Attacking capitalism from the bottom up through a culture of environmental
citizenship
“If today is a typical day on the planet earth, humans will add fifteen
million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square miles of
tropical rainforest, create seventy-two square miles of desert,
eliminate between forty to one hundred species, erode seventy-one
million tons of topsoil, add twenty-seven hundred tons of CFC´s to
the stratosphere, and increase their population by 263,000.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
David Orr, Ecological Literacy 1992
The evidence is clear our planet is in peril, and we have known this for a long time. But we seem
not to care; it’s not our responsibility to save the planet, isn’t that the reason we pay taxes? Even in
times of economic crisis, we keep going out to buy more and more “stuff”, our consumer society is
stronger than ever, and with it the root of the problem. So if the building blocks of the community are
not acting, how can we pretend to find real solutions? In this essay, I will explore the reasons behind
the consumer culture in the world, and how we must attack the problem from the bottom up, using
education as a way to form a culture of environmental citizenship that places all organisms in the
same plane , eliminating physical boundaries, and taking into consideration the natural and
interdependent relations between both living and non-living entities.
D
eforestation in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Capitalism and the consumer citizen
Currently, most of the world works under the political, social, and economic system of
capitalism, a system where economic growth is seen both as beneficent and necessary: the more we
have the better. But since its conception, this economic system has not taken into consideration the
wider consequences of high levels of production and consumption. The prices we pay for products
and services do not incorporate the environmental costs of manufacturing and transportation, or take
into consideration the needs of future generations. Past and current “out of control” growth have
brought us to an environmental state of peril, and politics have failed to correct the market’s
obliviousness to environmental needs. Thus, Gus Speth rightly argues: “right now, one can only
conclude that growth is the enemy of the environment. Economy and environment remain in
collision” (2008).
tore in Santa Marta
According to David Orr (1992), our current crisis, which can be thought of as a continued
lack of sustainability, is caused by two factors that are a direct consequence of capitalism and
economic growth: the appearance of a social trap, and the urge to dominate nature. Firstly, capitalism
is designed to trap people into certain patterns of behavior with promises of immediate rewards and
wealth. Media has tricked us into believing that happiness will only be achieved when we accumulate
products and services that are “essential” for our well-being, but we end up stuck in an endless cycle
of perceived needs, where nothing will be ever enough. Finally we are confronted with silent
consequences, that if previously known, we would rather avoid.
Furthermore, there is the urge to dominate nature. Since the beginning of times humans have felt
superior to other forms of life, societies seem to have an embedded need to dominate, control and
manipulate natural resources and forget that there is a delicate balance where all elements of the
global ecosystem are interrelated and thus interdependent. This need to dominate nature is the source
of a perceived need for indefinite, and continued growth.
In consequence, the economic system does not work when it comes to protecting
environmental resources, and the political system does not work when it comes to correcting the
system (Speth, 2008). Most environmental deterioration is a result of systemic failures by the
capitalist system in place today, and because the problem is so deeply rooted in the beliefs of a great
percentage of humanity, the long-term solutions must address these failures if significant change is to
occur. In addition, capitalism has managed to transform society into a “community of consumers”,
where the individual only worries about his or her own perceived needs and the desire to satisfy them
by acquiring more and more “things.”
It is clear that our current levels of consumption are both environmentally and socially
dangerous, but we can only create a better environment by drastically reducing consumption, with the
consequent effects on economic growth, something that requires profound lifestyle changes (Speth,
2008). Unfortunately, under the current political and economic system it would be impossible to
generate the needed changes at a society-wide scale. Not only are most people unwilling to change
their lifestyles, we are not socially prepared to do so in the short period of time required to salvage
some of our natural resources. Even conscious environmentalists and people that believe this to be
necessary would find it incredibly hard to give up their current life style, simply because this is the
way our society perceives what is, or is not, an adequate standard of living.
