Grünen Kapitalismus - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

wood forest have been destroyed, and many communities have been deluged
with toxic sludge. 204 Confronted by strong opposition to the practice
both from local inhabitants and from environmentalist organizations,
Obama’s response was to call not for its abolition but only for stricter regulation.
The EPA proposes, in its own words, to “minimize the adverse
environmental consequences of mountaintop coal mining.” 205
This response may be said to epitomize the approach of green capitalism.
It is open to question, however, along several axes. To begin with,
the damage to the environment in this process is not incidental; it is inherent,
inasmuch as the process consists by definition in the removal of
forest cover and the blasting of rock and coal. Thus, to minimize the consequences
means to minimize the practice itself. The destruction of the
environment is a cumulative process, in which every negative act adds to
the total effect. Second, as has already been illustrated, the capitalist state
is one whose regulators routinely empathize with – and often are drawn
directly from the ranks of – those whom they are supposed to regulate
(see Domhoff 1979, 31-37). This complicity is what undergirds, for any
issue involving poisons, the need to opt – as Barry Commoner puts it –
for prevention rather than mere “control” (Commoner 1990, 44). Finally,
in the specific case at hand, the mountaintops could readily be kept intact
and used instead as sites for tapping wind energy. But this would require
an altogether different relation of forces in the society.
The general framework for the next phase of US environmental policy
will be set by the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,
which is being discussed in Congress at the time of this writing. This
Act, given its task of balancing green image with industry demands, is
sure to be a document of considerable bulk and complexity. Its basic approach
is defined by cap-and-trade, but the strictness of the caps and the
terms of the trading remain to be finalized. A posture of resolute action
at the global level will need to be projected, but it will be offset by such
details as those listed in a section entitled “Exemptions from Other Programs”
(Title VIII, Part C). One of these exemptions reads as follows:
“Section 831, Criteria Pollutants: Provides that greenhouse gases may
204 Jeff Biggers, “Obama Says Mountain Crimes Can Be Regulated,” Huffington Post, June 11,
2009, www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/breaking-obama-says-mount_b_214207.html.
An 8-minute film of the blasting process and its effects can be seen at www.youtube.
com/watch?v=RPixjCneseE
205 EPA news release, June 11, 2009, http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379
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