We could describe planet earth as the ship in which we travel. How we take care of this ship determines whether we reach our destination. Sadly, it seems that we are not taking proper care and we are heading for a collision with Armageddon.
I blame capitalism for this.
Capitalism prioritises continuous economic growth, profit maximation, and high rates of consumption. In doing so it harms the environment by creating industrial pollution and depleting resources. Moreover, capitalism’s reliance on fossil fuels to power the “treadmill of production” causes climate change, loss of biodiversity and the accumulation of waste.
Environmental harm
The drive for profit encourages companies to treat the environment as a free resource and waste sink, leading to pollution and the destruction of ecosystems.
High consumption and waste: A culture of consumerism leads to increased demand for products, resulting in greater extraction of raw materials, greater energy consumption and higher carbon emissions.
Greenhouse gasses: A small number of fossil fuel companies, operating within a global capitalist framework, are responsible for the vast majority of industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
Discounting environmental harm: Costs such as carbon emissions and toxic waste are not included in the price of manufactured goods. Many production costs are borne by society and the natural world and not by producers.
Short-term focus: Capitalist competition pressures firms to prioritize immediate, short-term profits over long-term environmental sustainability.
While some argue that market mechanisms incentivise a drive for cleaner technologies, the foundational logic of capitalist accumulation still creates significant environmental costs. Meanwhile, capitalism generates wealth in the global west while pushing environmental burdens onto the global south. This uneven exchange burdens developing nations with pollution, climate change impacts and loss of wealth. It also undermines the drive towards sustainable development.
Key aspects of the disparity
The relationship between the developed capitalist nations and the developing countries of the global south is unbalanced.
Unequal ecological exchange: Developed nations (the centre) benefit from capital accumulation, while the global south (the periphery) faces environmental degradation – including deforestation, the accumulation of toxic waste, and water pollution.
Resource extraction: Multinational corporations exploit raw materials in developing countries, causing significant damage to ecosystems, often leaving local communities with long-term, toxic consequences.
Climate change vulnerability: The global south is more vulnerable to climate related impacts, despite having contributed little to emissions.
Systemic issues: The market-driven nature of capitalism prioritises profit over environmental health, making it difficult to achieve true sustainability.
Africa faces severe environmental challenges driven by climate change, rapid urbanization, and resource exploitation. These include extreme water scarcity affecting over 300 million people, rapid deforestation (especially in the Congo Basin), soil degradation, and high vulnerability to droughts and floods. Other notable harms are biodiversity loss, poor waste management, and oil pollution. These all threaten food security, health, and economic stability across the continent.
Environmental justice
The environmental justice movement is concerned with addressing the harm suffered by poor and marginalized communities as a result of resource extraction and land use from which they do not benefit. The movement aims to secure fair treatment for all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income, and to facilitate their involvement in decisions relating to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.
The movement – which started in America in the 1980s – was heavily influenced by civil rights activism and was primarily concerned to fight environmental racism within rich countries. It later expanded to encompass both international environmental justice and inequalities within marginalized groups. But as it achieved some success in the West, environmental burdens were shifted to the global south (for example through the global waste trade).
Even so, the environmental justice has made great strides with some of its aims now being articulated by the United Nations.
By Godfrey Selbar