            E.3 Can private property rights protect the environment?

   Environmental issues have become increasingly important over the
   decades. When Murray Bookchin wrote his first works on our ecological
   problems in the 1950s, he was only one of a small band. Today, even
   right-wing politicians have to give at least some lip-service to
   environmental concerns while corporations are keen to present their
   green credentials to the general public (even if they do not, in fact,
   have any).

   As such, there has been a significant change. This is better late than
   never, considering that the warnings made by the likes of Bookchin in
   the 1950s and 1960s have come true to a threateningly worrying degree.
   Sadly, eco-anarchist solutions are still ignored but that is
   unsurprising as they go to the heart of the ecological problem, namely
   domination within humanity as the precondition for the domination of
   nature and the workings of the capitalist economy. It is hardly likely
   that those who practice and benefit from that oppression and
   exploitation will admit that they are causing the problems! Hence the
   need to appear green in order to keep a fundamentally anti-green system
   going.

   Of course, some right-wingers are totally opposed to ecological issues.
   They seriously seem to forget without a viable ecology, there would be
   no capitalism. Ayn Rand, for example, dismissed environmental concerns
   as being anti-human and had little problem with factory chimneys
   belching smoke into the atmosphere (her fondness for chimneys and
   skyscrapers would have have made Freud reach for his notepad). As Bob
   Black once noted, "Rand remarked that she worshipped smokestacks. For
   her . . . they not only stood for, they were the epitome of human
   accomplishment. She must have meant it since she was something of a
   human smokestack herself; she was a chain smoker, as were the other
   rationals in her entourage. In the end she abolished her own breathing:
   she died of lung cancer." ["Smokestack Lightning," Friendly Fire, p.
   62] The fate of this guru of capitalism is a forewarning for our
   collective one if we ignore the environment and our impact on it.

   The key to understanding why so many on the right are dismissive of
   ecological concerns is simply that ecology cannot be squeezed into
   their narrow individualistic property based politics. Ecology is about
   interconnectiveness, about change and interaction, about the sources of
   life and how we interact with them and they with us. Moreover, ecology
   is rooted in the quality of life and goes not automatically view
   quantity as the key factor. As such, the notion that more is better
   does not strike the ecologist as, in itself, a good thing. The idea
   that growth is good as such is the principle associated with cancer.
   Ecology also destroys the individualistic premise of capitalist
   economics. It exposes the myth that the market ensures everyone gets
   exactly what they want -- for if you consume eco-friendly products but
   others do not then you are affected by their decisions as the
   environmental impact affects all. Equally, the notion that the solution
   to GM crops should letting "the market" decide fails to take into
   account that such crops spread into local eco-systems and contaminate
   whole areas (not to mention the issue of corporate power enclosing
   another part of the commons). The market "solution" in this case would
   result in everyone, to some degree, consuming GM crops eventually. None
   of this can be fitted into the capitalist ideology.

   However, while vocal irrational anti-green perspectives lingers on in
   some sections of the right (particularly those funded by the heaviest
   polluters), other supporters of capitalism have considered the problems
   of ecological destruction in some degree. Some of this is, of course,
   simply greenwashing (i.e., using PR and advertising to present a green
   image while conducting business as usual). Some of it is funding think
   tanks which use green-sounding names, imagery and rhetoric to help
   pursue a decidedly anti-ecological practice and agenda. Some of is, to
   some degree, genuine. Al Gore's campaign to make the world aware of the
   dangers of climate change is obviously sincere and important work
   (although it is fair to point out the lack of green policies being
   raised during his 2000 Presidential election campaign and the poverty
   of his proposed solutions and means of change). Nicholas Stern's 2006
   report on climate change produced for the UK government is another
   example and it gives an insight into the mentality of such
   environmentalists. The report did produce quite an impact (plus its
   dismissal by the usual suspects). The key reason for that was,
   undoubtedly, due to it placing a money sum on the dangers of
   environmental disruption. Such is capitalism -- people and planet can
   go to the dogs, but any threat to profits must be acted upon. As the
   British PM at the time put it, any Climate Change Bill must be "fully
   compatible with the interests of businesses and consumers as well."
   Which is ironic, as it is the power of money which is causing the bulk
   of the problems we face.

   Which is what we will discuss here, namely whether private property can
   be used to solve our environmental problems. Liberal environmentalists
   base their case on capitalist markets aided with some form of state
   intervention. Neo-liberal and right-"libertarian" environmentalists
   base their case purely on capitalist markets and reject any role for
   the state bar that of defining and enforcing private property rights.
   Both, however, assume that capitalism will remain and tailor their
   policies around it. Anarchists question that particularly assumption
   particularly given, as we discussed in [1]section E.1, the fundamental
   reason why capitalism cannot be green is its irrational "grow-or-die"
   dynamic. However, there are other aspects of the system which
   contribute to capitalism bringing ecological crisis sooner rather than
   later. These flow from the nature of private property and the market
   competition it produces (this discussion, we should stress, ignores
   such factors as economic power which will be addressed in [2]section
   E.3.2).

   The market itself causes ecological problems for two related reasons:
   externalities and the price mechanism. It is difficult making informed
   consumption decisions under capitalism because rather than provide
   enough information to make informed decisions, the market hinders the
   flow of relevant information and suppresses essential knowledge. This
   is particularly the case with environmental information and knowledge.
   Simply put, we have no way of knowing from a given price the ecological
   impact of the products we buy. One such area of suppressed information
   is that involving externalities. This is a commonly understood problem.
   The market actively rewards those companies which inflict externalities
   on society. This is the "routine and regular harms caused to others --
   workers, consumers, communities, the environment." These are termed
   "externalities" in "the coolly technical jargon of economics" and the
   capitalist company is an "externalising machine" and it is "no
   exaggeration to say that the corporation's built in compulsion to
   externalise its costs is at the root of many of the world's social and
   environmental ills." [Joel Bakan, The Corporation, p. 60 and p. 61]

   The logic is simple, by externalising (imposing) costs on others (be it
   workers, customers or the planet) a firm can reduce its costs and make
   higher profits. Thus firms have a vested interest in producing
   externalities. To put it crudely, pollution pays while ecology costs.
   Every pound a business spends on environmental protections is one less
   in profits. As such, it makes economic sense to treat the environment
   like a dump and externalise costs by pumping raw industrial effluent
   into the atmosphere, rivers, and oceans. The social cost of so doing
   weighs little against the personal profits that result from inflicting
   diffuse losses onto the general public. Nor should we discount the
   pressure of market forces in this process. In order to survive on the
   market, firms may have to act in ways which, while profitable in the
   short-run, are harmful in the long term. For example, a family-owned
   farm may be forced to increase production using environmentally unsound
   means simply in order to avoid bankruptcy.

   As well as economic incentives, the creation of externalities flows
   from the price mechanism itself. The first key issue, as green
   economist E. F. Schumacher stressed, is that the market is based on
   "total quantification at the expense of qualitative differences; for
   private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only what
   it gains from production." This means that the "judgement of economics
   . . . is an extremely fragmentary judgement; out of the large number of
   aspects which in real life have to be seen and judged together before a
   decision can be taken, economics supplies only one -- whether a thing
   yields a profit to those who undertake it or not." [Small is Beautiful,
   p. 215 and p. 28] This leads to a simplistic decision making
   perspective:

     "Everything becomes crystal clear after you have reduced reality to
     one -- one only -- of its thousand aspects. You know what to do --
     whatever produces profits; you know what to avoid -- whatever
     reduces them or makes a loss. And there is at the same time a
     perfect measuring rod for the degree of success or failure. Let
     no-one befog the issue by asking whether a particular action is
     conducive to the wealth and well-being of society, whether it leads
     to moral, aesthetic, or cultural enrichment. Simply find out whether
     it pays." [Op. Cit., p. 215]

   This means that key factors in decision making are, at best, undermined
   by the pressing need to make profits or, at worse, simply ignored as a
   handicap. So "in the market place, for practical reasons, innumerable
   qualitative distinctions which are of vital importance for man and
   society are suppressed; they are not allowed to surface. Thus the reign
   of quantity celebrates its greatest triumphs in 'The Market.'" This
   feeds the drive to externalise costs, as it is "based on a definition
   of cost which excludes all 'free goods,' that is to say, the entire
   God-given environment, except for those parts of it that have been
   privately appropriated. This means that an activity can be economic
   although it plays hell with the environment, and that a competing
   activity, if at some cost it protects and conserves the environment,
   will be uneconomic." To summarise: "it is inherent in the methodology
   of economics to ignore man's dependence on the natural world." [Op.
   Cit., p. 30 and p. 29]

   Ultimately, should our decision-making be limited to a single criteria,
   namely whether it makes someone a profit? Should our environment be
   handed over to a system which bases itself on confusing efficient
   resource allocation with maximising profits in an economy marked by
   inequalities of wealth and, consequently, on unequal willingness and
   ability to pay? In other words, biodiversity, eco-system stability,
   clean water and air, and so forth only become legitimate social goals
   when the market places a price on them sufficient for a capitalist to
   make money from them. Such a system can only fail to achieve a green
   society simply because ecological concerns cannot be reduced to one
   criteria ("The discipline of economics achieves its formidable
   resolving power by transforming what might otherwise be considered
   qualitative matters into quantitative issues with a single metric and,
   as it were, a bottom line: profit or loss." [James C. Scott, Seeing
   like a State, p. 346]). This is particularly the case when even
   economists admit that the market under-supplies public goods, of which
   a clean and aesthetically pleasing environment is the classic example.
   Markets may reflect, to some degree, individual consumer preferences
   distorted by income distribution but they are simply incapable of
   reflecting collective values (a clean environment and spectacular views
   are inherently collective goods and cannot be enclosed). As a result,
   capitalists will be unlikely to invest in such projects as they cannot
   make everyone who uses them pay for the privilege.

