The False Debate Between Technology and Conservation: Environmental Policy Is a Political Struggle

Our current environmental policy options are often described as a choice between (a) reducing material living standards and (b) stimulating future technological innovations that promise to enable continued economic growth without irreversibly damaging the environment. This policy choice is a false one; it serves as a stalling tactic by the capitalist interests that benefit from the exploitation of nature. We actually have many better choices that we can implement immediately. We already have the technologies to stop global warming, species losses, loss of natural resilience, resource exhaustion, soil and water degradation, and most of the other forms of ecological deterioration that we are experiencing. Given our true policy options, it is clear that US President Trump’s reversal of environmental policies is a political decision, not an optimizing economic decision. But since we are now in what Foster calls absolute capitalism , a system in which governments themselves behave in accordance with market principles as they serve the capitalist market system, it will become increasingly difficult to again restore the environmental policies of the past. Humanity thus faces more frequent economic crises as real capitalist accumulation clashes with ecological constraints. The threat of a rise in political dissent triggered by these crises will lead capitalists to tolerate, if not support, repressive right-wing political forces that promise to protect and sustain capitalists’ surplus. Veblen warned a century ago that such a rightward political shift will end up destroying the liberal conditions under which capitalism thrives, and humanity will be left with the authoritarian governance of an impoverished planet.

JEL Classification: B51, O44, P17.