http://www.greens.org/s-r/47/47-02.html

Production-Side Environmentalism

by Don Fitz

Excerpts:

Production-side environmentalism places blame on the criminal rather than the victim. It looks at the profits oil companies reap from urban sprawl rather than demeaning people who have no way to get to work other than driving a car. Production-side environmentalism looks at an agro-food industry which profits from transporting highly processed, over-packaged, nutrient-depleted junk thousands of miles rather than the parent giving in to a child bombarded with Saturday morning pop-tart-porn TV.

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The word "meaningful" is key in understanding whether consumption goes up, goes down, or stagnates. If a stove is manufactured to last 10 years instead of 50 years, a couple may purchase 5 stoves instead of 1 during a 50-year marriage. This is an increase in consumption in only the most frivolous, non-meaningful way. In the world of real people, as opposed to the fantasy world of economists, there has actually been a slight decrease in meaningful consumption. There were four times when the couple was without a stove.

Since WWII, and especially since the 1960s, America has witnessed a massive overproduction of what is profitable and an obscene shrinking of what is needed. There has been a mushrooming growth of nuclear weapons and other war toys that nobody can eat, wear or live in. Being able to get from here to there has been replaced with traffic jams and commercials telling us how happy we are to consume individual automobiles. The construction industry has shot up as buildings last fewer years. Food epitomizes simultaneous overproduction and underconsumption as Americans are increasingly obese and less nourished.

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Dramatically reducing production would profoundly reduce CO2 emissions, extend the use of available oil by centuries, and eliminate human expansion into species habitat. If people working at and living near manufacturing facilities were the ones making decisions about production, it would become possible to eliminate toxins that poison humans and other species.

Preaching to people that they "have to learn to do without" what a corporate society forces them to purchase will accomplish little more than antagonizing them. In contrast, organizing people to make corporations "learn to do without" the profits from destructive production is an essential for confronting ecological crises. Let's look at a few economic sectors.