Environmental activist George Monbiot recently published a long article in The Guardian titled ‘Capitalism is killing the planet’. The article – which Monbiot described as “the best thing I’ve ever written” – ended up going viral, earning 14K likes on Twitter.
Its basic thesis is: ‘capitalism bad’. And while capitalism is in some sense responsible for environmental problems – it’s hard to pollute if you haven’t produced anything – the problem for Monbiot is that socialism’s record is even worse.
As I said, it’s a long piece, and I don’t want to discuss every detail. But there was one paragraph in particular that caught my eye, and not because it was the ‘best thing I’ve ever read’. Far from it, in fact.
The first thing we encounter, looming out of the depths, should scare us almost out of our wits. It’s called growth. Economic growth is universally hailed as a good thing. Governments measure their success on their ability to deliver it. But think for a moment about what it means. Say we achieve the modest aim, promoted by bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, of 3% global growth a year. This means that all the economic activity you see today – and most of the environmental impacts it causes – doubles in 24 years; in other words, by 2045. Then it doubles again by 2069. Then again by 2093.
What’s wrong with this reasoning? It’s that Monbiot assumes there’s a one-to-one relationship between GDP and “environmental impacts”. In reality, there’s no reason why environmental impacts can’t go down as GDP goes up.
After all, GDP just measures the total value of goods and services in the economy. It’s not a measure of ‘total materials used’ or ‘total energy consumed’. So in principle, it can keep on rising forever.
Monbiot claims that if we shoot for 3% growth a year, then environmental impacts will double in just 24 years. (1.03 raised to the 24th power equals 2.) To see why this conclusion is wrong, let’s look at one particular environmental impact, namely CO2 emissions.
Between 1990 and 2018, the UK’s total GDP (measured in inflation-adjusted terms) increased by 74%. If Monbiot were right, then CO2 emissions should have increased by roughly the same amount. But they actually fell by 19%.
And this isn’t just because we offshored our emissions to China. That 19% figure corresponds to consumption-based CO2 emissions, which adjusts for emissions released in the production of traded goods.
What’s more, if the UK got serious about nuclear power, we could bring down emissions even further. France relies on nuclear more than any other country, and it’s per-capita emissions (again, adjusted for offshoring) are 20% lower than the UK’s.
In fact, economists talk about an ‘environmental Kuznets curve’, whereby pollution rises during the early stages of economic development, but then starts to fall during the later stages. This suggests that, in some circumstances, growth’s actually good for the environment.
I’m not entirely unsympathetic to Monbiot’s critique of growth. He’s right that governments sometimes treat it at as the only thing that matters, forgetting that human flourishing depends on more than just our living standards. We also need safety, access to nature, a sense of community, and many other things.
Yet critiques of growth can only go so far. After all, it’s only thanks to growth that Monbiot can make a living as a journalist and write articles telling people that growth should “scare us almost out of our wits”. (In an earlier time, he would have probably been a peasant farmer or shop-keeper, along with almost everyone else.)
Growth in GDP isn’t the same thing as growth in our impact on nature. And in fact, being richer often means we have more to spend on the environment.
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I love it when anti-capitalist tirades go ‘viral on Twitter’. Irony overload.
Smash-Capitalism!
(Sent from my ipod), message costs sponsored by Nike.
I was forwarded Monbiot’s article and read it. It is very negative IMHO and not very inspiring. Growth surely can be good and as this article states is not necessarily and inescapably linked to environmental harm. One thought about capitalism has occurred to me over the years, though, and that is the pursuit of a positive balance of trade. If countries seek a positive balance of trade there will be always be countries with a negative balance. A bit like carbon trading.
Of course it is negative, he is a nihilist.
You’d be depressed, too, if you worked at the Grauniad. Have you seen its circulation figures?
Have you seen their offices?
They were writing about the scandal of the homeless in London, I commented that they should donate their offices as a homeless shelter and all work from home.
Imagine my surprise when they blocked me.
https://www.overbury.com/case-studies/guardian
No, I try to block out the Grauniad as much as possible.
