print:Yale scholar says capitalism must change--US

(Seattle PI) - Capitalism has to change. Corporations are the big problem -- both for our environment and our democracy. We have to stop worshiping at the altar of GDP.

Gus Speth

Sounds more like what you'd expect from black-hooded anarchists protesting the WTO than from someone who is a former high-ranking official at the White House.

And yet that's just the kind of thing we heard this morning on KUOW's Weekday from James Gustave Speth. He's known to his friends -- including his old boss, President Jimmy Carter -- as Gus. He served as chairman of Carter's Council on Environmental Quality, and today serves as dean of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and also worked previously at the United Nations.

Speth is out with a new book, "The Bridge at the End of the World -- Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability." It argues that a basic restructuring of our economy to a "post-growth" stance is what's necessary.

Here are some excerpts from what Speth had to say to Marcie Sillman:

There's going to be a huge transformation needed... It will be the environmental fight of the century to get U.S energy policy straightened out.

Speth is co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a longtime environmentalist. Here's what he says about the movement today:

The paradox is that the environmental community has gotten stronger and stronger and the environment has continued to go downhill. We've gotten more sophisticated, we've gotten richer, more members and we're still seeing environmental deterioration -- and now at an unprecedented rate.

Here's the nub of what he's saying:

That's an indictment of something -- exactly what? . . . The conclusion that I came to is that environmentalists are working in a system in which they cannot succeed in the end. They can make adjustments, modest gains, but in the end they will lose because they're working a system that prizes economic growth at all costs, which has as its principle political actors -- and not merely just prinicple economic actors -- giant corporations with tremendous resources and trade associations. It has us to deal with, as hyperventiliating lifestyle consumers, people who are driven -- and prodded, also -- to consume more and more and more. And it has government, which depends very heavily on economic growth for a host of reasons.

Here's some of his most provocative words from this morning:

This is the system of modern capitalism that we're up against. I'm no socialist and I don't advocate socialism. But I do advocate very deep changes in our system of modern capitalism. We've got to get the market straightened out. It's running on environmentally dishonest prices. We've got to do something environmentalists don't do normally, which is to challenge consumption and consumerism.

We've got to be willing to take a hard look at economic growth and see whether the type of economic growth we see today really is benefitting us or whether it's costing us environmentally, socially and spiritually more than it's benefitting us. And we've got to challenge the basic structure of the modern corporation, which has run away with our democratic politics.

He went on to decry "gaping social inequities in our society that are unprecedented," calling for "a non-socialist alternative to the capitalism we have today. I am sure in the future there will be private enterprise, private property ownership. No one is talking about turning to large-scale state planning or state economies."

His prescription is, perhaps jarringly, grounded in a belief in the market:

Get the market right. Get the prices so they really reflect environmental and social costs.
Rethink . . . what motivates the corporation.

I was glad to hear a caller -- the first one, in fact -- bring up the oft-ingored factor of population. Said Speth of the situation in this country:

We have not learned how to talk about this issue and the environmental community does not talk about it and sometimes when people start talking about it, they sound like border vigilantes or people who are fundamentally anti-immigrant, which is not the way to talk about it at all.

The whole show is worth a listen on Real Audio or MP3.

(link to source)