Ecological Crisis and the Logic of Capital

This article draws out the contradictions in the relationship between capitalism as a mode of production and our contemporary efforts to deal with the breaching of planetary boundaries or the ecological crisis. First, it looks at the theoretical developments in understanding the source of our current ecological crisis. The historical establishment of a metabolic rift and the shifts engendered as solutions to this problem within capitalism are discussed. Then, it focuses on the problem of perception of the ecological crisis in the contemporary world. An unequal world cannot be a sustainable world as standpoint influences even the perception of an impending precipice, and consequently any form of collective action. Given this inability to understand the crisis, the solutions that emerge are reductive and tend to spatially, temporally or socially shift the problem rather than resolve it. Finally, it argues that environmentalism—or efforts to ‘save the planet’—needs to be understood based on the understanding of the problem rather than on social location of its members