Monbiot’s nihilism doesn’t stem from his writing for the Guardian, however, it’s his own philosophical choice.
Back in the 70s and 80s the ‘Balance of Trade Deficit’ obsessed the press and, supposedly, The Treasury, then it slowly disappeared from view.
Until Lockdown Globalism was lifting millions within the Developing World out of poverty every year; sadly brought to an abrupt end and now in reversal
Glad you are back
Thank you, and for your reply message;
at the time I was bored in hospital so not in the best frame of mind.
My point made the subject is closed I would hope.
yes, I remember the importance of the trade deficit
now our betters realise its best to get everything made in china and with the money they can buy our country bit by bit
Also the tax (removal of scheduleA) has subsidised them for doing that as well!
The very concept of a trade deficit, an excess of imports over exports, is a mercantilist fallacy.
Capitalism is the great equalizer. It allows the lower classes to rise up, and it keeps a healthy rotation of people in the 1%. This is why globalism is the Achilles’ heel of capitalism. When wealthy countries start exporting production to poor countries, that allows the business owners to sell at high prices and produce at low prices. The wealthy countries start suffering because job availability goes down, especially for the lower classes. Poor countries suffer too because while they are getting a stream of money into their economies, it’s not actually improving their economy. It doesn’t create a healthy market environment. That country becomes a sort of drug addict whose life depends on the money drug.
Of course that given enough time, capitalism will equalize everything. The poor countries will be brought up and the top wealthy countries will be cycled. But the problem is that capitalism may not survive this process. And we’re seeing this today. Capitalism is what generated the wealth of the West, even as restricted as it was. And out of that wealth rose people who now want to end capitalism. Before the poor countries can be lifted out of poverty, the wealthy countries abandon all reason and start going down the path of socialist austerity.
I have thought about it, but I could not think of a free market solution to this problem.
‘It allows the lower classes to rise up, and it keeps a healthy rotation of people in the 1%.’
The people that count do not get rotated out of anything.
That will always happen. There will always be people who simply are better than everyone else at what matters. But we are talking about a handful of people. I don’t know what the US is like these days, but back in the ’90s the 1% would change on a yearly basis. People would go in and out of it all the time.
Let’s talk about ‘Climate Change’ so we don’t notice what’s happening with the ‘Covid Circus’.
Don’t worry about people being forced to take the jabs or lose their jobs – look! there are some white, fluffy clouds! And a coal-fired power station – nasty!
Dunno if the header pic is Monbiots but what it depicts is, of course, inert steam. A visual trick often played by green fanatics.
Although I think it’s actually water vapour (i.e. not plant food) that controls the atmospheric temperature.
Well, and being above a certain level of wealth also gives people the capacity to care about the environment. I’d imagine that if you go to Zimbabwe and talk to a person of median income that climate change would not even register on their list of concerns. In fact, I’d say that the P95 in Zimbabwe doesn’t care about climate change.
Net Zero is a first world idea. It originated in the first world. It is only being chased in the first world. The third world doesn’t care.
If Monbiot wants the entire world to go to Net Zero, then what he needs is more capitalism not less.
Net zero is almost oxymoronic. Furthermore, it is based on reverting to a system of living, which includes working, which would be familiar to our medieval ancestors.
The corollary of course is that such a system could only support medieval levels of population.
The thick, stupid nutjobs of ‘extinction rebellion’ would therefore be campaigning for their own oblivion.
So, depopulation and poverty it is then.
The madness grows by the day.
God help us.
I mentioned the other day that my dad used to repair old furniture as a hobby. As early as the 1970s it became illegal to import virgin teak hardwood, he used to drag me around second hand furniture shops looking for used teak to Re-Cycle.
This was our governments attempt to save the rain forests; not that it did as the locals cut them down anyway.
We were told in, I think 1985, that the rainforest would be gone in five years. I understand that it still takes 5 hours to fly across it in any direction.
Only because it’s so large to begin with. You don’t need to be an eco loon to be concerned for its future.
The saddest case is Madagascar where the rainforest was cut down to make way for sisal plantations; we used to make string out of it in Empire days.
