The Defining Argument
The authors very early on define their argument very clearly. To make the argument as easy to understand as possible, they also boil its essentials down to an accessible metaphor:
“Our argument, in brief, is that a deep chasm has opened up in the metabolic relation between human beings and nature—a metabolism that is the basis of life itself.”
The Tearing of Nature
The ecological rift of the title is the book’s first metaphor. To avoid confusing the connotation of rift as a disagreement, it is more useful to think of the title “ecological tearing” and to further ease understanding, replace “ecological” with just plain nature. Or, in other words, the book is about how:
“Nature can be seen as a web or a fabric made up of innumerable processes, relations, and interactions, the tearing of which ultimately results in a crash of the ecological system.”
Why Capitalism?
Why is capitalism the antagonist in the war for the ecological well-being of the planet? Why would any one economic system be doing more harm than another? The answer is complex, but the metaphorical images are simple. All one needs to do is be able—and willing—to extrapolate. Unfortunately, those who are able often are not willing and those who might be willing are not able. It is a complex web of connections, after:
“Under Capitalism we are not human beings but consumers. Under capitalism mother earth does not exist, instead there are raw materials.”
Shopping is Oxygen
Consumer culture analyst Eric Assadourian offers a fairly unique view of the impact of toning down not just conspicuous consumption, but even just curbing basic consumption habits in order to save the planet. The metaphor is not just striking for its radical insanity, but for its insane radicalism:
“Asking people who live in consumer cultures to curb consumption is akin to asking them to stop breathing.”
Marx was Right All Along
True believers in the ultimate perfection of capitalism hate to hear these words perhaps more than any other, but when it comes to their favorite economic system being constructed not just on the ability but the necessity to harm the earth in order to sustain itself…Marx was right. It was he who observed in a letter written to Friedrich Engels way back in 1867:
“The earth is the reservoir, from whose bowels the use-values are to be torn.”