As Paul Santmire describes it, we are suffering from “Ecological schizophrenia…On one
hand, we venerate nature passionately, camping, hiking, sailing, surfing, and fighting for
conservation whenever we can find time. On the other hand, no less passionately we venerate the
Gross National Product as a criterion of national health and virtue, when increasing production
regularly means the exhaustion and pollution of nature” (1973.) This dualism between two clashing
passions has lead many people to move into the suburbs, where they believe they can have the best of
both worlds. Citizens of big cities express a wish to leave the city and move into the suburbs so they
can raise their families in a more “natural” environment, but even though they believe they are doing
the right thing. This phenomenon is knowns as “urban sprawl,” where cities continue to grow
horizontally taking up space that could be otherwise used for growing food, or preserving forests,
consequently the expansion of urbanized areas places an unbearable load on the environment.
First of all, the choice of transportation, transportation fuel use, and air quality are primarily a
function of residential density and land use configuration. In moderate density levels (mixed
development) there is public transportation, and walking and cycling are encouraged; while in lowdensity suburbs the use of cars is necessary. Second, in more compact cities fewer materials are
needed per capita for construction and infrastructure, because existing infrastructure is more fully
utilized. And lastly, less energy is used because distances are shorter, transit delivers more passengers,
and multi-family housing uses less heating and cooling per person (Vig, 2006).
ew York City
Urban sprawl leads to greater climate change emissions. With people moving to the suburbs,
the average distance driven per vehicle per year increases, it also disperses urban shadow functions
(gravel pits, waste disposal sites, etc) into the countryside, and inefficient transportation encourages
energy extraction activities in wilderness regions. As people move to peripheral areas, there is a
deterioration of urban cores, and since building everything from scratch is required, this in turn
encourages additional extraction of raw materials (Vig, 2006). In addition to the environmental issues
generated by suburban sprawl, moving to less densely populated areas also causes social problems,
since people loose all sense of community.
One option that should be explored involves a concerted movement towards repopulating and
transforming cities into more sustainable and livable places. Through inner-city restoration and
densification, perhaps we can avoid imposing environmental costs a second time around. This urban
oriented environmental vision is altogether different from that of the early period of the environmental
movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, when the immediate response to urban blight involved getting
“back to the land” and “closer to nature”, and thus a flight from cities towards peripheral areas.
Instead we can bring nature into the cities, for examples building rooftop and vertical gardens help
maximize the use of space, while providing sources of food, air and are visually appealing.
Today’s mainstream environmentalism, characterized by a piecemeal “problem solving”
approach, has proven to be insufficient when dealing with the current challenges previously
mentioned. The only realistic and permanent solution to the very serious environmental problems we
face is to change the system. But we know that it cannot be completely changed in the short term, and
we cannot try to change it from the top down (Speth, 2008.) In order to start thinking about long-term
transformations in our current political and economic system, incremental short-term changes must
also be designed and set in motion. If enough individuals begin changing their behaviors, long-term
change may then be achieved as it moves from the bottom up. One such transformation involves
shifting our notion of citizenship, moving from consumer to environmental citizens.
Changing Habits
To achieve this, we need to work from the bottom up, altering people’s perception of the
environment, and creating habits and attitudes leading to behavioral changes. It is clear by now that
governments respond to public demand, and in this sense, the demand for an environmentally based
citizenship must be created. By focusing on a culture of citizenship that emphasizes the environment,
perhaps these changes can be achieved.
As I explained in the previous section, one way to encourage sustainable living is by restoring
inner cities, increasing population densities, and ensuring higher standards of living. By minimizing
sprawl we can maintain wilderness areas wild and pristine for other types of enjoyment. But in order
to avoid all of the other social problems that come along with city living, we need to emphasize
certain community and citizen aspects of life in the city. If city-dwellers change their habits and
attitudes towards a more environmental and socially respectful society, we can then have healthier and
happier communities.
As Andrew Dobson mentions in his book Citizenship and the Environment (2003), “A
change of behavior lasts only as long as the incentives or dicentives are in place, and this is
inevitably subject to variations on fashion, experiments and the direction of the political wind that
happens to be blowing at the time.” It is important however, to clarify beforehand that in order to
successfully change habits in citizens the incentives promoting changes should be effective for at least
one full generation (approximately 30 years) so that certain habits become completely internalized by
citizens. For example, not throwing trash on the floor must become as natural as washing our hands
after going to the bathroom.