Now it’s to produce biodegradable packaging including flat pack ‘cardboard boxes’ of the type used by students when moving their stuff.
They can’t get empty boxes from the corner shop or Tesco these days as those places have to account (and pay) for the ‘ sustainalble’ disposal of Exterior Packaging in a bid to save the planet.
Westerners use it to salve their conscience, instead it created a market resulting in the destruction of the very environment they purport to be saving.
Mono Bot. Lol
Moonbat has always spouted nonsense
It’s incredible how such a mediocrity has manged to make a good living peddling this pseudo-intellectual guff!
Mono Bio, producers of meat free, meat
Economic growth occurs when capital is transferred from a less profitable use to a more profitable use. The role of the entrepreneur in the free market is to discover opportunities to do this.
In contrast, government allocates capital on the basis political calculation. No matter how unprofitable the resulting projects become they are funded basically forever.
The free market system is not ‘perfect’ – it is a trial-and-error discovery process after all – but the political system is moribund and wasteful in comparison. Those like Monbiot who prattle on about ‘market failure’ and propose government direction of resources as a solution haven’t the slightest clue as to how the world works.
Back in 2006 I had an argument with Monbiot: I was trying to highlight the use of a mercury salt thiomersal/thimerosal in infant vaccines. Apparently it was still alright to inject mercury into babies but not into the environment: he might at least have worked out if you inject it into babies it will leak into the environment ultimately even if you do not care about babies. Only if you had to dispose of faulty or expired vaccine lot did it apparently become an environmental problem according to this reasoning. In the end the only prominent environmentalist who also cared about the babies was Robert F Kennedy jnr- it was very odd.
I think environmentalists tend to view humans as problems rather than as central.
OTHER humans.
Like Marxism It’s an offshoot of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Indeed. As PJ O’Rourke (I think) put it:
The population problem: just the right number of me, way too many of you.
Stanley and Boris scattering their maker’s Image through the land (at least 6 each) dream of depopulation…Stanley at least wants us down to 10-15m. What a lad!
https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=efOJxs5DLLc
Indeed. The XR mob although very much in favour of less people on the planet never want to make the supreme altruistic move of volunteering to lead the way.
Funny that.
Being leftist means never having to live up to your supposed ideals until everyone else has been forced to do so first.
It was also OK to inject mercury into teeth (aka amalgam fillings). I think it’s been phased out.
No, there is still amalgam in many fillings given I believe. The mercury in vaccines was largely phased out in this country but the MHRA stoutly defended giving it to the infants of the developing world. I had much absurd correspondence with them. Their argument basically was that developing world was so polluted with mercury that it didn’t matter if infants were given even more.
That’s appalling. More was used in a large adult tooth filling than in a fluorescent light bulb. Yet the latter were attacked for using relatively small amounts of mercury when LEDs came in.
From what I know of the former use of ethyl mercury in vaccines, they used far less in a dose than the use of metallic mercury in a typical amalgam filling. But I haven’t looked in detail.
By the way the Del Bigtree broadcast of January 2020 which I was recently alerted to is an eye-opener. He featured filming from the WHO expert vaccine safety of December 2019. I had no idea that the safety case for common vaccines was so poor. He features the Chief Scientist lying on camera by just comparing her public statement four days earlier to her remarks in private.
He mentioned that in the USA, before the early 1960s, expectant mothers who caught measles passed on natural immunity to their baby. This inherited immunity was lost when the vaccine came in.
Correction – Expert vaccine safety *meeting*.
This is my version
https://www.ageofautism.com/2019/12/the-echo-chambers-of-public-health.html
BTW I have at least 26 mainstream peer review studies, some authored by the biggest names in vaccinology that concede that measles vaccination compromises population immunity in the medium-long term. We now have the prospect of an ageing global community who will have no natural measles immunity and will not be responsive to further vaccination: it could make Covid look like a picnic.
https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6926/rr-1
Marxism is a direct form of rent-seeking which is simply stated as economic pollution.
?format=500w
It is why marxist countries are pollution blackspots with nice areas for the elite to live in Dachas.
There appears to be a mass movement to the right in that picture.
