Ed. note: Since we're dealing with archives, this makes sense. Two weeks after I wrote the column published online yesterday, I had a change of heart, and published this in response to myself. Kovel's book moved me, but I am not sure that I still would conclude the same, but it's worth a read, particularly Kovel's argument on Bhopal.

 

Yes, I stand corrected, but moreso, inspired to take greater action.

 

Since I wrote two weeks ago that riding my bike and working in a community garden will create the change I want to see, I have learned that pedaling and planting by themselves are inadequate, and must join with a greater struggle to overcome our societal ills.

 

My affinity for veggies and velos are “voluntarism,” according to Joel Kovel, in his 2002 book “The Enemy of Nature.” These actions, “arise from good intention,” he says, and are “taken primarily on moral or aesthetic grounds.” But, “Such actions, lists of which can be found in mass-marketed literature of the ‘xx things you can do to save the planet’ type, stand as much chance of overcoming the ecological crisis as handing out spare change on the subway does of overcoming poverty.”

 

What ecological crisis? The one spurred by capitalism’s never satiated desire for growth. Hartford’s brownfields, high asthma rate and landfills play minor roles in capital’s global tragedy.

 

Kovel argues not only the standard Marxist grounds that capital separates us from our labor, as we see in Hartford’s miserable poverty. But capitalism is the efficient cause of global warming and the destruction of the world.

 

Bluntly, it’s either capitalism or us, Kovel says. We all want to enjoy the fruits of life, liberty and happiness. Yet, Kovel says, the people of the Earth must stop the march of capital or deal with barbarism worse than Bhopal on a planetary scale.

 

Bhopal is the Indian city where Union Carbide’s negligence resulted in the leak of methyl isocyanate gas, a man-made substance. In one night in 1984, this leak killed more than 8,000 people and injured 500,000 more. Now, 10-15 people die monthly from injuries sustained in the accident, for which no person was ever held responsible.

 

The day Connecticut-based Union Carbide agreed to pay the Indian government $470 million in fines for its murderous misconduct, Kovel states that Union Carbide’s stock shot up $2 a share. The settlement cost each shareholder $0.43, so shareholders “earned” $1.57 a share for industrial mass murder.

 

In the face of this environmental crisis, where death equals profit, where mercury renders fish inedible, where falling forests pump up the gross national product, where trading pollution credits creates more greenhouse gases, where continued capitalist expansion renders the planet unhabitable, planting a community garden is insufficient.

 

Community gardens and bicycling can be effective, Kovel argues, if the people doing them coordinate their actions with the larger struggle against capitalism. Kovel posits this in a neo-Marxist framework: Ecosocialism. Essentially, Marx failed to link humanity and nature, nor did he foresee capitalism’s environmental destruction.

 

Humankind must acknowledge the spiritual interconnectedness of all living creatures on Earth, and around that principle, organize existing groups with fresh converts to usher in an era of non-toxic living. Through sacrifice, education and concerted action that directly confronts capital, we can lay the foundations for a post-capitalist society.