   Then there is the tendency for the market to undermine and destroy
   practical and local knowledge on which truly ecological decisions need
   to be based. Indigenous groups, for example, have accumulated an
   enormous body of knowledge about local ecological conditions and
   species which are ignored in economic terms or eliminated by
   competition with those with economic power. Under markets, in other
   words, unarticulated knowledge of soil conditions and bio-diversity
   which have considerable value for long-term sustainability is usually
   lost when it meets agribusiness.

   Practical knowledge, i.e. local and tacit knowledge which James C.
   Scott terms metis, is being destroyed and replaced "by standardised
   formulas legible from the centre" and this "is virtually inscribed in
   the activities of both the state and large-scale bureaucratic
   capitalism." The "logic animating the project . . . is one of control
   and appropriation. Local knowledge, because it is dispersed and
   relatively autonomous, is all but unappropriable. The reduction or,
   more utopian still, the elimination of metis and the local control its
   entails are preconditions, in the case of the state, of administrative
   order and fiscal appropriation and, in the case of the large capitalism
   firm, of worker discipline and profit." [Op. Cit., pp. 335-6] Green
   socialist John O'Neill provides a similar analysis:

     "far from fostering the existence of practical and local knowledge,
     the spread of markets often appears to do the opposite: the growth
     of global markets is associated with the disappearance of knowledge
     that is local and practical, and the growth of abstract codifiable
     information . . . the market as a mode of co-ordination appears to
     foster forms of abstract codifiable knowledge . . . The knowledge of
     weak and marginal actors in markets, such as peasant and
     marginalised indigenous communities, tends to be lost to those who
     hold market power. The epistemic value of knowledge claims bear no
     direct relation to their market value. Local and often unarticulated
     knowledge of soil conditions and crop varieties that have
     considerable value for long-term sustainability of agriculture has
     no value in markets and hence is always liable to loss when it comes
     into contact with oil-based agricultural technologies of those who
     do have market power. The undermining of local practical knowledge
     in market economies has also been exacerbated by the global nature
     of both markets and large corporate actors who require knowledge
     that is transferable across different cultures and contexts and
     hence abstract and codifiable . . . Finally, the demand for
     commensurability and calculability runs against the defence of local
     and practical knowledge. This is not just a theoretical problem but
     one with real institutional embodiments. The market encourages a
     spirit of calculability . . . That spirit is the starting point for
     the algorithmic account of practical reason which requires explicit
     common measures for rational choice and fails to acknowledge the
     existence of choice founded upon practical judgement. More generally
     it is not amicable to forms of knowledge that are practical, local
     and uncodifiable." [Markets, Deliberation and Environment, pp.
     192-3]

   Thus the market tends to replace traditional forms of agriculture and
   working practices (and the complex knowledge and expertises associated
   with both) with standardised techniques which aim to extract as much
   profit in the short-term as possible by concentrating power into the
   hands of management and their appointed experts. That they cannot even
   begin to comprehend the local conditions and practical knowledge and
   skills required to effectively use the resources available in a
   sustainable manner should go without saying. Unfortunately, the
   economic clout of big business is such that it can defeat traditional
   forms of knowledge in the short-term (the long-term effect of such
   exploitation is usually considered someone else's problem).

   So, given this analysis, it comes as no surprise to anarchists that
   private property has not protected the environment. In fact, it is one
   of the root causes of our ecological problems. Markets hide the
   ecological and health information necessary for environmentally sound
   decisions. Ultimately, environmental issues almost always involve value
   judgements and the market stops the possibility of producing a public
   dialogue in which these values can be discussed and enriched. Instead,
   it replaces this process by an aggregation of existing preferences
   (shaped by economic pressures and necessity) skewed in favour of this
   generation's property owners. An individual's interest, like that of
   the public as a whole, is not something which exists independently of
   the decision-making processes used but rather is something which is
   shaped by them. Atomistic processes focused on a simplistic criteria
   will produce simplistic decisions which have collectively irrational
   results. Collective decision making based on equal participation of all
   will produce decisions which reflect all the concerns of all affected
   in a process which will help produce empowered and educated individuals
   along with informed decisions.

   Some disagree. For these the reason why there is environmental damage
   is not due to too much private property but because there is too
   little. This perspective derives from neo-classical and related
   economic theory and it argues that ecological harm occurs because
   environmental goods and bads are unpriced. They come free, in other
   words. This suggests that the best way to protect the environment is to
   privatise everything and to create markets in all areas of life. This
   perspective, needless to say, is entirely the opposite of the standard
   eco-anarchist one which argues that our environmental problems have
   their root in market mechanisms, private property and the behaviour
   they generate. As such, applying market norms even more rigorously and
   into areas of life that were previously protected from markets will
   tend to make ecological problems worse, not better.

   As would be expected, the pro-property perspective is part of the wider
   turn to free(r) market capitalism since the 1970s. With the apparent
   success of Thatcherism and Reaganism (at least for the people who count
   under capitalism, i.e. the wealthy) and the fall of Stalinism in the
   Eastern Block, the 1980s and 1990s saw a period of capitalist
   triumphantism. This lead to an increase in market based solutions to
   every conceivable social problem, regardless of how inappropriate
   and/or insane the suggestions were. This applies to ecological issues
   as well. The publication of Free Market Environmentalism by Terry L.
   Anderson and Donald R. Leal in 1991 saw ideas previously associated
   with the right-"libertarian" fringe become more mainstream and,
   significantly, supported by corporate interests and the think-tanks and
   politicians they fund.

   Some see it as a deliberate plan to counteract a growing ecological
   movement which aims to change social, political and economic structures
   in order to get at the root cases of our environmental problems.
   Activist Sara Diamond suggested that "[s]ome farsighted corporations
   are finding that the best 'bulwark' against 'anti-corporation'
   environmentalism is the creation and promotion of an alternative model
   called 'free market environmentalism.'" ["Free Market
   Environmentalism," Z Magazine, December 1991] Whatever the case, the
   net effect of this reliance on markets is to depoliticise environmental
   debates, to transform issues which involve values and affect many
   people into ones in which the property owner is given priority and
   where the criteria for decision making becomes one of profit and loss.
   It means, effectively, ending debates over why ecological destruction
   happens and what we should do about it and accepting the assumptions,
   institutions and social relationships of capitalism as a given as well
   as privatising yet more of the world and handing it over to
   capitalists. Little wonder it is being proposed as an alternative by
   corporations concerned about their green image. At the very least, it
   is fair to say that the corporations who punt free market
   environmentalism as an alternative paradigm for environmental policy
   making are not expecting to pay more by internalising their costs by so
   doing.

   As with market fundamentalism in general, private property based
   environmentalism appears to offer solutions simply because it fails to
   take into account the reality of any actual capitalist system. The
   notion that all we have to do is let markets work ignores the fact that
   any theoretical claim for the welfare superiority of free-market
   outcomes falls when we look at any real capitalist market. Once we
   introduce, say, economic power, imperfect competition, public goods,
   externalities or asymmetric information then the market quickly becomes
   a god with feet of clay. This is what we will explore in the rest of
   this section while the [3]next section will discuss a specific example
   of how laissez-faire capitalism cannot be ecological as proved by one
   of its most fervent ideologues. Overall, anarchists feel we have a good
   case on why is unlikely that private property can protect the
   environment.

E.3.1 Will privatising nature save it?

   No, it will not. To see why, it is only necessary to look at the
   arguments and assumptions of those who advocate such solutions to our
   ecological problems.

   The logic behind the notion of privatising the planet is simple. Many
   of our environmental problems stem, as noted in the [4]last section,
   from externalities. According to the "market advocates" this is due to
   there being unowned resources for if someone owned them, they would sue
   whoever or whatever was polluting them. By means of private property
   and the courts, pollution would end. Similarly, if an endangered
   species or eco-system were privatised then the new owners would have an
   interest in protecting them if tourists, say, were willing to pay to
   see them. Thus the solution to environmental problems is simple.
   Privatise everything and allow people's natural incentive to care for
   their own property take over.

