Moncrief Dances Around the Real Culprit

Moncrief’s critique of Lynn White’s argument that the tradition of Judeo-Christian values in science are to blame for the current ecological crisis rests upon expanding the blame to such other social institutions as democracy, urbanization, and capitalism. Moncrief is closer to a complete and compelling argument than White, but fails to articulate clearly how capitalism plays such a sinister role in environmental degradation. He briefly mentions the industrial development of Europe and North America, attributing it vaguely to capitalism. Later he articulates three characteristics of a society ill-equipped to deal with ecological crisis that, upon closer inspection, reflect the capitalistic nature of that society. If he clarified this connection, he could make a much stronger argument by reducing number of vague culprits he names and focusing his attention on articulating one.

Moncrief lists the first characteristic as a loss of moral direction. He argues that the modern individual tends to “maximize self-interests” and attempt to “shift… costs to society to promote individual ends.” These are clear characteristics of a capitalist system, which embraces private ownership in order to gain profit for an individual through the immoral exploitation of labor and natural resources. Even in economics, shifting costs to society as a whole “externalizes” that cost away from the individual, and is not accounted for anywhere else.

His second characteristic he calls “institutional inadequacies.” He discusses the fact that air and water, along with other natural resources in the “commons” are considered free commodities, and as such government finds it difficult to regulate them. The struggle to commoditize natural things, which were not created within a market and thus cannot be true commodities, has haunted capitalism since its inception, but has most likely been intentionally unsolved. The ability to have an owner-less air or water enables capital to exploit them without fear of repercussion. In a world of private property, what cannot be owned can be used.

Lastly, Moncrief laments our society’s unyielding faith in technology. Technology must be recognized for what it is. Technology exists only because those with the money to fund it can create it, and only do in order to reap profit in a capitalist system. To say that our faith in technology will doom us is incomplete: our faith in the capitalist system that created both technology and environmental catastrophe is the true harbinger of peril.