@Kudos
I won’t respond to each point otherwise this is gonna become too long and bore the pants of everyone else. Plus, I’m not gonna pretend I have the answer to each specific point you raise. To be honest, this conversation is best done over a pint rather than on an internet forum!
But, in short, the issue is at the macro level. A capitalist economic system requires growth due to the need to create surplus value (I’d really recommend reading some David Harvey to go into this in detail). However, growth is not / cannot be decoupled from environmental pressures (a solid analysis of the literature on this can be found
here). And so, to address the environmental crisis, we need to transition to a post-growth, and therefore likely post-capitalist, economy (However, there’s a really good paper,
here, on why this would actually increase wellbeing for almost everyone).
Some of the examples you give are good. However, looking at the micro-level hides what’s happening at the macro. Take your nature reserve example. On the micro level, you’re right, this a great idea for a business with ecological benefits. However, in order to service the loan you borrowed from a bank, you need to make a profit. That requires the creation of surplus value somewhere else in the economy which then makes its way to you through fee-paying visitors (there’s a good paper analysing whether there is a role for for-profit business in a sustainable economy
here)
If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, there are a few good and accessible books I can recommend. Happy to DM you if you’d like but obviously don’t want to push anything on you!
I thought I’d also just respond to one of your points directly as I think it’s an important one:
At a macro level wouldn't redistribution of wealth just result in redistribution of consumption? 1 Ferrari replaced by 100 BMWs.
So, this is one of the issues that is being grappled with at the moment – the concept of the “marginal propensity to consume”, that is, the resource intensity of consumption at different points on the economic spectrum. More basic needs are generally more resource intensive – food, housing, heating etc. So, there is one school of thought that suggests redistribution will increase consumption-based emissions.
However, there are obviously moral objections to keeping people poor just to keep down emissions. In addition, carbon and material footprints are significantly higher amongst the rich, with research suggesting that much of this excess consumption contributes little to furthering their wellbeing.
So, through the redistribution of wealth, and the downscaling of unnecessary material consumption amongst the rich, we can create “ecological space” for the poor to increase their consumption to meet their basic needs. However, we also need to create systems which lower the material requirements of meeting basic needs for all – for example, choosing public transport over car ownership, swapping higher wages for more free time etc., reducing private land ownership and increasing access to commons etc. Economies with a growth imperative aren’t capable of delivering this given their mandate to maximise profit, rather than maximise social value.
And just quickly on the concept of rebound: A good thought experiment to illustrate the concept comes from the invention of the chain saw. Say, in the past, people felled one tree a day using a manual saw. Then someone invented the chainsaw. Rather than fall one tree in an hour and take the rest of the day off, a growth economy, with the need to generate surplus and maximise profit, will instead use the increased efficiency to fell 10 trees a day. So, in short, efficiency savings are always reinvested into increasing profits.
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This is all a fast-moving area of research, and no-one claims to have all the answers (least of all me). But more and more economists are now accepting that growth is, at least part of, the problem and how we transition to post-capitalism is an area of much interest at the moment.
Sorry everyone, I'll stop clogging up the forum with this now.