I believe that, although capitalism has been a serious threat to the Environment, the sustainability solution lies in capitalism itself . I'll do a little historical review to explain my reasoning.
Before theIndustrial Revolution (mid-18th century), the population was relativelylimited because there was no capacity to continually increasefood production. Consequently, if there was a good agricultural year, the population increased; If there was a bad agricultural year, part of the population died of hunger.
After the Industrial Revolution, technology allowed increasescontinuousproduction which led to a continuous increase in the population. At that time, people began to realize that their survival no longer depended so much on external factors, but more on themselves. As such, the increase in wealth of families allowed people to stop thinking about surviving and start thinking about living. From this change, another step was taken when people began to think about living in better conditions. With this change came new knowledge, increased awareness and increased concern for the environment.
In short, we went from a concern with surviving, to a concern with living and, subsequently, with living better. And as we changed these concerns, the private initiative adapted. First, the concern was to offer the maximum amount of goods at the lowest possible price. Now, the concern is to offer more and better goods, but with the lowest possible environmental impact.
And this is where we are currently. The problem with this story is that it only applies to the developed world. That is, there are some regions on the planet where people are still in survival mode and other regions on the planet where people are just living.
Which leads us to the question: soit's not possible to get everyone on the planet trying to live better? Currently it is not yet possible. There is the problem of scarcity: there is no technology that guarantees that the use of all available resources allows everyone to have a standard of living that exists in a developed country. If we are already overusing the planet's resources, imagine what it would be like for all the people in countries like India and China consuming what we consume.
What then is the solution? One of the most famous anti-capitalist solutions is use blame and suggest to the population in developed countries that they reduce their standard of living. This solution is unfeasible because people want to live better. This search for the best is imprinted in our DNA and that is why any movement that goes against this search will fail.
The most natural solution is the continuous dissemination of information about the planet's sustainability problems strong>. This increase in knowledge will make more people realize that the search for a better life will depend on people in other regions also starting to think about living a better life. And it will be this valuation force on the sustainability of the planet that willforce companies to look for better technological solutions to create even more sustainable products. span>
In short, the most sustainable solution is to make people value sustainability more and more, so that consequently capitalism increasingly recognizes this value.
Filipe Grilo
Professor at FEP at the University of Porto
Head of Simulation and Forecasting at Watson & Noble
