I made a horrible mistake last night—in front of a theatre full of essentially anti-oil-liberals, I uttered likely the most conservative-sounding remark of the night: the words “natural capitalism.”
Unfortunately, no-one had a clue what I was talking about, and must have assumed I was a right-wing Big Oil supporter looking to sidestep—by way of a change of subject—the vast human and environmental costs associated with the Alberta Tar Sands.
Not so!
Check the website: natcap.org (the brief summary there is enough to give you a general idea).
The jist of it is this:
- pre-Industrial Revolution there was a shortage of human power, and a seemingly limitless amount of resources
- now, there is an increasingly finite set of resources, with an unprecedented amount of human potential able to be tapped
- this fundamental reversal precipitates the kind of economic change that’s currently budding, namely that:
- sustainable development is not a hindrance to economic growth; rather, it is quite the opposite (layman examples abound here)
- it will be business—not so much social, cultural or ideological revolution—that will drive forward the “radically more productive use of natural resources” and sustainable development in general
P.S. You can also download all the chapters free from their website (here).
Personally, while I generally wince at the very sight of business suits—let alone their politics or morals—I think this is by far the most reasonable sounding argument for the …saving of the Earth(!).
If only we could stop the corporations in question from ultimately corrupting anew… (and this is a major issue, no doubt).
P.S. The comic above deals with ‘Green tax shifts’—a key component of Natural Capitalism—though I doubt the author of the comic is even aware of the natcap project (no one is).
Film.
