and its ecological processes, in ways that capitalism is inherently incapable of doing.

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15. AFF’s attempt to make capitalist corporations environmentally friendly fails – “greening” companies only means a dangerous compromise with capital’s destruction of the environment Dennis Soron interviewing John Bellamy [Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon and Dennis, researcher with the Neoliberal Globalism and Its Challengers Project at the University of Alberta, where he also teaches part-time in the sociology department, Ecology, capitalism, and the socialization of nature], "Ecology, capitalism, and the socialization of nature", Pages 1-2, November 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_6_56/ai_n8704499/pg_2/?tag=content;col1 (HEG) DS: In light of this kind of political inertia, do environmental groups need to reassess their current strategies for promoting change? JBF: I think so. As you know, I've recently been quite critical of the strategies adopted by some groups. Take the example of the International Forum on Globalization and other similar organizations, which are very good and very progressive in many respects. In some of their recent reports, however, their main policy prescription is to "green" the World Bank, the WTO, and so on--that is, to somehow make these institutions "greener" and more environmentally friendly. I think that this approach is completely ludicrous. These institutions are controlled primarily by capital, and their basic nature is not going to change. They are merely instruments of other powerful forces that need to be addressed. The whole purpose of the WTO, for instance, is to expand global capital accumulation, primarily to the benefit of the richest countries, by removing barriers to the international mobility of capital, eliminating state subsidies and regulations, and basically applying neoliberal prescriptions everywhere. To this extent, there is no way that it can be "greened" in some way or turned into an environmental organization. To move forward, we need to be not only a lot more organized, but more realistic about the forces we're up against, and more willing to address the larger economic issues at the heart of today's environmental crisis. Most of all, the environmental movement needs to stop believing that simply talking to elite groups will somehow lead to a compromise that will save the environment. For the powers that be, the primary goal of "sustainable development" has come to be that of sustaining development--that is, sustaining economic development in the rich countries and sustaining the process of capital accumulation. There is no basis for a compromise with that kind of institutional reality. Ecology Against Capitalism DS: Unlike some fellow radical ecologists, who have tended to portray "modernity" or "industrialism" as the primary causes of environmental destruction, you've made a strong argument for the need to anchor ecological theory and practice in a systemic critique of capitalism. Could you elaborate on this point? JBF: First of all, it is a simple and unavoidable fact that capitalism is the actual social system in which we live, and that our primary way of designating and understanding that system is to see it as capitalist. For a very long time now, social scientists from different disciplines and from across the political spectrum have agreed on this and have shared a basic understanding of how the system works. In progressive circles, of course, people continue to debate about whether they should "name the system" or not, because sometimes it seems too radical or too grandiose to claim that capitalism itself is to blame for the problems we face. In contrast, the establishment shows no such reluctance to "name" capitalism. Fortune magazine and Business Week explicitly praise the virtues of capitalism all the time. Whatever approach one adopts, however, there is still very little doubt about what our social system actually is. With respect to "industrialism," we need to remember that capitalism was destructive of the environment on a global scale long before the Industrial Revolution--so the [EVIDENCE CONTINUES BELOW] [EVIDENCE CONTINUES UNABRIDGED] problem can't simply be attributed to the presence of industrial production methods. "Modernity" is a category that is so over-arching that it is sometimes difficult to know precisely what it means. Whatever

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it is, and we could certainly discuss this topic for a long time, it isn't a useful way of describing a social system. It might provide a way of describing a certain pattern of historical development characteristic of the social system we have today, but it doesn't really point us to anything concrete. If modernity itself were somehow to blame for environmental degradation, then the problem could be expected to exist only in "modern" societies. I think that this is too simplistic a conclusion to draw. My own view is that the ecological problem has existed for millennia, but that to understand it in any particular historical period we have to look concretely at the historical systems that are in place. I think that capitalism has been enormously destructive of the environment, but it is by no means the only social system that has been this way. Soviet-style systems were destructive of the environment in somewhat different ways for somewhat different reasons. Feudal and other tributary societies of earlier millennia were also enormously destructive of the environment. That said, the unprecedented magnitude of today's global ecological crisis shows us that capitalism really takes the cake. When you start looking concretely at the forces that are generating this crisis, it becomes clear that they are inseparable from the basic dynamics of the global capitalist system itself. Today, as much as ever, capitalism demands constant and rapid economic growth. Historically, it has generally been assumed that capitalist economies could be expected to enjoy an overall rate of growth of about 3 percent a year. At this rate, the world economy would increase sixteen times in a century, 250 times in two centuries, and 4000 times in three centuries. This is just an arithmetical game in a way, but it shows us that a system as expansive as the one we have is inevitably going to cause problems in the context of a limited biosphere. Indeed, the global economic system is increasingly beginning to rival the biogeochemical processes of the planet itself in terms of scale. Obviously, this situation casts doubt upon the viability and effectiveness of environmental approaches which simply take the imperative of capitalist growth for granted.