In the next section I explore the concept of citizen culture, showing how it was successfully
applied in Bogotá, arguing that it can serve as a model that can be applied towards creating an
environmental citizenship.
Citizen Culture
According to Dobson, two models of citizenship are currently accepted in the United States of
America: the liberal and the civic republican. Both of them are characterized by their contractual
nature, meaning that there is reciprocity between the citizen and the State. The main difference is that
while liberal citizenship is passive, focusing on the rights of the citizen, the civic republican is active,
and discharges duties and responsibilities to the political community. These views of citizenship focus
on a constant bargaining between the individual citizen and the political community. If citizenship is
under strain, it is assumed that it must be because the bargain is a bad one and the individual is not
getting enough out of the contract. Hence, there is no incentive to be a “good” citizen. For this reason
Dobson explores a third type of citizenship: a post-cosmopolitan citizenship, whose main
characteristic is that it is explicitly non-contractual and has nothing to do with bargains between
citizens and the political community when it comes to the duties and responsibilities of the citizen.
Citizens must act without expecting anything in return. This model is also non-territorial in the sense
of material space (Dobson, 2003.)
One good example of the successful application of this model of post-cosmopolitan
citizenship can be observed in Bogotá, where it was put in practice between 1995 and 1997. The
mayor at the time, Antanas Mockus, initiated a campaign of citizen culture in the city. Mockus’, a
philosopher by training and University professor, considered that there was a great gap separating the
three factors regulating human behavior: law (government), morality (individual), and culture
(collective). He believed that in an ideal society culture should be more demanding than law, and
morals more exigent than culture. This gap between the three aspects expresses itself as inadmissible
moral actions that are culturally tolerated or accepted, while some legal obligations are not seen as
moral obligations or lack cultural approval (Mockus, 2002.)
He considered that it was important to confront conflict from the perspective of the
limitations in communication, encouraging citizenship through programs and projects that generated a
conscious behavioral change (Mockus, 2002.) He argued that using communication and intensified
interaction through face-to-face relations, the city could reduce the separation between law, morals
and culture, thus reducing violence and creating a citizens’ culture.
Mockus based his theory on Stanley Milgram’s theories, a recognized social psychologist
from Yale. Milgram had deduced through experimentation that “it is easier for humans to throw an
atomic bomb from an airplane, than hurting a person face to face” (Milgram, 1974.) Through
communication and interactions citizens self-regulate and regulate each other without the need for
constant outside intervention. The idea is that our individual rights are part of our shared or
community rights, so communication encourages each member of society to obey the law because by
accepting his duties to society and demanding his rights, he is also fulfilling the rights and duties of
the community (Mockus, 2002).
The citizen culture program included multiple educational actions framed by a common
philosophy, using essential concepts such as individual regulation (autonomy and moral conscience)
and collective regulation (regulation between citizens) (Acero, 2008). One campaign for example,
involved distributing great numbers of red and white plastic cards among citizens. On the white side a
thumbs up had been drawn, on the red side, a thumbs down. If a citizen saw another one doing
something wrong (Ex, passing a red light) they could show them the thumbs down. This method
served as a way for citizens to regulate each other’s behavior in a peaceful manner. While the
program was active, significant reductions in deaths by traffic accidents, children burnt with
fireworks, and intra-family violence were recorded by city authorities. There were also significant
increases in voluntary gun turn-ins, and reductions in water consumption and alcohol sales to minors
(Acero, 2008.)
Connecting citizenship with the environment
Before going into further detail, it is important to understand that there is a difference
between environmental citizenship and ecological citizenship. According to Dobson, environmental
citizenship is, “a citizenship that deals in the currency of environmental rights, it is conducted
exclusively in the public sphere”, while ecological citizenship relates to the idea of post-cosmopolitan
citizenship, for it, “Deals in the currency of non-contractual responsibility, it inhabits the private as
well as the public sphere, it is explicitly non-territorial”(2003). Because ecological citizenship is a
more inclusive concept and sees responsibility towards the environment in a global way, I will
explore this notion a bit further, even though both are complementary and equally important.
