ABSTRACT
Capitalism can think profit but it can’t think nature. It’s not in its nature to think nature. Capitalism as a system of ever accelerating production and consumption is, as we environmentalists continually insist, not sustainable. Yet the capitalist will stoically look destruction in the face before he will stop what he’s doing, especially if he believes that it is somebody else whose destruction is in question. The topsy-turvy conclusion is that it is only the capitalist who enjoys the benefits of socialism. Being willing to say such things about capitalism does not mean that one has a special access to the Truth, but it also doesn’t mean that one is a mere ideologue or that most dismissible of things, a communist. Environmentalists are on the whole educated and successful people, many of whom have prospered within corporate capitalism. For both capitalism and environmentalism, there is a hard division between land set aside for nature and land devoted to production.