How can you have infinite growth on a finite planet?
You can’t. Nature has never allowed it. The only potential infinite expansion is the universe itself and even that’s not a known.
Monbiots rants ( to his audience who will probably go and check their share values before an avocado based lunch ), play on fear. It uses this idea that we are expanding infinitely, when some of the evidence points the other way. He frequently ignores the improvements that humans have made to the environment and focuses only on the negative.
I’m curious to hear them ?
Improvements was a poor choice. Rebalancing or fixing historical screw ups would have been better.
I’ve been in the conservation “sector” most of my adult life until the lightbulb moment a decade or so ago.
The minute you attempt to control, manage or manipulate nature it is no longer natural!
We could have a philosophical debate about humans ecological function in the natural world, but the instant you subvert natural process, you produce future consequences. You can’t beat nature, but you can magnify future consequences for those interventions.
eg. pathogens are natures way of population control to maintain competition in bio-diversity, fuck with it & it bites you in the bum eventually.
The question you pose is inherently incoherent, since infinite growth is a theoretical construct that can never exist in reality, whereas the planet is a material space.
So the answer is that you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet, but that answer tells us nothing beyond that the question was inherently flawed.
But the political conclusion you presumably seek to draw from it, that growth cannot be our primary objective, cannot possibly flow from that answer.
In reality, the material universe is in practical terms infinite from the human perspective, and human material growth can never even approach infinite no matter how much we try. When we come up against limits on growth, we try to use ingenuity to get around them, and sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t.
Green eco-zealots like George Monbiot is exactly the kind of person who should never be near the reins of power. Unfortunately and increasingly the likes of George Monbiot do hold the reins of power; even though they have never been democratically elected e.g. Carrie Symonds.
And they all seem to have mysteriously given up over GMOs now. Last time I can find that Monbiot wrote about GMOs was 2004. Now you can edit nature to your heart’s content and the green lobby do not care. Carrie certainly does not care because bio-tech is a flag-ship policy for the Johnson government.
Capitalism? It doesn’t exist, only a series of increasingly regulated and taxed mixed economies exist.
George Monbiot gloats as he demands destruction for the sake of destruction and the sacrifice of man as an end in itself.
when Monbiot thinks about growth he sees factories and chimneys
rather than dog grooming services, online courses, hobbies and other life enhancing pursuits.
Wouldn’t a dog grooming service be a cut?
In fairness, the factories and chimneys are still in existence. They’re just in China or Indonesia rather than in Barnsley.
“(In an earlier time, he would have probably been a peasant farmer or shop-keeper, along with almost everyone else”
With a life expectancy half what his is now, no access to healthcare, his children dying young, his wife dying in childbirth…
Monbiot is just a pseudo-intellectual pampered bourgeoise miserablist. He’s certainly done alright out of ‘growth’ being from the family behind Lyon’s Tea, born in Kensington to a businessman and head of the Conservative trade and industry forum and being educated at 12K a term Stowe school.
But once you have been gifted all the enormous advantages Monbiot has in life, it’s important to remember to pull the ladder up after you, and dedicate your life to making everyone else’s as deprived and as desolate as possible.
pseudo-intellectual pampered bourgeoise miserablist
That needs to be printed on a t shirt ( organic cotton ) and sent to him for Christmas
If you were pushed so much and even with all that considerable nepotism advantages you were decidedly below average you’d have a chip on your shoulder too.
He’s got a log on his shoulder. Sustainable pine naturally.
Trouble is, it’s above his neck, too!
“In fact, economists talk about an ‘environmental Kuznets curve’, whereby pollution rises during the early stages of economic development, but then starts to fall during the later stages. This suggests that, in some circumstances, growth’s actually good for the environment.“
The reality is, of course, that worrying about the environment in a theoretical sense is a luxury. It’s only possible after you’ve achieved the benefits of increased wealth only provided for the majority by industrialisation and growth.
Convenience, as opposed to growth, is the real problem environmentally. It’s convenient to take the private jet to Glasgow. It’s convenient to use single use plastics. It’s convenient to buy our food from large chain stores, forcing larger scale industrialisation on food. It’s convenient to take the car to pick up the kids etc etc….
