Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

S
58 politics and governance
We should aim, accordingly, to harness self-interest, not loyalties
to community; the power of greed, not that of altruism; and the
practical force of utility but that of no larger vision. In the transition
to an ecologically designed, pollution-free world operating
on sunlight, there is far less for government to regulate, less cause
to intervene in markets operating by the logic of natural capitalism,
and fewer, if any, wars to fi ght over oil or resources. So what
do governments do when they no longer need to regulate commerce,
bother people, or fi ght each other? Perhaps, as Karl Marx
once fantasized and tax-cutter Grover Norquist suggested more
recently, the state would simply wither away.
This is an appealing vision in many ways, and on odd- numbered
days I am inclined to believe some of it. But on other days I am
sobered by the recollection of the lamentable history of corporations
and the persistence of greed, ignorance, hard-heartedness,
the lust for power, and the unfailing human capacity to screw
up even good things. 6 For those prone to hyperventilate about
the many virtues and sincerity of green corporations, I suggest
that they spend a few hours on top of what’s left of any one
of the 500-plus mountains in Appalachia leveled for a few years
of “cheap” coal—or perhaps sit outside the former headquarters
of Enron or Lehman Brothers and contemplate what corporations
have wrought to people and the land. Or they might
simply ponder the Hummer—its origins and the many reasons
for its demise, along with those of General Motors and the city of
Detroit. Maybe a natural capitalism will be different, but we ought
at least to ask why and how it would be different. Is natural capitalism
as inevitable as claimed? Will it, in fact, be more profi table,
as claimed? Can capitalism be rendered patient and disciplined in
the long term? Will green capitalists, as a rule and not as an occasional
late-life and much celebrated event, subordinate the will to
accumulate to the larger good?
With few exceptions, corporate decisions to go green or
reduce carbon footprints are based on the cold logic of profi t in a