Sustainability and the System Problem
by Gar Alperovitz
Based on an address to the Executive Staff of the
President's Council on Sustainable Development
The Good Society, Vol. 5, No.3, Fall 1995

Page 3 of 8
Capitalism

We have little difficulty recognizing such structural concepts when we look "outward" toward another system. But what of our own system? Are the environmental problems of capitalism also systemic? Are the trends toward environmental degradation and the continuing escalation of resource consumption minor "side-effects" of the system? Or are they a necessary consequence of our own system's design?

The trends are not encouraging to those who would like an easy answer.

Although there are occasional breakthroughs (like the elimination of D.D.T.) and many small reforms, what obviously counts are long-term "outcome" results. Consider one broad index of natural resource consumption: the World Resources Institute has recently observed that "the United States consumes nearly 3 times as much iron ore as India, 4.6 times as much steel, 3.6 times as much coal, 12 times as much petroleum, 3 times as many head of cattle and sheep, and 1.7 times as much roundwood." The United States has less than one-third the population of India, so per capita consumption differences are at least 300 percent greater than the ratios above indicate.

U.S. consumption of fossil energy is so large that per capita emissions of carbon dioxide, a principal greenhouse gas, are nineteen times those of India.

Alan Durning has estimated that since 1940 Americans have alone used up as large a share of the earth's mineral resources as did everyone in history on the planet before this time. Such resource utilization rates would be impossible to sustain if all nations were to develop along U.S. lines in the new century. But if voracious consumption--and the deeper sources of growth and consumerism from which it springs--are ever to be confronted, we will clearly have to go well beyond such modest reform proposals as taxing consumption and/or advertising.

Similar conclusions emerge as one reflects upon long-term outcome measures of pollution and toxic wastes. Chemical production in the United States increased by 115 percent between 1970 and 1992 alone. Yet less than two percent of the 70,000 chemicals used in commerce have been fully tested for human health effects; there are no health data at all on over seventy percent of these chemicals. According to the EPA, over half of all hazardous waste in the United States is generated by the chemical industry--and nearly 1,000 new chemicals are put on the market each year. Such rates of growth mean that 50 percent of the substances that will be in use in fifteen to twenty years do not now even exist. Yet if all the laboratory resources currently available were put to work, it would only be possible to test some five hundred chemical products per year!

We all know that capitalism as an economic system has certain basic properties: its profit-maximizing imperatives make it dependent upon continued expansion and continually greater levels of resource use. It, too, generates pressures to externalize costs and to pollute.

Capitalism, too, also obviously creates certain kinds of power relationships--most notably, the concentration of economic and political power in the large corporation. Countless studies (and common observation) indicate that corporate institutions have the capacity to wield disproportionate influence--to manipulate regulatory agencies, thwart citizen action groups, and impact both electoral politics and legislation.

Nor is this because all corporate leaders personally lack concern for the environment; it is because of the logic of the system: Business executives must take care of business--or they will be out of business!

Capitalism also produces extreme income hierarchies, status and cultural inequalities, and materialist aspirations. Moreover, the income hierarchies have obvious feed-back effects on politics: those with more money tend to have more power--and a disproportionate capacity to dominate the broader public interest. It is also no accident that toxic dumps regularly end up in poor and minority communities.

Growth in capitalist systems is not motivated simply by hunger for profit, but also by fear. The logic and dynamics of the capitalist system are such that companies must cut costs if they are to withstand competition. They must externalize. If a company willingly spends money on a pollution reduction problem--and then raises its prices to cover the cost, it risks finding its market share reduced by a less conscientious rival firm.

Again, a community given the choice, say, between continued logging of declining forests or loss of jobs, simply by reason of fear is in a weak position to resist growth politics. On a larger scale we see cities and states prostrating themselves to attract corporate investment--not simply out of greed, but because the consequences of not continuing to grow are so severe and so obvious: high unemployment, continued social breakdown, and, of course, negative political outcomes for incumbent officials in government. For communities, like capitalist firms, it very often also is a matter of "grow or die."

The same proposition holds for many individuals' lives as well. The materialist aspirations many so easily condemn often are in large measure the flip side of pervasive economic insecurity. Consider the life cycle of a typical middle-class American: one goes to college in order to get ahead, and then incurs debt. To pay off the debt requires accumulating as much money as possible, and then it's time for a family, children, and if you're lucky, a mortgage. More responsibilities, and more pressure to accumulate as much as possible. Then parents come to realize that if they don't live in the right neighborhood, their child's education will suffer. Similarly, they had better start saving for college. And by the time that's over, the question of "who will take care of me?" in old age or sickness becomes central.

For the vast majority of Americans whatever security one attains is fragile at best. At any time--and this is now as true for white-collar managers as for blue-collar workers--one might be laid off as a result of a downturn in the economy, a corporate buyout, a new technology or even simply a change in the exchange rate. The only way to get any real security is first and foremost to avoid failing. It is therefore always wise to strive for "more" now; tomorrow may well bring "less". . . . Thus continues the materialist merry-go-round--and with it, continued striving to climb the income and status ladder.

In this situation it is hardly surprising that mass insecurity should generate adulation of the rich and the secure in the system--or that the capacity to consume so often becomes a measure of self-esteem and status.

Meanwhile, the corporate need to sell also generates pressures for higher consumption--and further impacts the "buy and consume" materialist culture.

I have been dwelling on such widely recognized features of our own system for a reason. That these are "system properties" is obvious--but this, in turn, implies that the unsustainable outcomes we regularly observe are also inherent in the nature of capitalism. We all know that our system is characterized by such institutional, structural, and power "design features". The problem is we rarely call a spade a spade. Most important, the implications are seldom incorporated into analyses of the challenge of long-term sustainability.

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