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PES Lecture notes Chapter 7
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A summary of lecture 7 on Structural explanations of environmental degradation
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Structural explanations of environmental degradation1. The mainly US-based theory of the Treadmill of Production (ToP), which was grounded in Marxist
thinking.
◊ “The environment” by Schainberg == coherent social explanation of envir degradation
◊ ToP – Karl Marx came up with it: rapid economic development and graoth after WWII led to huge demand
for natural resoures and new techno needs more energy use . whenever more energy used=envir degradation
is worse
Production was owned by the class of capitalists and the class of labors only their own working power.
Labor class only got small amount of money from selling their products, so a lot of money left over was
taken by the capitalists the capitalists took this surplus money and invested in other production like
factories, machineries and new techno
Framework thru which we could understand the relationship between things humans do and things in the
envir (as society grows and expands = more extraction of ecological resources = more serious consequences
= make further economic development difficult)
◊ Result of inherent growth mechanisms of capitalists production
◊ To deal with problems – get rid of inherent mechanic growth overthrow the capitalists system
Threadmill has to be stooped
- Moral injustice : captilastics vs laborers
- Nature is “for free” -> prices are not in the envr impacrs of their production?
◊ Ever expanding volume of consumption, necessitated by continuous accumulation of capital and
investment in productivity growth --- key to degradation
Support of the view: Foster, NGO, policy makers
Targets capitalisims
2. A somewhat heterogeneous cluster of views that we will label ‘Counterproductivity (CP)’ theories;
these theories are based on a combination of romanticist and neo-Marxist ideas, and their origins lay
both in Europe and the US.
◊ Associated with work of Ivan Illich central idea
◊ Diverge from ToP because it is not just the relations of products also forces of production hat were
unleashed by captitalism
◊ Industrial production and techno are IMPORTANT
o Build on Ramnticism : cultural movement that reacts to rationalization and industrialization of
society
o Critize the dominance of physical science in Western societies & features of industrial
production
Division of labor
Increased in scienece and tech = rationalization of production and society = large
marginalization of other ways of thinking and producing
Expansion in tech = increased use of energy and materials
Concentration of power in society
◊ Production forces is good thing = helps to increase
welfare+ wellbeing > development goes more and more,
neg happen and outweigh the pos> beyond the critical
points wellbeing goes down (it doesn’t matter if the
monetary income increases) ==== this is what it means to
be counterproductive ->no longer produces anything
◊ To solve: to degrowth and use the donut ecnomics diagram
◊ Support view: Political ecology, in degrowth movement,
community based conservation
Targets industrialism
Approach 1& 2 are radical target fundamental institutions of modernity
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