To enable ecological citizenship as a citizen culture, we must include the idea of the
environment into the equation. The problem then, is how to narrow or eliminate the gap between law,
morals, culture, and the environment. Primarily we need to expand the concept of the citizenship
community to include the environment and everything within it. Or, to put it in Aldo Leopold’s
words, “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters,
plants and animals, or collectively: the land…. It changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror
of the land-community to plain member of it” (1949.)
ran Caldera de Luba, Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea
Also, for ecological responsibility to work adequately, it must be to be non-territorial because
the effects of environmental problems surpass and exceed national boundaries. Ecological citizenship
should not be merely “international or global”. Rather, it should be based on a shared notion of a
“common humanity”. As Dobson (2003) argues,
“The ‘space’ of ecological citizenship is not given by the boundaries of nation-states, it is
produced by the functional and material relationships of individual people with their
environment. The relationship gives rise to an ecological footprint which gives rise, in
turn, to relationships with those on whom it impacts. We are unlikely to have met, or be
even likely to ever meet, those with whom we have these relationships. They may live
near or far away, and they may be from this generation or of generations yet to be born…
By definition, then, ecological citizenship is a citizenship of strangers”(Dobson, 2003).
Responsibility towards the environment, then, falls to the individual level, but with the
understanding that the individual “is a member of a community of interdependent parts” (Leopold,
1949). It is a fact that the government and the industries respond to the public, so if we want to get
them to act and change, it requires many individual acts (collective). If every individual were to buy
ozone friendly products, burn less fuel and join recycling schemes, then producers would have to
change (Dobson, 2003.)
Citizenship and Education
So, how do we produce ecological citizens? Though being an ecological citizen may be
natural decision for a few people, most people are not willing to give up their life style. So we need to
focus on education to achieve this goal. The world in general, and countries under capitalist systems
in particular, need ecologically literate and caring citizens that are willing to change their life style
drastically in order to help reduce the scale of the problems by reducing demands on the environment
and accepting (or even demanding) public policies that require sacrifices. It all comes down to
whether the public understands the relation between its well being and the health of natural systems
(Orr, 1992.) The protection of the environment is a task of the human community, no matter what the
occupation, continent, ethnic group or age is, hence our education systems should prepare students to
be environmentally conscious despite the career path they choose.
The truth is that our current crisis cannot be solved by the same kind of education that created
the problem to begin with (Orr, 1992.) And currently environmental education is seen as an “extra”
curricular activity, not as an important and essential part of the curriculum, it is the area that usually
gets cut off when there are budget cuts in schools (Dobson, 2003). This needs to change, because the
only way we are going to have ecological citizens is by teaching younger generations how to be one.
If the necessary habits are taught at a young age, then long-term incentives will not be necessary to
reach adequate behaviors.
As Orr argues in his book “Ecological literacy”,
“By failing to include ecological perspectives in any number of subjects, students are
taught that ecology is unimportant for history, politics, economics, society and so forth.
And through television they learn that the earth is theirs for the taking. The result is a
generation of ecological yahoos without a clue why the color of the water in their river is
related to their food supply, or why storms are becoming more severe as the planet
warms. The same persons as adults will create businesses, vote, have families, and above
all, consume. If they come to reflect on the discrepancy between the splendor of their
private lives in a hotter, more toxic and violent world, as ecological illiterates they will
have roughly the same success as one trying to balance a checkbook without knowing
arithmetic” (1992.)
For them to become environmental citizens, children need to learn at a young age about their
surroundings, about themselves and about the society they live in. Only in this way will they acquire
environmentally knowledgeable attitudes and behaviors.
lanting trees at Gimnasio Moderno
To achieve ecological citizenship education, we have to bring together citizens’ education and
environmental education, and make them the basis of the entire curriculum. While environmental
education focuses on what and why, citizenship education teaches the how. Students would then learn
about and for the environment, forming frames of mind and habits that lead to sustainability. A focus
on knowledge, values and skills that bring in the concept of global interconnectedness and the moral
and ethical dimensions of social life. Ecological citizenship education can thus develop a critical
appreciation of rights and obligations in society (Orr, 1992.)