   Even on this basic level, there are obvious problems. Why assume that
   capitalist property rights are the only ones, for example? However, the
   crux of the problem is clear enough. This solution only works if we
   assume that the "resources" in question make their owners a profit or
   if they are willing and able to track down the polluters. Neither
   assumption is robust enough to carry the weight that capitalism places
   on our planet's environment. There is no automatic mechanism by which
   capitalism will ensure that environmentally sound practices will
   predominate. In fact, the opposite is far more likely.

   At its most basic, the underlying rationale is flawed. It argues that
   it is only by giving the environment a price can we compare its use for
   different purposes. This allows the benefits from preserving a forest
   to be compared to the benefits of cutting it down and building a
   shopping centre over it. Yet by "benefits" it simply means economic
   benefits, i.e. whether it is profitable for property owners to do so,
   rather than ecologically sensible. This is an important difference. If
   more money can be made in turning a lake into a toxic waste dump then,
   logically, its owners will do so. Similarly, if timber prices are not
   rising at the prevailing profit or interest rate, then a
   self-interested firm will seek to increase its profits and cut-down its
   trees as fast as possible, investing the returns elsewhere. They may
   even sell such cleared land to other companies to develop. This
   undermines any claim that private property rights and environmental
   protection go hand-in-hand.

   As Glenn Albrecht argues, such a capitalist "solution" to environmental
   problems is only "likely to be effective in protecting species [or
   ecosystems] which are commercially important only if the commercial
   value of that species [or ecosystem] exceeds that of other potential
   sources of income that could be generated from the same 'natural
   capital' that the species inhabits If, for example, the conservation of
   species for ecotourism generates income which is greater than that
   which could be gained by using their habit for the growing of cash
   crops, then the private property rights of the owners of the habitat
   will effectively protect those species . . . However, this model
   becomes progressively less plausible when we are confronted with rare
   but commercially unimportant species [or ecosystems] versus very large
   development proposals that are inconsistent with their continual
   existence. The less charismatic the species, the more 'unattractive'
   the ecosystem, the more likely it will be that the development proposal
   will proceed. The 'rights' of developers will eventually win out over
   species and ecosystems since . . . bio-diversity itself has no right to
   exist and even if it did, the clash of rights between an endangered
   species and multi-national capital would be a very uneven contest."
   ["Ethics, Anarchy and Sustainable Development", pp. 95-118, Anarchist
   Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 104-5]

   So the conservation of endangered species or eco-systems is not
   automatically achieved using the market. This is especially the case
   when there is little, or no, economic value in the species or
   eco-system in question. The most obvious example is when there is only
   a limited profit to be made from a piece of land by maintaining it as
   the habitat of a rare species. If any alternative economic uses for
   that land yields a greater profit then that land will be developed.
   Moreover, if a species looses its economic value as a commodity then
   the property owners will become indifferent to its survival. Prices
   change and so an investment which made sense today may not look so good
   tomorrow. So if the market price of a resource decreases then it
   becomes unlikely that its ecological benefits will outweigh its
   economic ones. Overall, regardless of the wider ecological importance
   of a specific eco-system or species it is likely that their owner will
   prioritise short-term profits over environmental concerns. It should go
   without saying that threatened or endangered eco-systems and species
   will be lost under a privatised regime as it relies on the willingness
   of profit-orientated companies and individuals to take a loss in order
   to protect the environment.

   Overall, advocates of market based environmentalism need to present a
   case that all plants, animals and eco-systems are valuable commodities
   in the same way as, say, fish are. While a case for market-based
   environmentalism can be made by arguing that fish have a market price
   and, as such, owners of lakes, rivers and oceans would have an
   incentive to keep their waters clean in order to sell fish on the
   market, the same cannot be said of all species and habitats. Simply
   put, not all creatures, plants and eco-systems with an ecological value
   will have an economic one as well.

   Moreover, markets can send mixed messages about the environmental
   policies which should be pursued. This may lead to over investment in
   some areas and then a slump. For example, rising demand for recycled
   goods may inspire an investment boom which, in turn, may lead to
   over-supply and then a crash, with plants closing as the price falls
   due to increased supply. Recycling may then become economically
   unviable, even though it remains ecologically essential. In addition,
   market prices hardly provide an accurate signal regarding the "correct"
   level of ecological demands in a society as they are constrained by
   income levels and reflect the economic pressures people are under.
   Financial security and income level play a key role, for in the market
   not all votes are equal. A market based allocation of environmental
   goods and bads does not reflect the obvious fact the poor may appear to
   value environmental issues less than the wealthy in this scheme simply
   because their preferences (as expressed in the market) are limited by
   lower budgets.

   Ultimately, market demand can change without the underlying demand for
   a specific good changing. For example, since the 1970s the real wages
   of most Americans have stagnated while inequality has soared. As a
   result, fewer households can afford to go on holidays to wilderness
   areas or buy more expensive ecologically friendly products. Does that
   imply that the people involved now value the environment less simply
   because they now find it harder to make ends meet? Equally, if falling
   living standards force people to take jobs with dangerous environmental
   consequences does than really provide an accurate picture of people's
   desires? It takes a giant leap of faith (in the market) to assume that
   falling demand for a specific environmental good implies that reducing
   environmental damage has become less valuable to people. Economic
   necessity may compel people to act against their best impulses, even
   strongly felt natural values (an obvious example is that during
   recessions people may be more willing to tolerate greenhouse gas
   emissions simply because they need the work).

   Nor can it be claimed that all the relevant factors in ecological
   decision making can take the commodity form, i.e. be given a price.
   This means that market prices do not, in fact, actually reflect
   people's environmental values. Many aspects of our environment simply
   cannot be given a market price (how can you charge people to look at
   beautiful scenery?). Then there is the issue of how to charge a price
   which reflects the demand of people who wish to know that, say, the
   rainforest or wilderness exists and is protected but who will never
   visit either? Nor are future generations taken into account by a value
   that reflects current willingness to pay and might not be consistent
   with long-term welfare or even survival. And how do you factor in the
   impact a cleaner environment has on protecting or extending human
   lives? Surely a healthy environment is worth much more than simply lost
   earnings and the medical bills and clean-up activities saved? At best,
   you could factor this in by assuming that the wage premium of workers
   in dangerous occupations reflects it but a human life is, surely, worth
   more than the wages required to attract workers into dangerous working
   conditions. Wages are not an objective measure of the level of
   environmental risks workers are willing to tolerate as they are
   influenced by the overall state of the economy, the balance of class
   power and a whole host of other factors. Simply put, fear of
   unemployment and economic security will ensure that workers tolerate
   jobs that expose them and their communities to high levels of
   environmental dangers.

   Economic necessity drives decisions in the so-called "free" market
   (given a choice between clean air and water and having a job, many
   people would choose the latter simply because they have to in order to
   survive). These factors can only be ignored which means that
   environmental values cannot be treated like commodities and market
   prices cannot accurately reflect environmental values. The key thing to
   remember is that the market does not meet demand, it meets effective
   demand (i.e. demands backed up with money). Yet people want endangered
   species and eco-systems protected even if there is no effective demand
   for them on the market (nor could be). We will return to this critical
   subject in the [5]next section.

   Then there are the practicalities of privatising nature. How, for
   example, do we "privatise" the oceans? How do we "privatise" whales and
   sharks in order to conserve them? How do we know if a whaling ship
   kills "your" whale? And what if "your" shark feeds on "my" fish? From
   whom do we buy these resources in the first place? What courts must be
   set up to assess and try crimes and define damages? Then there are the
   costs of defining and enforcing private rights by means of the courts.
   This would mean individual case-by-case adjudications which increase
   transaction costs. Needless to say, such cases will be influenced by
   the resources available to both sides. Moreover, the judiciary is
   almost always the least accountable and representative branch of the
   state and so turning environmental policy decisions over to them will
   hardly ensure that public concerns are at the foremost of any decision
   (such a move would also help undermine trial by jury as juries often
   tend to reward sizeable damages against corporations in such cases, a
   factor corporations are all too aware of).

   This brings us to the problem of actually proving that the particles of
   a specific firm has inflicted a specific harm on a particular person
   and their property. Usually, there are multiple firms engaging in
   polluting the atmosphere and it would be difficult, if not impossible,
   to legally establish the liability of any particular firm. How to
   identify which particular polluter caused the smog which damaged your
   lungs and garden? Is it an individual company? A set of companies? All
   companies? Or is it transportation? In which case, is it the specific
   car which finally caused your cancer or a specific set of car uses? Or
   all car users? Or is it the manufacturers for producing such dangerous
   products in the first place?

