The environmental sustainability contradicts the logic of capitalism. But the liberal green economic project may partly succeed in reforming the contemporary capitalistic system but the main problem is that neither the politician nor the corporate elites or CEOs, are going to accept the and respect the reduction of fossil energy. Changing the economic structure and reestablishing a green ecological system requires a large-scale investment and acquittance of a vast financial resources to invest in order to reshape the industrial structure of the current contemporary capitalism..In addition, the restructuring of the current system is likely to lead to the short-term unemployment and consequently lower tax revenues, which are partly used as investment in economic restructuring and partly help to maintain the welfare state in developed economies.
Another problem is that CEOs and boards of companies and the banking system are rarely accountable to society and lack any long-term ecological plan. Meanwhile, they are accountable to the private shareholders who wish to receive return and the profits from their capital investments, regardless paying any attention to the damage of the natural habitat. No company in the world will shut down its business to save the planet. On the one hand, following the economic reform known as economic adjustment policy, that began in1980s in the United States and the United Kingdom and further was implemented in other countries in the nineties by the recommendation of the World Bank, and the fast growing and spreading the globalization contributed to the weekend the national state.
The governments in different countries will not be able to convince transnational corporations that have invested billions of dollars in the fossil energy industry or in companies that use fossil energy to change this pattern and restructure the industry from fossil energy to renewable energy if the fossil energy is cheap and further the government is unable to subsidize the industry. Moreover, any systematic decline in the fossil fuel industry will result in a severe, perhaps irreversible, economic downturn snd deep recession worldwide. But since sustainable development is unthinkable without a fundamental change in production and consumption patterns. The key question is whether human beings will be able to abandon a growth-based mindset that is impossible without consumerism.
We should remember the famous statement of the former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, when both said at a press conference before the invasion of Iraq: We will not allow any country affect or lower our standard of living in the West. We know that ” The purpose of the attack on Iraq was the domination of oil companies on Iraqi oil resources rather than establishing the democracy in Iraq. And nowadays the war in Libya with the intervention of various countries such as France, Italy, Russia, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is nothing more than to receive a share of investment in oil industry in Libya.
Will the countries which dominating the global economy i.e., most developed economies prefer saving the planet and future generations over the mentality or the mindset of cheap fossil-fueled economic growth? In future, given the shrinking market for the current dominant economic powers i.e., Western countries, because of emerging emerging economies such as China, does the developed and emerging countries are willing to work together for a new green and ecological economic order?
Will there be an international body called the Green Tax Bank (GTB), which will levy taxes on fossil production industries to subsidize the conservation of the tropical forests in developing countries? Or, if the development and technological progress is a solution to effectively recycle and repair the existing air-water-land pollution or is there any willingness to put forward a plan for the upcoming environmental damages. Is there any possibility that advanced technology will be available to developing countries in the future? I think because of the logic of investment and the return on profits and capital accumulation, it will be impossible for the developing countries to get access to advanced environmental technology.
Will Western countries accept to abandon the West-oriented monetary and economic institutions based on the old system of capitalism and Western domination? Or they will strive to dominate the world market and apply their financial and economic mechanisms to the war, which is the continuous of the politics. Whether the developing countries can change economic structures based on green renewable energies, as well as diversifying and modernizing their economies because of the numerous economic, political and social problems and lack of capital, specialist and modern technology? In addition, oil-exporting countries that have suffered from political, economic and social problems and governed by undemocratic-unelected political elites are able to recognize the environmental damages due to the extracting the oil and exporting it in order to maximize their own interest. And will the monopoly-ruled politicians and politicians in these countries who benefit from oil rents will diversify their economies?
eco-pol-soc 