Capitalism And Its Impact On The Environment Essay

Throughout history capitalists have tended to focus on the short term gains rather than how their actions will effect them, as well as others, over the long term, and when it comes to the environment it is no different. The valorization of capital both relies on and affects the environment in a countless number of ways. It relies on the environment through the externalization of environmental costs of production, while at the same time it effects the environment by depleting natural resources and habitat degradation. Globalization and the industrial revolution, historically, have not been kind to the environment. At first technology made the impact capitalism has on the environment even worse. It Europeans thousands of years to destroy their own environment, but only hundreds to destroy the environment of other through colonialism. Nevertheless, pollution, habitat destruction, and the loss of biodiversity have taken their toll on our environment. Capitalists, in pursuit of short term gains, neglected …show more content…
The environmental justice movement is about how environmental costs are most often a burden of the poor. “Distancing”, as one of the authors calls it, is all about separating consumers from the environmental costs of the things they buy. This separation was in many ways is a response to the grassroots environmental movement that sprang up in rich countries in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The response of capitalists to this movement was not to clean up their ways but to take those environmental costs somewhere else. Over the year, capitalists have found all sorts of ways to prevent consumers from finding out about the environmental costs associated with the production of the goods that they sell. This has lead to movement to shine a light on these tactics and environmental justice organizations are at the forefront of this movement and it has begun to spread world