The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Development and the Environment

Abstract

On the basis of a long tradition of studies about the relationship of humanity to the natural environment, the worsening of environmental conflicts is leading to the intensification and renewal of the debate in the context of the current systemic crisis. The shortage, escalating costs and depletion of non-renewable and renewable resources is interpreted in different ways under different approaches to the nature-society dialectic and the contradictory assessments of the capitalist system. Against this background, this paper examines the debate on the relationship between human causes for environmental deterioration and ongoing and long-term socioeconomic processes. Of what nature and of what environment are we speaking? Do socioeconomic dynamics truly depend on the environment? Under which time scales and spatial differentiations do these relationships occur? These are some of the questions that structure this text.