   Needless to say, even this possibility is limited to the current
   generation. Pollution afflicts future generations as well and it is
   impossible for their interests to be reflected in court for "future
   harm" is not the question, only present harm counts. Nor can non-human
   species or eco-systems sue for damage, only their owners can and, as
   noted above, they may find it more profitable to tolerate (or even
   encourage) pollution than sue. Given that non-owners cannot sue as they
   are not directly harmed, the fate of the planet will rest in the hands
   of the property-owning class and so the majority are effectively
   dispossessed of any say over their environment beyond what their money
   can buy. Transforming ecological concerns into money ensures a monopoly
   by the wealthy few:

     "In other words, the environment is assumed to be something that can
     be 'valued,' in a similar way that everything else is assigned a
     value within the market economy.

     "However, apart from the fact that there is no way to put an
     'objective' value on most of the elements that constitute the
     environment (since they affect a subjective par excellence factor,
     i.e. the quality of life), the solution suggested . . . implies the
     extension of the marketisation process to the environment itself. In
     other words, it implies the assignment of a market value to the
     environment . . . so that the effects of growth onto it are
     'internalised' . . . The outcome of such a process is easily
     predictable: the environment will either be put under the control of
     the economic elites that control the market economy (in case an
     actual market value be assigned to it) or the state (in case an
     imputed value is only possible). In either case, not only the arrest
     of the ecological damage is -- at least -- doubtful, but the control
     over Nature by elites who aim to dominate it -- using 'green'
     prescriptions this time -- is perpetuated."
     [Takis Fotopoulous, "Development or Democracy?", pp. 57-92, Society
     and Nature, No. 7, pp. 79-80]

   Another key problem with using private property in regard to
   environmental issues is that they are almost always reactive, almost
   never proactive. Thus the pollution needs to have occurred before court
   actions are taken as strict liability generally provides after-the-fact
   compensation for injuries received. If someone does successfully sue
   for damages, the money received can hardly replace an individual or
   species or eco-system. At best, it could be argued that the threat of
   being sued will stop environmentally damaging activities but there is
   little evidence that this works. If a company concludes that the
   damages incurred by court action is less than the potential profits to
   be made, then they will tolerate the possibility of court action
   (particularly if they feel that potential victims do not have the time
   or resources available to sue). This kind of decision was most
   infamously done by General Motors when it designed its Malibu car. The
   company estimated that the cost of court awarded damages per car was
   less than ensuring that the car did not explode during certain kinds of
   collusion and so allowed people to die in fuel-fed fires rather than
   alter the design. Unfortunately for GM, the jury was horrified (on
   appeal, the damages were substantially reduced). [Joel Bakan, The
   Corporation, pp. 61-5]

   So this means that companies seeking to maximise profits have an
   incentive to cut safety costs on the assumption that the risk of so
   doing will be sufficiently low to make it worthwhile and that any
   profits generated will more than cover the costs of any trial and
   damages imposed. As eco-anarchist David Watson noted in regards to the
   Prudhoe Bay disaster, it "should go without saying that Exxon and its
   allies don't try their best to protect the environment or human health.
   Capitalist institutions produce to accumulate power and wealth, not for
   any social good. Predictably, in order to cut costs, Exxon steadily
   dismantled what emergency safeguards it had throughout the 1980s,
   pointing to environmental studies showing a major spill as so unlikely
   that preparation was unnecessary. So when the inevitable came crashing
   down, the response was complete impotence and negligence." [Against the
   Megamachine, p. 57] As such, it cannot be stressed too much that the
   only reason companies act any different (if and when they do) is
   because outside agitators -- people who understand and cared about the
   planet and people more than they did about company profits --
   eventually forced them to.

   So given all this, it is clear that privatising nature is no guarantee
   that environmental problems will be reduced. In fact, it is more likely
   to have the opposite effect. Even its own advocates suggest that their
   solution may produce more pollution than the current system of state
   regulation. Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal put it this way:

     "If markets produce 'too little' clean water because dischargers do
     not have to pay for its use, then political solutions are equally
     likely to produce 'too much' clean water because those who enjoy the
     benefits do not pay the cost . . . Just as pollution externalities
     can generate too much dirty air, political externalities can
     generate too much water storage, clear-cutting, wilderness, or water
     quality . . . Free market environmentalism emphasises the importance
     of market process in determining optimal amounts of resource use."
     [Free Market Environmentalism, p. 23]

   What kind of environmentalism considers the possibility of "too much"
   clean air and water? This means, ironically, that from the perspective
   of free-market "environmentalism" that certain ecological features may
   be over-protected as a result of the influence of non-economic goals
   and priorities. Given that this model is proposed by many corporate
   funded think tanks, it is more than likely that their sponsors think
   there is "too much" clean air and water, "too much" wilderness and "too
   much" environmental goods. In other words, the "optimal" level of
   pollution is currently too low as it doubtful that corporations are
   seeking to increase their costs of production by internalising even
   more externalities.

   Equally, we can be sure that "too much" pollution "is where the company
   polluting the water has to pay too much to clean up the mess they make.
   It involves a judgement that costs to the company are somehow
   synonymous with costs to the community and therefore can be weighed
   against benefits to the community." Such measures "grant the highest
   decision-making power over environmental quality to those who currently
   make production decisions. A market system gives power to those most
   able to pay. Corporations and firms, rather than citizens or
   environmentalists, will have the choice about whether to pollute (and
   pay the charges or buy credits to do so)." [Sharon Beder, Global Spin,
   p. 104]

   The surreal notion of "too much" clean environment does indicate
   another key problem with this approach, namely its confusion of need
   and demand with effective demand. The fact is that people may desire a
   clean environment, but they may not be able to afford to pay for it on
   the market. In a similar way, there can be "too much" food while people
   are starving to death simply because people cannot afford to pay for it
   (there is no effective demand for food, but an obvious pressing need).
   Much the same can be said of environment goods. A lack of demand for a
   resource today does not mean it is not valued by individuals nor does
   it mean that it will not be valued in the future. However, in the
   short-term focus produced by the market such goods will be long-gone,
   replaced by more profitable investments.

   The underlying assumption is that a clean environment is a luxury which
   we must purchase from property owners rather than a right we have as
   human beings. Even if we assume the flawed concept of self-ownership,
   the principle upon which defenders of capitalism tend to justify their
   system, the principle should be that our ownership rights in our bodies
   excludes it being harmed by the actions of others. In other words, a
   clean environment should be a basic right for all. Privatising the
   environment goes directly against this basic ecological insight.

   The state's environmental record has often been terrible, particularly
   as its bureaucrats have been influenced by private interest groups when
   formulating and implementing environmental policies. The state is far
   more likely to be "captured" by capitalist interests than by
   environmental groups or even the general community. Moreover, its
   bureaucrats have all too often tended to weight the costs and benefits
   of specific projects in such a way as to ensure that any really desired
   ones will go ahead, regardless of what local people want or what the
   environmental impact will really be. Such projects, needless to say,
   will almost always have powerful economic interests behind them and
   will seek to ensure that "development" which fosters economic growth is
   pursued. This should be unsurprising. If we assume, as "market
   advocates" do, that state officials seek to further their own interests
   then classes with the most economic wealth are most likely to be able
   to do that the best. That the state will reflect the interests of those
   with most private property and marginalise the property-less should,
   therefore, come as no surprise.

   Yet the state is not immune to social pressure from the general public
   or the reality of environmental degradation. This is proved, in its own
   way, by the rise of corporate PR, lobbying and think-tanks into
   multi-million pound industries. So while the supporters of the market
   stress its ability to change in the face of consumer demand, their view
   of the alternatives is extremely static and narrow. They fail,
   unsurprisingly, to consider the possibility of alternative forms of
   social organisation. Moreover, they also fail to mention that popular
   struggles can influence the state by means of direct action. For them,
   state officials will always pursue their own private interests,
   irrespective of popular pressures and social struggles (or, for that
   matter, the impact of corporate lobbying). While it is possible that
   the state will favour specific interests and policies, it does not mean
   that it cannot be forced to consider wider ones by the general public
   (until such time as it can be abolished, of course).

   As we discussed in [6]section D.1.5, the fact the state can be
   pressured by the general public is precisely why certain of its
   secondary functions have been under attack by corporations and the
   wealthy (a task which their well-funded think-tanls provide the
   rationales for). If all this is the case (and it is), then why expect
   cutting out the middle-person by privatising nature to improve matters?
   By its own logic, therefore, privatising nature is hardly going to
   produce a better environment as it is unlikely that corporations would
   fund policies which would result in more costs for themselves and less
   access to valuable natural resources. As free market environmentalism
   is premised on economic solutions to ecological problems and assumes
   that economic agents will act in ways which maximise their own benefit,
   such an obvious conclusion should come naturally to its advocates. For
   some reason, it does not.