The trouble has always been that simplistic, sloganistic thinking such as “capitalism is bad”, “growth is bad” or “you can’t have infinite growth in a finite universe” appeal to people who lack the inclination or ability to think the issues through thoroughly.
When that’s combined with intellectual fashion, you have “obvious truths” that are in fact not true, but easily sweep through and become endemic within the population and become the basis for accepted nostrums that are very dangerous, because based on untruth.
A doctor in British Columbia has made the first ever “climate change” diagnosis of a patient.
Kit Knightly over at Off-Guardian.
He makes the same case – this sort of nonsense will proliferate; more and more “obvious truths” eg the science is settled. And on and on.
Selling off our industries to other countries and then preaching about C02 emissions is going well!
‘Care’ for environment with their extremely unfriendly actions towards life and environment since Jan 20?
Only way to protect environment and life is to pull plug on World’s government i.e. Gates, banks, oil and its spin-offs Pharma and agrochemical.
Their power depends on electronic communication, their digitalisation on net.
Their cancelling and on-line harm bill make net less useful and more unusable.
The more own-goals they score the safer life and the environment will be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn5SwOZKzl0
Covid: Dr Clare Craig on why she’s against mandatory jabs for NHS staff
George Carlin saw through this malarkey years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Monbiot needn’t worry, his globalist masters are even now, pushing through their final solution to the problems, that bother him so much.
There’s scepticism about AGW & there’s common sense!
Nothing is forever, almost nothing on earth is infinite. I strongly disagree with climate justice, shenanigans. But human self-indulgence has created significant ecological problems. AGW shills have a political agenda, from geopolitical positioning to ideological power grabs, the climate has always been transitional & warmer in the past.
But we are destroying our natural world, if you truly believe in science, this is an indisputable fact, so I call BS on this article (for the bit I read). I don’t have answers or solutions, I don’t advocate genocide or human rights violations to tackle the biodiversity crisis, but it is a looming crisis for many billions of people who rely on their relationship with nature for a living.
“But we are destroying our natural world“
The natural world is not “our world”, by definition. We change it to suit us,and that unnatural world is our world. We do not “destroy” it, we change it.
It’s hard to find a square mile of land on the UK mainland that is not fundamentally different as a result of human activity. But there’s plenty of beautiful land on the British mainland. Nobody can live in a natural environment. We can visit it, for sure, but by living in it, we change it.
Not saying there aren’t problems caused by human activity – pollution, unbalancing of food chains, etc. Just that the perspective that there is a beautiful natural world versus a nasty destroyed human world is a false one imo. Useful, perhaps, if not taken too far, but fundamentally false.
Oh fuck off, your constant contradiction is getting really tedious, stalker.
At the risk of upsetting you more, I’m going to have to contradict you again. I can assure you there is no selectivity in targetting you. I contradict any comment I wish to disagree with, by anyone, pretty much, and will continue to do so regardless of your personal over-sensitivity. Grow a thicker skin, or stop making assertions you cannot or will not back up.
You know I came back to this comment with a sense of guilt, that my reply was unreasonable with a view to apologizing. But reading your response just confirms what I was thinking!
But i’ll play the game if you think you’re up to it, honestly I don’t think you’re a worthy opponent.
All living organisms influence their environment, in science it’s called ecology. That relationship varies in levels of destruction!
When a deer eats a tree it doesn’t (always) change it often destroys it, when a wolf eats a deer, it doesn’t change it, it destroys it. When a human kills a wolf, it destroys it! But yes that is nature.
Subject which no one can be proved wrong by stating & I must say completely irrelevant to my comment.
A naive & Idiotic statement which doesn’t really deserve further comment. All living organisms are part of the natural world, it is impossible to isolate or separate ourselves from natural process.
AGAIN (one of your very favourite words) totally out of context to my original comment, it’s just assumption, taking me out of context & going off on your own dogmatic tangent.
You think you are a lot smarter than you really are! In reality, you just waffle incoherent nonsense. Which is why I stopped readding your comments. But knock yourself out replying to me.
