J.S.’s Reviews > Nature is a Battlefield: Towards a Political Ecology > Status Update

...catastrophism is mistaken. Capitalism will not die a natural death, for 1 simple reason: it has the means to adapt to the environmental crisis. It is about to show its stunning resilience once again... In truth, capitalism is not only capable of adapting to the environmental crisis, but-on top of that-of profiting from it. Indeed, there is no guarantee that the ecological crisis will aggravate the economic crisis.

Industrial development - capitalism - is at the origin of environmental crisis and inequalities... Financialization... protects investment from the consequences of climate change... and simultaneously provides opportunities for profits... Financialization is thus one of capitalism's first reactions faced with the ecological crisis.

Capitalism exploits nature, which leads to ever greater costs for the state, which turns to the finance markets in order to be able to cope... Because of global warming, pathogenic agents are appearing in regions that had previously been free of them. With rising temperatures, a growing part of US territory risks becoming exposed to malaria... further deepening the fiscal crisis of the state.

The financial crisis drives states increasingly to financialize the insurance for climate risks... So what does capitalism do? It transfers the growing cost of reproducing the conditions of production to the state. This is the system's very logic: socialization of costs, privatization of profits... For this reason, there is a structural deficit in the public finances.

… following the 11 Sept 2001 attacks, when insurers' contracts dropped terrorism coverage, before the state forcibly push them back on to this market (their retreat from it in fact having been a means of compelling the state to take on an even greater share of insurance for such attacks; a privatization of profits and says socialization of losses – for that is how capitalism works).

The notion of 'catastrophe' is a relative one – that is to say, it is historically and geographically variable. In the Judeo Christian world it has an evident religious connotation… A catastrophic event is one where the damages amount to more than $25 million; above $5 billion and it is cataclysmic.

The 19th-century emergence of 'wilderness' was inextricably linked to the historically concomitant emergence of 'Whiteness'. The city was dark and dirty and that was where the dark and dirty individuals were found... Whiteness... is synonymous with purity. This purity characterizes not only the White ruling classes and their neighborhoods, but also nature, which is their privileged space.

These organizations played an important role in turning nature into national heritage; that is, in defining a patriotic concern for nature. The Club alpin explicitly linked love for the mountains and amor patria. It also maintained close relations with the French army... The history of skiing in France is a military history.

The [British] gentry took form in a certain relation to nature... [so] organizations close to the environmental justice movement... provide [minorities] with an opportunity to familiarize themselves [with the countryside] to break through the upper classes' monopoly connection with nature.

[The environmental justice movement is] in dialogue with... the movement for climate justice... Among its most important demands is the recognition of the 'ecological debt' the countries of the North owe those in the South, having racked up this liability across the colonial and postcolonial periods.
... [its struggles include:] toxic waste, pollution, access to amenities, workplace safety and so on.