Capitalist Impact on Krill in Area 48 (Antarctica)

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹ Viewed from space, the Carajás Mine bleakly illuminates the failings of ecological economics. Currently yielding 300,000 tons of ore daily, the mine ceaselessly consumes rain forest, the value of which is incalculable and its ecosystemic functioning irretrievable. Envisioned as a redemptive science reconciling the perspectives of two divergent disciplines, ecological economics ultimately succeeded merely in grafting microeconomics and a utilitarian preference structure onto ecology. Environmental protection is abstracted to a pricing mechanism, entrusting nature to the auspices of the “self-regulating” market. Karl Polanyi presciently understood the deeply problematic foundations of such an enterprise—the commodification of nature as a panacea. The imposition of the invisible hand conveniently displaces any ethic of responsibility. Guided by this logic, the market is supposed to correct itself. Meanwhile, awash in positivism, the ambition of the Brazilian government and corporate miners is to return the site to primeval rain forest when the ore disappears. Increasingly marginalized by the disciplines which spawned it, ecological economics seems only to provide directions to a political and academic dead end.