Capitalism and the Environment: The Best Arguments on the Other Side
By: Jamie Baranda
Tags: Consumerism, Climate Change, Global Warming

Photo by Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash

In my previous blog post I went over the best arguments about consumers needing to change their habits in order to prevent climate change. What I’ve taken away from the two arguments is that consumerism often leads to goods being thrown away. Non-essential goods are bought frequently by the consumer class and later thrown away and the cycle goes on and on. This ongoing cycle negatively impacts our environment and not a lot of people are aware of it. Something individuals can do to act against this is by shopping consciously. In the second argument I analyzed, the article went over ways cosmetic product consumers can shop consciously. Things as simple as reading the label or looking at the ingredients can help save the environment. In this blog post I’ll be analyzing the best arguments made on the opposing side of the argument, the side that believes it’s up to big companies and world leaders to make changes in order to prevent climate change.

The first argument I’ll be going over is an article published by the National Development and Reform Commission, also known as the NDRC. It focuses on corporate honesty and its relation to climate change. The author, Joshua Axelrod, is a senior advocate of the nature program for the NDRC and has been part of their team since 2013. Axelrod focuses on issues such as public land protection and conservation, renewable energy, and climate policy. This adds to the argument’s strength because it helps build the audience’s trust since Axelrod is someone who is knowledgeable in topics having to do with the environment’s health. The example Axelrod used to discuss corporate honesty is american tissue companies. These companies fail to inform their consumers of who they’re supporting when they buy their products. “Competitors in the tissue sector are impacting the world’s remaining unharmed forests negatively”. He mentions how the use of virgin pulp (something that can be produced either mechanically or chemically) in the production of toilet paper, facial tissue, and paper towel brands is a major greenhouse gas source. Axelrod looks closely at P&G in his article, P&G states that they’re working to reduce annual emissions 50% by 2030 which sounds amazing, but this is exactly what companies like this would want people to think. Axelrod looked more closely to P&G’s statement and found that their commitment to reducing 50% of emissions by 2030 only covers a fraction of P&G’s operations. To help the audience get a better understanding of this Axelrod including two images in the article.

One goes through the cycle of turning trees to toilet paper

The other is a pie chart showing P&G’s climate footprint and emissions reduction goals.

The use of these images help strengthen the argument because it catches the audience’s attention and simplifies the ideas being introduced. This argument is packed with information but the one thing I’d say it lacks is emotional appeal. Emotional appeal is an important part of an argument because people’s values play a big factor on their actions. If the argument did appeal to emotion more people would be motivated to hold corporations accountable.

The second argument I’ll be analyzing is one written by Morten Fibieger Byskov. Byskov currently works with the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His main area of research is the intersection between human development theory, democratic theory, and philosophy. Again, like the previous argument, this one is also credible and trustworthy which helps strengthen it. Byskov focuses on two reasons as to why making it the duty of individuals to limit global warming is wrong. The first reason is because “individuals are statistically blameless”, although the power of consumers is strong, it’s significance in comparison to international corporations and governments is very small. Byskov then lists off multiple reasons as to why this is. To name a few, he mentions how asking individuals to be held accountable for the burden of global warming takes away the responsibility of those who are meant to protect society. He also expresses that governments need to be held accountable for letting corporations exploit the environment. The other reason is that governments and industries should lead. Governments have the power to enact legislation and individuals only have so much they can do before it’s up to their leaders to make bigger changes. The weakness in this argument would be that it’s a very opinionated article, the only reason as to why it’s credible is because of the author’s background.

After analyzing these two arguments, I took a step back to reflect on my own stance. Going into it, I believed it’s mostly up to consumers to step forward and hold responsibility to shop consciously to better the environment. But after doing more research and stumbling upon these two arguments it’s become much more apparent that corporations want consumers to think that way so the blame isn’t focused on them.