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The Environment

A liberal view that doesn't answer the questions:

How could capitalism, a system based on profit and capital accumulation, protect nature? Could capitalist production develop technological means to maintain both: private accumulation and safe eco-systems? Could that happen without exploitation and obscene inequality, and with continuous growth?

We are seeing some movement towards green transport, for example. To what an extent though such a movement could be extended to encompass the major global industries without at the same time jeopardising the rate of profit?

Will states be able to impose new ways of production in a system where private owenership of such industries reign? Or, will states themselves carry out a change in investing in green and sustainable ways of how we produce, eat, and move?

Coronavirus is a warning to us to mend our broken relation with nature. Who's "us"? "Us" implies that we are all responsible and we should work together to mend our relation with nature. This is the same narrative I heard many years ago when individuals began talking about the emvironment, eating green, travelling less, printing less, etc. That is "a neoliberal con".

And it is not about consumption. Half of the world population are not consuming enough to maintain their bodies and souls. When Boris Johnson, for instance, says go shopping it is about consumerism and bying what we don't need. The last 40 years or so have created a whole culture around consumerism that redefined the meanings of 'freedom', 'democracy' and individualism and pir relation to the Other, including oir indifference to nature.
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