   Ultimately, privatising nature rests on the ridiculous notion that a
   clean environment is a privilege which we must buy rather than a right.
   Under "free market environmentalism" private property is assumed to be
   the fundamental right while there is no right to a clean and
   sustainable environment. In other words, the interests of property
   owners are considered the most important factor and the rest of us are
   left with the possibility of asking them for certain environmental
   goods which they may supply if they make a profit from so doing. This
   prioritisation and categorisation is by no means obvious and
   uncontroversial. Surely the right to a clean and liveable environment
   is more fundamental than those associated with property? If we assume
   this then the reduction of pollution, soil erosion, and so forth are
   not goods for which we must pay but rather rights to which we are
   entitled. In other words, protecting species and ecosystem as well as
   preventing avoidable deaths and illnesses are fundamental issues which
   simply transcend the market. Being asked to put a price on nature and
   people is, at best, meaningless, or, at worse, degrading. It suggests
   that the person simply does not understand why these things are
   important.

   But why should we be surprised? After all, private property bases
   itself on the notion that we must buy access to land and other
   resources required for a fully human life. Why should a clean
   environment and a healthy body be any different? Yet again, we see the
   derived rights (namely private property) trumping the fundamental base
   right (namely the right of self-ownership which should automatically
   exclude harm by pollution). That this happens so consistently should
   not come as too great a surprise, given that the theory was invented to
   justify the appropriation of the fruits of the worker's labour by the
   property owner (see [7]section B.4.2). Why should we be surprised that
   this is now being used to appropriate the rights of individuals to a
   clean environment and turn it into yet another means of expropriating
   them from their birthrights?

E.3.2 How does economic power contribute to the ecological crisis?

   So far in this section we have discussed why markets fail to allocate
   environmental resources. This is due to information blocks and costs,
   lack of fully internalised prices (externalities) and the existence of
   public goods. Individual choices are shaped by the information
   available to them about the consequences of their actions, and the
   price mechanism blocks essential aspects of this and so information is
   usually partial at best within the market. Worse, it is usually
   distorted by advertising and the media as well as corporate and
   government spin and PR. Local knowledge is undermined by market power,
   leading to unsustainable practices to reap maximum short term profits.
   Profits as the only decision making criteria also leads to
   environmental destruction as something which may be ecologically
   essential may not be economically viable. All this means that the price
   of a good cannot indicate its environmental impact and so that market
   failure is pervasive in the environmental area. Moreover, capitalism is
   as unlikely to produce their fair distribution of environmental goods
   any more than any other good or resource due to differences in income
   and so demand (particularly as it takes the existing distribution of
   wealth as the starting point). The reality of our environmental
   problems provides ample evidence for this analysis.

   During this discussion we have touched upon another key issue, namely
   how wealth can affect how environmental and other externalities are
   produced and dealt with in a capitalist system. Here we extend our
   critique by addressed an issue we have deliberately ignored until now,
   namely the distribution and wealth and its resulting economic power.
   The importance of this factor cannot be stressed too much, as "market
   advocates" at best downplay it or, at worse, ignore it or deny it
   exists. However, it plays the same role in environmental matters as it
   does in, say, evaluating individual freedom within capitalism. Once we
   factor in economic power the obvious conclusion is the market based
   solutions to the environment will result in, as with freedom, people
   selling it simply to survive under capitalism (as we discussed in
   [8]section B.4, for example).

   It could be argued that strictly enforcing property rights so that
   polluters can be sued for any damages made will solve the problem of
   externalities. If someone suffered pollution damage on their property
   which they had not consented to then they could issue a lawsuit in
   order to get the polluter to pay compensation for the damage they have
   done. This could force polluters to internalise the costs of pollution
   and so the threat of lawsuits can be used as an incentive to avoid
   polluting others.

   While this approach could be considered as part of any solution to
   environmental problems under capitalism, the sad fact is it ignores the
   realities of the capitalist economy. The key phrase here is "not
   consented to" as it means that pollution would be fine if the others
   agree to it (in return, say, for money). This has obvious implications
   for the ability of capitalism to reduce pollution. For just as working
   class people "consent" to hierarchy within the workplace in return for
   access to the means of life, so to would they "consent" to pollution.
   In other words, the notion that pollution can be stopped by means of
   private property and lawsuits ignores the issue of class and economic
   inequality. Once these are factored in, it soon becomes clear that
   people may put up with externalities imposed upon them simply because
   of economic necessity and the pressure big business can inflict.

   The first area to discuss is inequalities in wealth and income. Not all
   economic actors have equal resources. Corporations and the wealthy have
   far greater resources at their disposal and can spend millions of
   pounds in producing PR and advertising (propaganda), fighting court
   cases, influencing the political process, funding "experts" and
   think-tanks, and, if need be, fighting strikes and protests. Companies
   can use "a mix of cover-up, publicity campaigns and legal manoeuvres to
   continue operations unimpeded." They can go to court to try an "block
   more stringent pollution controls." [David Watson, Against the
   Megamachine, p. 56] Also while, in principle, the legal system offers
   equal protection to all in reality, wealthy firms and individuals have
   more resources than members of the general public. This means that they
   can employ large numbers of lawyers and draw out litigation procedures
   for years, if not decades.

   This can be seen around us today. Unsurprisingly, the groups which bear
   a disproportionate share of environmental burdens are the poorest ones.
   Those at the bottom of the social hierarchy have less resources
   available to fight for their rights. They may not be aware of their
   rights in specific situations and not organised enough to resist. This,
   of course, explains why companies spend so much time attacking unions
   and other forms of collective organisation which change that situation.
   Moreover as well as being less willing to sue, those on lower income
   may be more willing to be bought-off due to their economic situation.
   After all, tolerating pollution in return for some money is more
   tempting when you are struggling to make ends meet.

   Then there is the issue of effective demand. Simply put, allocation of
   resources on the market is based on money and not need. If more money
   can be made in, say, meeting the consumption demands of the west rather
   than the needs of local people then the market will "efficiently"
   allocate resources away from the latter to the former regardless of the
   social and ecological impact. Take the example of Biofuels which have
   been presented by some as a means of fuelling cars in a less
   environmentally destructive way. Yet this brings people and cars into
   direct competition over the most "efficient" (i.e. most profitable) use
   of land. Unfortunately, effective demand is on the side of cars as
   their owners usually live in the developed countries. This leads to a
   situation where land is turned from producing food to producing
   biofuels, the net effect of which is to reduce supply of food, increase
   its price and so produce an increased likelihood of starvation. It also
   gives more economic incentive to destroy rainforests and other fragile
   eco-systems in order to produce more biofuel for the market.

   Green socialist John O'Neill simply states the obvious:

     "[The] treatment of efficiency as if it were logically independent
     of distribution is at best misleading, for the determination of
     efficiency already presupposes a given distribution of rights . . .
     [A specific outcome] is always relative to an initial starting point
     . . . If property rights are changed so also is what is efficient.
     Hence, the opposition between distributional and efficiency criteria
     is misleading. Existing costs and benefits themselves are the
     product of a given distribution of property rights. Since costs are
     not independent of rights they cannot guide the allocation of
     rights. Different initial distributions entail differences in whose
     preferences are to count. Environmental conflicts are often about
     who has rights to environment goods, and hence who is to bear the
     costs and who is to bear the benefits . . . Hence, environmental
     policy and resource decision-making cannot avoid making normative
     choices which include questions of resource distribution and the
     relationships between conflicting rights claims . . . The monetary
     value of a 'negative externality' depends on social institutions and
     distributional conflicts -- willing to pay measures, actual or
     hypothetical, consider preferences of the higher income groups [as]
     more important than those of lower ones. If the people damaged are
     poor, the monetary measure of the cost of damage will be lower --
     'the poor sell cheap.'" [Markets, Deliberation and Environment, pp.
     58-9]

   Economic power also impacts on the types of contracts people make. It
   does not take too much imagination to envision the possibility that
   companies may make signing waivers that release it from liability a
   condition for working there. This could mean, for example, a firm would
   invest (or threaten to move production) only on condition that the
   local community and its workers sign a form waiving the firm of any
   responsibility for damages that may result from working there or from
   its production process. In the face of economic necessity, the workers
   may be desperate enough to take the jobs and sign the waivers. The same
   would be the case for local communities, who tolerate the environmental
   destruction they are subjected to simply to ensure that their economy
   remains viable. This already happens, with some companies including a
   clause in their contracts which states the employee cannot join a
   union.