“You know I came back to this comment with a sense of guilt, that my reply was unreasonable with a view to apologizing……You think you are a lot smarter than you really are! In reality, you just waffle incoherent nonsense. Which is why I stopped readding your comments“
Well honesty is definitely the better policy in such matters, imo. Your opinion is a matter of mild interest to me, though not concern, so I prefer a truthful response to a mendacious one, whichever that might be.
“But i’ll play the game if you think you’re up to it“
Not sure what other point you might think there is to a discussion forum than discussion and debate, tbh.
See a comment you disagree with or dislike, ignore it or engage with it. Those are the worthwhile options imo. Getting angry at someone “contradicting” you is not, imo, but each to his own.
“All living organisms influence their environment, in science it’s called ecology…..When a deer eats a tree it doesn’t (always) change it often destroys it, when a wolf eats a deer, it doesn’t change it, it destroys it. When a human kills a wolf, it destroys it! But yes that is nature…..A naive & Idiotic statement which doesn’t really deserve further comment. All living organisms are part of the natural world, it is impossible to isolate or separate ourselves from natural process….AGAIN (one of your very favourite words) totally out of context to my original comment, it’s just assumption, taking me out of context & going off on your own dogmatic tangent.”
To address all this verbiage at one go, you can’t at one and the same time create an opposition between natural/man-made, and also insist that “it is impossible to isolate or separate ourselves from natural process”.
The irrelevance of most of your comments there can be seen by going back to review your comment that was the beginning of the exchange:
“we are destroying our natural world,”
Yes, a particular thing can be destroyed, but by your own explanation, “the natural world” can’t be destroyed, unless you postulate an “unnatural world” to replace it.
For once I completely agree with Noah. Growth is compatible with an improving environment. But it shouldn’t be the only thing that matters and it can be destructive of the environment.
Sounds like a good argument against economic growth. Think you shot yourself in the foot there mate…
Neil Oliver roasting the plebs @ cop26.
Imagine being part of the working class and agreeing with the idea that economic growth is bad…
Also, as history shows, the higher the economic level of a country, the cleaner it is. Socialists are anti-reality idiots.
The world needs spiritual, intellectual and philosophical growth, especially in the dumbed down by design corporatised Satanic Orwellian electro magnetic radiation driven fed on a diet of terrorism and lies shithole west. We need to grow our wisdom and chop the head off the Beast. A lot of the problems we have are due to the traitors in the police and military who do the dirty work of the kakistocracy. If they want to remain as traitors, screwing their own by promoting biological warfare on home soil against those who pay their wages and fucking over their friends and families and their native culture and future for their pension and a bunch of vile humans who wouldnt cross the road to piss on them if they were on fire, fine remain as traitors, they will go down in history as the Nazis of the new millenium. They serve people like Henry Kissinger, Jeremy Cunts favourite human, who said the following:
I think the fact that Monbiot writes for the Graun explains it all. His readership already knows what it believes and doesn’t want to have that challenged. George would likely cause outrage if he punctured any of their shibboleths.
Monbiot is just a bit of a tw@t.
When he opts to live in a vegan friendly goat hair teepee whilst only eating food that he can forage within walking distance of his new home then I might accept he is sincere.
Sussed him out a long time ago. I think he is aware of the flaws in his argument and just pandering to the Groaniad for cash
Some of the best rebuttals to the CAGW scam come from Tony Heller.
Tony goes back to look at newspaper reports from the turn of the last century and shows that the climate was far less stable than in recent times.
He is also very good at showing how the likes of NASA are retrospectively doctoring the climate data to push the catastrophist agenda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-DfKF16oiM
Re Monbiot’s criticism of capitalism: would he exist without it? Indeed, most of us wouldn’t, after all.
I’m shocked and disappointed that DS use the image of steam emitting cooling-towers to head your article on industrial pollution – the sort of dishonesty we expect from the MSM and BBC! Come on, DS you’re above that.
Monbiot has less knowledge about climate change than Wankcock & Savage Jabber have about healthcare
For those who want an objective view about the lies used by by the ‘climate change’ lobby:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8