Ecological Modernization

Before enrolling in this winter term course, I have come across multiple instances in my economics courses where one would have to question, could the capitalist model that the United States and many other countries embrace really support and synchronize with something so non-profit oriented such as recycling? Not many of my economics or geology classes have really meshed together as much as I wish they have, so this topic remained untouched by most of my classes to date. That is why my eyes widened and my ears perked up when reading the introduction for Samantha MacBride's Recycling Reconsidered - The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in The United States. 

Samantha MacBride states her work "Takes business (capital) as the central focus of analysis with respect to the creation and solution of environmental problems"(MacBride 6). She continues to explore my question of whether or not classic capitalist economic models and theory are truly compatible with social issues such as recycling, that classical models would theoretically ignore to make way for profit, and the most cost-effective solutions. MacBride explains, "Rich literatures exist that question whether capitalism can ever be an ecologically or socially viable system of meeting human needs, given that capitalist production subtracts materials from nature and reintroduces them back to nature in ways that are predictable only in their tendency to deplete and pollute." (MacBride 6). MacBride acknowledges this dilemma and delves further into the issues by exploring the idea of a form of capitalism that adapts to instances of "unintended devastation" this form of capitalism is called "ecological modernization". MacBride continues to describe ecological modernization as a reinvented form of capitalism that is conscious of material impact, learns from natural systems, and maximizes human creativity expressed through technology.

The idea of this enticed me to further research the subject which led me to find an interesting presentation developed by J.P. Sapinski (listed below). Sapinski shows that the ecological modernization model argues that once an economy enters a certain threshold, or at some point, addressing environmental issues will prove to be cost efficient or profitable for industries or firms, as it can reduce production costs. When considering the classical economic model for capitalism, this is not true, it is cheaper for firms such as Wal-Mart to outsource cheap labor to extract natural resources to create their products. Although I believe we witnessed firsthand sometime over the past two days at the various institutions we visited that perhaps that particular industry has reached the aforementioned threshold. I believe it was Carey Hamilton who mention to me that, recycling for Wal-Mart has now proven to be cost efficient for them to pursue, evident in that Wal-Mart is willing to grant the city of Indianapolis X-Million dollars to encourage recycling within the city. This idea brought a lot of things to a full circle for me as I found it to be on of the more intriguing things I have had the privilege to study while at DePauw. If you find this topic to be as intriguing as myself, it would be worth your time to take a deeper look at Sapinkski's work.

http://climatejustice.irisyorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/climatejustice/2011/09/CapitalismClimateChangeAndEcomod2.pdf