   Then there is the threat of legal action by companies. "Every year,"
   records green Sharon Beder, "thousands of Americans are sued for
   speaking out against governments and corporations. Multi-million dollar
   law suits are being filed against individual citizens and groups for
   circulating petitions, writing to public officials, speaking at, or
   even just attending, public meetings, organising a boycott and engaging
   in peaceful demonstrations." This trend has spread to other countries
   and the intent is the same: to silence opposition and undermine
   campaigns. This tactic is called a SLAPP (for "Strategic Lawsuits
   Against Public Participation") and is a civil court action which does
   not seek to win compensation but rather aims "to harass, intimidate and
   distract their opponents . . . They win the political battle, even when
   they lose the court case, if their victims and those associated with
   them stop speaking out against them." This is an example of economic
   power at work, for the cost to a firm is just part of doing business
   but could bankrupt an individual or environmental organisation. In this
   way "the legal system best serves those who have large financial
   resources at their disposal" as such cases take "an average of three
   years to be settled, and even if the person sued wins, can cost tens of
   thousands of dollars in legal fees. Emotional stress, disillusionment,
   diversion of time and energy, and even divisions within families,
   communities and groups can also result." [Global Spin, pp. 63-7]

   A SLAPP usually deters those already involved from continuing to freely
   participate in debate and protest as well as deterring others from
   joining in. The threat of a court case in the face of economic power
   usually ensures that SLAPPS do not go to trial and so its objective of
   scaring off potential opponents usually works quickly. The reason can
   be seen from the one case in which a SLAPP backfired, namely the
   McLibel trial. After successfully forcing apologies from major UK media
   outlets like the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian by threatening legal
   action for critical reporting of the company, McDonald's turned its
   attention to the small eco-anarchist group London Greenpeace (which is
   not affiliated with Greenpeace International). This group had produced
   a leaflet called "What's Wrong with McDonald's" and the company sent
   spies to its meetings to identify people to sue. Two of the anarchists
   refused to be intimidated and called McDonald's bluff. Representing
   themselves in court, the two unemployed activists started the longest
   trial in UK history. After three years and a cost of around 10
   million, the trial judge found that some of the claims were untrue
   (significantly, McDonald's had successfully petitioned the judge not to
   have a jury for the case, arguing that the issues were too complex for
   the public to understand). While the case was a public relations
   disaster for the company, McDonald's keeps going as before using the
   working practices exposed in the trial and remains one of the world's
   largest corporations confident that few people would have the time and
   resources to fight SLAPPs (although the corporation may now think twice
   before suing anarchists!).

   Furthermore, companies are known to gather lists of known
   "trouble-makers" These "black lists" of people who could cause
   companies "trouble" (i.e., by union organising or suing employers over
   "property rights" issues) would often ensure employee "loyalty,"
   particularly if new jobs need references. Under wage labour, causing
   one's employer "problems" can make one's current and future position
   difficult. Being black-listed would mean no job, no wages, and little
   chance of being re-employed. This would be the result of continually
   suing in defence of one's property rights -- assuming, of course, that
   one had the time and money necessary to sue in the first place. Hence
   working-class people are a weak position to defend their rights under
   capitalism due to the power of employers both within and without the
   workplace. All these are strong incentives not to rock the boat,
   particularly if employees have signed a contract ensuring that they
   will be fired if they discuss company business with others (lawyers,
   unions, media, etc.).

   Economic power producing terrible contracts does not affect just
   labour, it also effects smaller capitalists as well. As we discussed in
   [9]section C.4, rather than operating "efficiently" to allocate
   resources within perfect competition any real capitalist market is
   dominated by a small group of big companies who make increased profits
   at the expense of their smaller rivals. This is achieved, in part,
   because their size gives such firms significant influence in the
   market, forcing smaller companies out of business or into making
   concessions to get and maintain contracts.

   The negative environmental impact of such a process should be obvious.
   For example, economic power places immense pressures towards
   monoculture in agriculture. In the UK the market is dominated by a few
   big supermarkets. Their suppliers are expected to produce fruits and
   vegetables which meet the requirements of the supermarkets in terms of
   standardised products which are easy to transport and store. The
   large-scale nature of the operations ensure that farmers across Britain
   (indeed, the world) have to turn their farms into suppliers of these
   standardised goods and so the natural diversity of nature is
   systematically replaced by a few strains of specific fruits and
   vegetables over which the consumer can pick. Monopolisation of markets
   results in the monoculture of nature.

   This process is at work in all capitalist nations. In American, for
   example, the "centralised purchasing decisions of the large restaurant
   chains and their demand for standardised products have given a handful
   of corporations an unprecedented degree of power over the nation's food
   supply . . . obliterating regional differences, and spreading identical
   stores throughout the country . . . The key to a successful franchise .
   . . can be expressed in one world: 'uniformity.'" This has resulted in
   the industrialisation of food production, with the "fast food chains
   now stand[ing] atop a huge food-industrial complex that has gained
   control of American agriculture . . . large multinationals . . .
   dominate one commodity market after another . . . The fast food chain's
   vast purchasing power and their demand for a uniform product have
   encouraged fundamental changes in how cattle are raised, slaughter, and
   processed into ground beef. These changes have made meatpacking . . .
   into the most dangerous job in the United States . . . And the same
   meat industry practices that endanger these workers have facilitated
   the introduction of deadly pathogens . . . into America's hamburger
   meat." [Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, p. 5 and pp. 8-9]

   Award winning journalist Eric Schlosser has presented an excellent
   insight in this centralised and concentrated food-industrial complex in
   his book Fast Food Nation. Schlosser, of course, is not alone in
   documenting the fundamentally anti-ecological nature of the capitalism
   and how an alienated society has created an alienated means of feeding
   itself. As a non-anarchist, he does fail to drawn the obvious
   conclusion (namely abolish capitalism) but his book does present a good
   overview of the nature of the processed at work and what drives them.
   Capitalism has created a world where even the smell and taste of food
   is mass produced as the industrialisation of agriculture and food
   processing has lead to the product (it is hard to call it food)
   becoming bland and tasteless and so chemicals are used to counteract
   the effects of producing it on such a scale. It is standardised food
   for a standardised society. As he memorably notes: "Millions of . . .
   people at that very moment were standing at the same counter, ordering
   the same food from the same menu, food that tasted everywhere the
   same." The Orwellian world of modern corporate capitalism is seen in
   all its glory. A world in which the industry group formed to combat
   Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation is called
   "Alliance for Workplace Safety" and where the processed food's taste
   has to have the correct "mouthfeel." Unsurprisingly, the executives of
   these companies talk about "the very essence of freedom" and yet their
   corporation's "first commandant is that only production counts . . .
   The employee's duty is to follow orders. Period." In this irrational
   world, technology will solve all our problems, even the ones it
   generates itself. For example, faced with the serious health problems
   generated by the industrialisation of meat processing, the meatpacking
   industry advocated yet more technology to "solve" the problems caused
   by the existing technology. Rather than focusing on the primary causes
   of meat contamination, they proposed irradiating food. Of course the
   firms involved want to replace the word "irradiation" with the phrase
   "cold pasteurisation" due to the public being unhappy with the idea of
   their food being subject to radiation.

   All this is achievable due to the economic power of fewer and fewer
   firms imposing costs onto their workers, their customers and,
   ultimately, the planet.

   The next obvious factor associated with economic power are the
   pressures associated with capital markets and mobility. Investors and
   capitalists are always seeking the maximum return and given a choice
   between lower profits due to greater environmental regulation and
   higher profits due to no such laws, the preferred option will hardly
   need explaining. After all, the investor is usually concerned with the
   returns they get in their investment, not in its physical condition nor
   in the overall environmental state of the planet (which is someone
   else's concern). This means that investors and companies interest is in
   moving their capital to areas which return most money, not which have
   the best environmental impact and legacy. Thus the mobility of capital
   has to be taken into account. This is an important weapon in ensuring
   that the agenda of business is untroubled by social concerns and
   environmental issues. After all, if the owners and managers of capital
   consider that a state's environmental laws too restrictive then it can
   simply shift investments to states with a more favourable business
   climate. This creates significant pressures on communities to minimise
   environmental protection both in order to retain existing business and
   attract new ones.

   Let us assume that a company is polluting a local area. It is usually
   the case that capitalist owners rarely live near the workplaces they
   own, unlike workers and their families. This means that the decision
   makers do not have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
   The "free market" capitalist argument would be, again, that those
   affected by the pollution would sue the company. We will assume that
   concentrations of wealth have little or no effect on the social system
   (which is a highly unlikely assumption, but never mind). Surely, if
   local people did successfully sue, the company would be harmed
   economically -- directly, in terms of the cost of the judgement,
   indirectly in terms of having to implement new, eco-friendly processes.
   Hence the company would be handicapped in competition, and this would
   have obvious consequences for the local (and wider) economy.

   This gives the company an incentive to simply move to an area that
   would tolerate the pollution if it were sued or even threatened with a
   lawsuit. Not only would existing capital move, but fresh capital would
   not invest in an area where people stand up for their rights. This --
   the natural result of economic power -- would be a "big stick" over the
   heads of the local community. And when combined with the costs and
   difficulties in taking a large company to court, it would make suing an
   unlikely option for most people. That such a result would occur can be
   inferred from history, where we see that multinational firms have moved
   production to countries with little or no pollution laws and that court
   cases take years, if not decades, to process.