The foundation of ecological citizenship lies in having a meaningful relationship with the
earth (Berry, 1988), this way students will feel as part of the system, being able to expand their sense
of community to all living and non-living organisms. If literacy is driven by the search for knowledge,
ecological literacy is driven by the sense of wonder (Orr, 1992), which is based in emotions and
affect. Or in other words, what E.O. Wilson has called “biophilia”: to have an affinity and a sense of
kinship with all of the living world (1984.) In order to achieve this relationship with the earth,
students should be encouraged to spend more time outside. This should be a mandatory aspect of the
curriculum.
Ecological literacy has been very difficult in the western culture, because we have lost the
ability to think broadly, to see the bigger picture. By focusing on ever narrowing fields of knowledge;
most people are good at only one task, and expect everything else to be done by someone else. We are
unable to see the relations between things, between us and each other, us and the natural world and
the natural world within itself (Berry, 1973). Ecological literacy is the opposite of specialization; an
ecologically literate person has the necessary knowledge to comprehend interrelatedness, and feels
part of the ecological community. It also implies a broader understanding of how people and societies
relate to each other and to natural systems, and how they can do it sustainably. It presumes both an
awareness of the interrelatedness of life and knowledge of how the planet works. (Orr, 1992)
Even though we can make a real difference by changing the habits and mental frameworks of
the young people that are going to be the building blocks of future society, a great part of the
community is not in school anymore, so we need another method for creating and forming these
citizens. This can be done using a similar model as the one implemented in Bogotá by Antanas
Mockus, forcing communication, interaction, and self-regulation. We need to encourage a sense of
community, strengthening the relations between individual citizens. If citizens are able to gain
knowledge about the world surrounding them, knowledge about who they are, and what their role in
the planet is, and knowledge about the global community we will have a more environmentally
responsible community.
Conclusion: The Environmental Community
As I have tried to show, the cause of a good portion of our environmental problems today is
the way we live our lives, and the structure of society as it has been formed by our current economic
system: Capitalism. It is also clear that the modern environmental movement has not been able to
fight the problem by moving within the system. The only realistic way to actually stop the causes of
this problems is by changing the system. But we know that this is not possible in the short term
simply because humans are not prepared or willing to make such a radical changes in their life style.
So at least one short-term solution that might begin changing the system is to begin from the bottom
up, we first need to expand our concept of community using education, and move towards a
community with no boundaries that encloses all living and non-living organisms. Through a sense of
citizenship and a strong relation within the members of this ecological community, we can begin to
change attitudes and behaviors towards the environment.
In order to move from consumer citizenship to ecological citizenship, we need to begin by
strengthening the community, and encouraging direct interaction and communication between
environmentally responsible individuals. If each individual has a strong sense of responsibility
towards the environment and towards his or her fellow ecological citizens, other persons would start
feeling the same sense of responsibility. The ecological citizen, through his/her demands can get the
governments and the industries to act on sustainability, changing the supply and production patterns.
“Consumers react to superficial signals without caring about, understanding or being committed to
the underlying rationale for the incentives to which they respond. Ecological citizens are committed
to the principals and will ‘do good’ because it is the right thing to do” (Dobson, 2003.)
At the beginning of this paper, the phenomenon of urban sprawling was exposed as one of the
causes of the sustainability crisis. By moving back to the cities, and transforming the existing urban
regions into more sustainable and livable cities, we can reduce many of the current environmental
threats. But in order to make urban environmentalism make sense, “cities must be well-designed,
compact green cities that include trees, river parks, green belts, and urban farms where people can
see, touch, and experience nature in a variety of ways. In fact, no other cities will be sustainable in a
greenhouse world” (Orr, 1992.) Also, sustainable community planning emphasizes a highly
participatory process seeking to create livable urban areas and restore local democracy, community
and civic life. This way the entire ecological community (people, living things and the land) will have
happier and healthier lives.
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