Grünen Kapitalismus - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

oad policymaking and in their regulatory functions. And fourth are the
activities of capitalist enterprises themselves, in terms of not only their
products but also their production processes and their public relations
and political activities.
Taking into account this quite complex grid within which capital responds
to “green” concerns, it should then be possible for us to gain some
precision in identifying channels for possible Left initiatives. While a
broad vision of ecological socialism is indispensable, close attention to
the evolving departure-point will be helpful not only for suggesting particular
initiatives, but also for alerting us to problems of scale, resourceavailability,
and implementation that exist irrespective of the class-basis
of the regime.
Prior to the post-WW2 period, environmental awareness in the US had
been largely shaped by the century-old conservationist movement. Although
the founders of the latter were inspired by well-grounded disaffection
with the depredations of industrialism – an attitude which in England
was spearheaded by the socialist William Morris – the wider propagation
of conservationist views was largely the work of sectors which
in other respects embraced capitalist and imperialist priorities, and for
whom the preservation of pristine “nature” was associated, if not with
extravagances such as African safaris, at least with purely recreational
activities. A prime exemplar of this orientation was President (1901–09)
Theodore Roosevelt, who left as a positive legacy the US system of National
Parks/Wilderness Areas. It is important to recognize the value of such
spaces both intrinsically – in providing protected areas for wildlife – and
in educational/cultural terms in fostering public enjoyment/awareness/
appreciation of the natural environment. Nonetheless, and despite the
partial democratizing impact of relatively free access to these reserves,
the association of environmental concern with either privilege or recreational
activity – hunting, fishing, hiking, etc. – long stereotyped environmentalism
as a narrow sectoral interest.
Linked to this pre-1945 environmentalism was the fact of a fairly clear
geographical separation between the zones of environmental degradation
– marked by cities and smokestacks – and zones of relatively clean
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