   This is the current situation on the international market, where there
   is competition in terms of environment laws. Unsurprisingly, industry
   tends to move to countries which tolerate high levels of pollution
   (usually because of authoritarian governments which, like the
   capitalists themselves, simply ignore the wishes of the general
   population). Thus we have a market in pollution laws which,
   unsurprisingly, supplies the ability to pollute to meet the demand for
   it. This means that developing countries "are nothing but a dumping
   ground and pool of cheap labour for capitalist corporations. Obsolete
   technology is shipped there along with the production of chemicals,
   medicines and other products banned in the developed world. Labour is
   cheap, there are few if any safety standards, and costs are cut. But
   the formula of cost-benefit still stands: the costs are simply borne by
   others, by the victims of Union Carbide, Dow, and Standard Oil." [David
   Watson, Op. Cit., p. 44] This, it should be noted, makes perfect
   economic sense. If an accident happened and the poor actually manage to
   successfully sue the company, any payments will reflect their lost of
   earnings (i.e., not very much).

   As such, there are other strong economic reasons for doing this kind of
   pollution exporting. You can estimate the value of production lost
   because of ecological damage and the value of earnings lost through its
   related health problems as well as health care costs. This makes it
   more likely that polluting industries will move to low-income areas or
   countries where the costs of pollution are correspondingly less
   (particularly compared to the profits made in selling the products in
   high-income areas). Rising incomes makes such goods as safety, health
   and the environment more valuable as the value of life is, for working
   people, based on their wages. Therefore, we would expect pollution to
   be valued less when working class people are affected by it. In other
   words, toxic dumps will tend to cluster around poorer areas as the
   costs of paying for the harm done will be much less. The same logic
   underlies the arguments of those who suggest that Third World countries
   should be dumping grounds for toxic industrial wastes since life is
   cheap there

   This was seen in early 1992 when a memo that went out under the name of
   the then chief economist of the World Bank, Lawrence Summers, was
   leaked to the press. Discussing the issue of "dirty" Industries, the
   memo argued that the World Bank should "be encouraging MORE migration
   of the dirty industries" to Less Developed Countries and provided three
   reasons. Firstly, the "measurements of the costs of health impairing
   pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and
   mortality" and so "pollution should be done in the country with the
   lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages."
   Secondly, "that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly
   UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low
   compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." Thirdly, the "demand for a
   clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have
   very high income elasticity." Concern over pollution related illness
   would be higher in a country where more children survive to get them.
   "Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is
   about visibility impairing particulates . . . Clearly trade in goods
   that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing.
   While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a
   non-tradable." The memo notes "the economic logic behind dumping a load
   of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should
   face up to that" and ends by stating that the "problem with the
   arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution" in the
   third world "could be turned around and used more or less effectively
   against every Bank proposal for liberalisation." [The Economist,
   08/02/1992]

   While Summers accepted the criticism for the memo, it was actually
   written by Lant Pritchett, a prominent economist at the Bank. Summers
   claimed he was being ironic and provocative. The Economist,
   unsurprisingly, stated "his economics was hard to answer" while
   criticising the language used. This was because clean growth may slower
   than allowing pollution to occur and this would stop "helping millions
   of people in the third world to escape their poverty." [15/02/1992] So
   not only is poisoning the poor with pollution is economically correct,
   it is in fact required by morality. Ignoring the false assumption that
   growth, any kind of growth, always benefits the poor and the utter
   contempt shown for both those poor themselves and our environment what
   we have here is the cold logic that drives economic power to move
   location to maintain its right to pollute our common environment.
   Economically, it is perfectly logical but, in fact, totally insane
   (this helps explain why making people "think like an economist" takes
   so many years of indoctrination within university walls and why so few
   achieve it).

   Economic power works in other ways as well. A classic example of this
   at work can be seen from the systematic destruction of public transport
   systems in America from the 1930s onwards (see David St. Clair's The
   Motorization of American Cities for a well-researched account of this).
   These systems were deliberately bought by automotive (General Motors),
   oil, and tire corporations in order to eliminate a less costly (both
   economically and ecologically) competitor to the automobile. This was
   done purely to maximise sales and profits for the companies involved
   yet it transformed the way of life in scores of cities across America.
   It is doubtful that if environmental concerns had been considered
   important at the time that they would have stopped this from happening.
   This means that individual consumption decisions will be made within an
   market whose options can be limited simply by a large company buying
   out and destroying alternatives.

   Then there is the issue of economic power in the media. This is well
   understood by corporations, who fund PR, think-tanks and "experts" to
   counteract environmental activism and deny, for example, that humans
   are contributing to global warming. Thus we have the strange position
   that only Americans think that there is a debate on the causes of
   global warming rather than a scientific consensus. The actions of
   corporate funded "experts" and PR have ensured that particular outcome.
   As Sharon Beder recounts in her book Global Spin: The Corporate Assault
   on Environmentalism, a large amount of money is being spent on number
   sophisticated techniques to change the way people think about the
   environment, what causes the problems we face and what we can and
   should do about it. Compared to the resources of environmental and
   green organisations, it is unsurprising that this elaborate
   multi-billion pound industry has poisoned public debate on such a key
   issue for the future of humanity by propaganda and dis-information.

   Having substantial resources available means that the media can be used
   to further an anti-green agenda and dominate the debate (at least for a
   while). Take, as an example, The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book by
   Bjrn Lomborg (a political scientist and professor of statistics at the
   University of Aarhus in Denmark). When it was published in 2001, it
   caused a sensation with its claims that scientists and environmental
   organisations were making, at best, exaggerated and, at worse, false
   claims about the world's environmental problems. His conclusion was
   panglossian in nature, namely that there was not that much to worry
   about and we can continue as we are. That, of course, was music to the
   ears of those actively destroying the environment as it reduces the
   likelihood that any attempt will be made to stop them.

   Unsurprisingly, the book was heavily promoted by the usual suspects
   and, as a result received significant attention from the media.
   However, the extremely critical reviews and critiques it subsequently
   produced from expert scientists on the issues Lomborg discussed were
   less prominently reviewed in the media, if at all. That critics of the
   book argued that it was hardly an example of good science based on
   objectivity, understanding of the underlying concepts, appropriate
   statistical methods and careful peer review goes without saying. Sadly,
   the fact that numerous experts in the fields Lomborg discussed showed
   that his book was seriously flawed, misused data and statistics and
   marred by flawed logic and hidden value judgements was not given
   anything like the same coverage even though this information is far
   more important in terms of shaping public perception. Such works and
   their orchestrated media blitz provides those with a vested interest in
   the status quo with arguments that they should be allowed to continue
   their anti-environmental activities and agenda. Moreover, it takes up
   the valuable time of those experts who have to debunk the claims rather
   than do the research needed to understand the ecological problems we
   face and propose possible solutions.

   As well as spin and propaganda aimed at adults, companies are
   increasingly funding children's education. This development implies
   obvious limitations on the power of education to solve ecological
   problems. Companies will hardly provide teaching materials or fund
   schools which educate their pupils on the real causes of ecological
   problems. Unsurprisingly, a 1998 study in the US by the Consumers Union
   found that 80% of teaching material provided by companies was biased
   and provided students with incomplete or slanted information that
   favoured its sponsor's products and views [Schlosser, Op. Cit., p. 55]
   The more dependent a school is on corporate funds, the less likely it
   will be to teach its students the necessity to question the motivations
   and activities of business. That business will not fund education which
   it perceives as anti-business should go without saying. As Sharon Beder
   summarises, "the infiltration of school curricula through banning some
   texts and offering corporate-based curriculum material and lesson plans
   in their place can conflict with educational objectives, and also with
   the attainment of an undistorted understanding of environmental
   problems." [Op. Cit., pp. 172-3]

   This indicates the real problem of purely "educational" approaches to
   solving the ecological crisis, namely that the ruling elite controls
   education (either directly or indirectly). This is to be expected, as
   any capitalist elite must control education because it is an essential
   indoctrination tool needed to promote capitalist values and to train a
   large population of future wage-slaves in the proper habits of
   obedience to authority. Thus capitalists cannot afford to lose control
   of the educational system. And this means that such schools will not
   teach students what is really necessary to avoid ecological disaster:
   namely the dismantling of capitalism itself. And we may add,
   alternative schools (organised by libertarian unions and other
   associations) which used libertarian education to produce anarchists
   would hardly be favoured by companies and so be effectively
   black-listed - a real deterrent to their spreading through society. Why
   would a capitalist company employ a graduate of a school who would make
   trouble for them once employed as their wage slave?

   Finally, needless to say, the combined wealth of corporations and the
   rich outweighs that of even the best funded environmental group or
   organisation (or even all of them put together). This means that the
   idea of such groups buying, say, rainforest is unlikely to succeed as
   they simply do not have the resources needed -- they will be outbid by
   those who wish to develop wilderness regions. This is particularly the
   case once we accept the framework of economic self-interest assumed by
   market theory. This implies that organisations aiming to increase the
   income of individual's will be better funded than those whose aim is to
   preserve the environment for future generations. As recent developments
   show, companies can and do use that superior resources to wage a war
   for hearts and minds in all aspects of society, staring in the
   schoolroom. Luckily no amount of spin can nullify reality or the spirit
   of freedom and so this propaganda war will continue as long as
   capitalism does.

