“The growth of capital has increased the demands on the world as a whole. The ‘ecological footprint’ of the core nations continues to expand, as they deplete their own historic stocks of material and energy, as well as those of other nations. Debt cycles and military interventions maintain global inequalities, as the South continues to subsidize the North in terms of labour, commodities and natural resources. Extraction of raw materials for commodity production is organized around meeting demands of the countries of the North, where approximately 25 percent of the world’s population lives but which consumes 75 percent of global resources. For hundreds of years, the centre has depended on cheap primary materials and labour from the periphery. The volume of material and economic value that flows out of the South increases (the volume of exports from Latin America increased by 245 percent between 1980 and 1995), yet the financial debt of these nations continues to grow, exacerbated by arbitrary increases in interest rates. At the same time monopoly capital, dominating the world market, is able to overvalue the North’s industrial, high-value commodity exports, further unbalancing international trade.” Foster, J.B. & Clark, B. 2004. Ecological Imperialism: The Curse of Capitalism. Socialist Register
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 12:20:11 +0000
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