I used to be sold on the “All growth is good growth” mantra – I grew up in capitalism and I work for an agency that’s main mandate is to create jobs and drive value-add through increased economic activity. But I’ve also been convinced of the environmental calamity our world faces and the need to act on it. The solutions seem obscure – for example, Starbucks banning plastic straw doesn’t seem sufficient but are they even a step in the right direction? Does it even make sense to think of environmentalism within a capitalist resource-craving mindset? These were questions our discussion group tried to tackle, and it was not easy.

As always, our readings for the session that you can use to contextualize the conversation:

1. Can the capitalist economic system deliver environmental justice? – IOPScience
2. Green Capitalism
3. Eco-Capitalism – Wiki
4. What is Virtue Signaling – The Guardian
5. Climate Signals – The Weekly Standard

I lean towards the view that capitalism by definition of profit maximization seeks to exploit resources to its core. This is an objective statement that can either be interpreted as a signal towards efficiency or a gesture towards a more sinister truth. That truth is that ultimately capitalism unbridled causes a hunger for resources that cannot be maintained in the long term.

The Economics undergraduate class solution is an interesting one. It points to environmental impact as externalities – mere unaccounted costs that the market must internalize. This has led to the carbon credit system and the brand value of eco-friendliness. WeWork’s banning of meat at its sponsored luncheons is a good example of how environmentalism has now a dollar value. Policy is also seen as an important tool albeit one that still permits the capitalist system and seeks to put bound to it. All of these still take the assumption that the capitalist system is the best one because it is the most efficient. It is the system by which our world has witnessed tremendous growth and by which, statistically, a lot of global problems such as poverty and access to health have been solved. I do not deny these logical links.

What I do find worth challenging is whether they’re still relevant. Capitalism could have been the perfect paradigm for the 21st century but would it be still so for the next? What was good for our parents’ generation need not be still effective for ours. Kate Raworth’s description of Doughnut Economics towards “good enough” growth is a very enlightening shift. In her thesis, she illustrates the lower and upper bounds for growth that each country can decide – the lower to ensure populations can live out of poverty and the upper to prevent exploitation and degradation. It is not simply the number itself but the process of accounting that brings society and the economy on a new normative path.

Of course, the challenge comes in exactly that. How do we normalize “good enough” economics? Where consumer frenzy is not the norm but moderation and sustainability are. Where we think consciously of the full supply chain of our products? Where we design not to correct for environmental damage but to think of the environment as part of the design. These are difficult shifts and even more difficult to convince people who operate in capitalist institutions that such a shift is within their means.  We need to go beyond virtue signaling and evaluate our lifestyles by a new standard – not by how much we own but by how “good enough” we are. The ambitious achiever in me finds this personally difficult too, but moderation has a healthier track to it that I’m finding so much more useful.

Capitalism needs to evolve with the times and those times are seeing the world suffer at our hands. One need not look far to see the impact of human consumerism on our planet. But we need to decide that capitalism as we know it is not good enough. We need to be good enough with good enough. Then, we can work towards fixing our problems.