   In summary, market solutions to environmental problems under capitalism
   will always suffer from the fact that real markets are marked by
   economic inequalities and power.

E.3.3 Can capitalism's focus on short-term profitability deal with the
ecological crisis?

   No a word, no. This is another key problem associated with capitalism's
   ability to deal with the ecological crisis it helps create. Due to the
   nature of the market, firms are forced to focus on short-term
   profitability rather than long-term survival. This makes sense. If a
   company does not make money now, it will not be around later.

   This, obviously, drives the creation of "externalities" discussed in
   previous sections. Harmful environmental effects such as pollution,
   global warming, ozone depletion, and destruction of wildlife habitat
   are not counted as "costs of production" in standard methods of
   accounting because they are borne by everyone in the society. This
   gives companies a strong incentive to ignore such costs as competition
   forces firms to cut as many costs as possible in order to boost
   short-term profits.

   To give an obvious example, if a firm has to decide between installing
   a piece of costly equipment which reduces its pollution and continuing
   as it currently is, then it is more likely to do the latter. If the
   firm does invest then its costs are increased and it will lose its
   competitive edge compared to its rivals who do not make a similar
   investment. The "rational" decision is, therefore, not to invest,
   particularly if by externalising costs it can increase its profits or
   market share by cutting prices. In other words, the market rewards the
   polluters and this is a powerful incentive to maximise such activities.
   The market, in other words, provides incentives to firms to produce
   externalities as part their drive for short-term profitability. While
   this is rational from the firm's position, it is collectively
   irrational as the planet's ecology is harmed.

   The short-term perspective can also be seen by the tendency of firms to
   under-invest in developing risky new technologies. This is because
   basic research which may take years, if not decades, to develop and
   most companies are unwilling to take on that burden. Unsurprisingly,
   most advanced capitalist countries see such work funded by the state
   (as we noted in [10]section D.8, over 50% of total R&D funding has been
   provided by the federal state in the USA). Moreover, the state has
   provided markets for such products until such time as markets have
   appeared for them in the commercial sector. Thus capitalism, by itself,
   will tend to under-invest in long term projects:

     "in a competitive system you do short-term planning only . . . Let's
     take corporate managers, where there's no real confusion about what
     they're doing. They are maximising profit and market share in the
     short term. In fact, if they were not to do that, they would no
     longer exist. Let's be concrete. Suppose that some automobile
     company, say General Motors, decides to devote their resources to
     planning for something that will be profitable ten years from now.
     Suppose that's where they divert their resources: they want to think
     in some long-term conception of market dominance. Their rivals are
     going to maximising profit and power in the short term, and they're
     going to take over the market, and General Motors won't be in
     business. That's true for the owners and also for the managers. The
     managers want to stay managers. They can fight off hostile take-over
     bids, they can keep from being replaced, as long as they contribute
     to short-term profitability. As a result, long-term considerations
     are rarely considered in competitive systems." [Noam Chomsky,
     Language and Politics, p. 598]

   This does not mean that firms will not look into future products nor do
   research and development. Many do (particularly if helped by the
   state). Nor does it imply that some industries do not have a
   longer-term perspective. It simply shows that such activity is not the
   normal state of affairs. Moreover, any such "long-term" perspective is
   rarely more than a decade while an ecological perspective demands much
   more than this. This also applies to agriculture, which is increasingly
   being turned into agribusiness as small farmers are being driven out of
   business. Short-termism means that progress in agriculture is whatever
   increases the current yield of a crop even if means destroying the
   sources of fertility in the long run in order to maintain current
   fertility by adding more and more chemicals (which run off into rivers,
   seep into the water table and end up in the food itself.

   This kind of irrational short-term behaviour also afflicts capital
   markets as well. The process works in the same way Chomsky highlights.
   Suppose there are 3 companies, X, Y, and Z and suppose that company X
   invests in the project of developing a non-polluting technology within
   ten years. At the same time its competitors, Y and Z, will be putting
   their resources into increasing profits and market share in the coming
   days and months and over the next year. During that period, company X
   will be unable to attract enough capital from investors to carry out
   its plans, since investors will flock to the companies that are most
   immediately profitable. This means that the default position under
   capitalism is that the company (or country) with the lowest standards
   enjoys a competitive advantage, and drags down the standards of other
   companies (or countries). Sometimes, though, capital markets experience
   irrational bubbles. During the dot.com boom of the 1990s, investors did
   plough money into internet start-ups and losses were tolerated for a
   few years in the expectation of high profits in the near future. When
   that did not happen, the stock market crashed and investors turned away
   from that market in droves. If something similar happened to
   eco-technologies, the subsequent aftermath may mean that funding
   essential for redressing our interaction with the environment would not
   be forthcoming until the memories of the crash had disappeared in the
   next bubble frenzy.

   Besides, thanks to compound interest benefits far in the future have a
   very small present value. If $1 were left in a bank at 5% annual
   interest, it would be worth more than $2 million after 300 years. So if
   it costs $1 today to prevent ecological damage worth $2 million in the
   24th century then economic theory argues that our descendants would be
   better off with us putting that $1 in the bank. This would suggest that
   basing our responsibility to future generations on economics may not be
   the wisest course.

   The supporter of capitalism may respond by arguing that business
   leaders are as able to see long-term negative environmental effects as
   the rest of us. But this is to misunderstand the nature of the
   objection. It is not that business leaders as individuals are any less
   able to see what's happening to the environment. It is that if they
   want to keep their jobs they have to do what the system requires, which
   is to concentrate on what is most profitable in the short term. Thus if
   the president of company X has a mystical experience of oneness with
   nature and starts diverting profits into pollution control while the
   presidents of Y and Z continue with business as usual, the stockholders
   of company X will get a new president who is willing to focus on
   short-term profits like Y and Z. As Joel Bakan stresses, managers of
   corporations "have a legal duty to put shareholders' interests above
   all others . . . Corporate social responsibility is thus illegal -- at
   least when it is genuine." Ones which "choose social and environmental
   goals over profits -- who try and act morally -- are, in fact, immoral"
   as their role in both the economy and economic ideology is to "make
   much as much money as possible for shareholders." [The Corporation, pp.
   36-7 and p. 34]

   In general, then, if one company tries to devote resources to develop
   products or processes that are ecologically responsible, they will
   simply be undercut by other companies which are not doing so (assuming
   such products or processes are more expensive, as they generally are as
   the costs are not inflicted on other people and the planet). While some
   products may survive in small niche markets which reflect the fact that
   many people are willing and able to pay more to protect their world, in
   general they will not be competitive in the market and so the
   ecologically damaging products will have the advantage. In other words,
   capitalism has a built-in bias toward short-term gain, and this bias --
   along with its inherent need for growth -- means the planet will
   continue its free-fall toward ecological disaster so long as capitalism
   exists.

   This suggests that attempts to address ecological problems like
   pollution and depletion of resources by calling for public education
   are unlikely to work. While it is true that this will raise people's
   awareness to the point of creating enough demand for
   environment-friendly technologies and products that they will be
   profitable to produce, it does not solve the problem that the costs
   involved in doing such research now cannot be met by a possible future
   demand. Moreover, the costs of such technology can initially be quite
   high and so the effective demand for such products may not be
   sufficient. For example, energy-saving light bulbs have been around for
   some time but have been far more expensive that traditional ones. This
   means that for those on lower-incomes who would, in theory, benefit
   most from lower-energy bills cannot afford them. Thus their short-term
   income constrains undermine long-term benefits.

   Even if the research is completed, the market itself can stop products
   being used. For example, the ability to produce reasonably inexpensive
   solar photovoltaic power cells has existed for some time. The problem
   is that they are currently very expensive and so there is a limited
   demand for them. This means that no capitalist wants to risk investing
   in factory large enough to take advantage of the economies of scale
   possible. The net effect is that short-term considerations ensure that
   a viable eco-technology has been margainalised.

   This means that no amount of education can countermand the effects of
   market forces and the short-term perspective they inflict on us all. If
   faced with a tight budget and relatively expensive "ecological"
   products and technology, consumers and companies may be forced to
   choose the cheaper, ecologically unfriendly product to make ends meet
   or survive in the market. Under capitalism, we may be free to choose,
   but the options are usually lousy choices, and not the only ones
   potentially available in theory (this is a key problem with green
   consumerism -- see [11]section E.5).

   The short-termism of capitalism has produced, in effect, a system which
   is "a massive pyramid scheme that will collapse somewhere down the line
   when all the major players have already retired from the game. Of
   course when the last of these hustlers cash in their chips, there won't
   be any place left to retire to." [David Watson, Op. Cit., p. 57]

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE1.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE3.html#sece32
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE4.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE3.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE3.html#sece32
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD1.html#secd15
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html#secb42
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC4.html
  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD8.html
  11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE5.html
