ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the discourse of market economics colonizes and serves to narrowly frame critical and oppositional discourse on the environment and ecology. In particular, we consider a speech, already discussed in chapter 3, by John Browne (1997), the chief executive officer (CEO) of BP, a major multinational corporation, whose operations do not normally associate them with the cleaning up of the globe. The framing of ecology in this fashion is proceeding rapidly within our prevailing capitalist economic system. Moreover, this is no recent development. In the seventies O’Neill (1972: 20) drew attention to the issue I wish to discuss: “Political imagination is shackled by the corporate organization of modern society.” It is difficult for governments to limit the ability of multinational corporations “to shape the national ecology and psychic economy of individuals” (emphasis added, RJA). O’Neill continues (1972: 20):
The corporate economy stands between the state and the individual. Its power to determine the life-style of modern society must be recognized as the principal subject of political economy.
