In his remarkable study When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten recounts a meeting he attended ahead of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The meeting was led, Korten notes, by indigenous leaders who were anxious about the direction in which global environmental policy was being steered. They were also, quite justifiably, worried about who was doing the steering.
“In the conference’s preparatory meetings,” Korten writes, “corporatists…proposed that to save nature we must put a price on her.”
“Under capitalism, everything is a business opportunity — catastrophes, from tsunamis to wars, are no exception.”
It’s a familiar story: Capitalism, we are often told, can be made green. Incentives can be established. The corporations previously leading the way in pollution, plunder, and exploitation can, with a few adjustments, become the world’s leaders in the development of clean energy and pave the way to a sustainable future.
As is often the case, it is those who have seen up close the harm done by corporate greed who most quickly see through the facade.