task 5

In this text sustainability is essentially defined as communal equality in the social, environmental, economic, moral and political areas of society within our generation and that of generations to come. It involves living an environmentally conscious lifestyle. The main characteristics of capitalism consist of creating new markets to stay afloat, subsuming non-capital markets and strengthening internal markets. A  'crisis of Capitalism' is when capitalization reaches limitations and has to create a new market in order to survive. An example of this is the environmental crisis. This has been used to open up new 'green' market possibilities as well as using 'greenwashing' to sell products that aren't even necessarily ecologically friendly. In terms of solutions to the problem of sustainability, there are two main angles. The capitalist concept, 'environmentalism' involves maintaining a capitalist idea and buying our way out of the environmental crisis; for example bio-diesel as mentioned in the text is actually more expensive than regular fuel. This is unrealistic because many people (if not the vast majority) are not able to afford this fuel in the same way that they are not able to afford a hybrid car. The other concept presented as a solution to this same problem is 'ecologism'; the idea that in order to have a 'green' planet we must abolish capitalism rather than simply changing elements of the system as in an environmentalist structure.      

An example of how this is being applied is the factory in Ontario mentioned in the text. However although this is less of a capitalist idea, the factory was in fact built onto a 'green space' and had a huge negative impact on the surrounding residential area. It seems that the concept of sustainability is not at all compatible with capitalism, as it is the cause and the solution to the environmental issues. In a capitalist culture, most things are not designed for the needs of the people (or the planet), but for the needs of the manufacturers to sell to people to keep capitalism going.