Member-only story
Why Capitalism Isn’t to Blame
There’s a glib oft-repeated meme that climate change and all the other ills that assail us are the fault of capitalism.
No one throwing this assertion around actually knows what capitalism is, but that’s OK. Capitalism is like gluten or carbohydrates: just plain bad. We know it’s bad because we read it somewhere, probably in an online blog or a glossy magazine. There’s no need to do any research, no need to do any thinking, no need to understand anything. We can have a nice warm feeling by protesting against it while we sip our designer lattes while wearing our global trade jeans while stroking our global supply chain smartphones.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s not actually capitalism that’s harming the planet.
It’s us. It’s the hardwired instincts evolution has given us. It’s the tiny human brain with its near-total incapacity for rational coherent fact-based reasoning and adequate foresight.
That’s why we humans have always been destroying our environment. It’s lovely to harbor dreams of peaceful hunter-gatherers living in harmony with nature but the historical record reveals something very different. Everywhere people appear, the ecosystem suffers. This has been true for many thousands of years.
In Europe ten thousand years ago we slaughtered the woolly mammoths, driving them to…
