Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

late-night thoughts about democracy S 59
system that is designed to maximize short-term shareholder value
and in which the rights of an abstraction—the corporation—have
by legal alchemy been rendered equal to those of real people. 7
There are few, if any, reasons for abstractions to protect the longterm
public good, but there are many for them to appear as if they
are doing so. Given the rules of the market, there is still little or no
reason not to off-load environmental costs of doing business onto
less-developed countries or future generations, but there are many
reasons to lobby behind closed doors against rules requiring corporate
accountability and decency, which are central to the vision
of a natural capitalism. Even were corporations to become fully
housebroken, there still might be precious little incentive for them
to do their fair share to alleviate poverty or distribute income
fairly, but there would be many reasons to justify not doing so as
economic necessity. And there is no particular reason why they
would prefer democratic government to other forms, raising the
specter of a world largely controlled by solar-powered, hypereffi
cient, and green corporations—but that would be a sustainable
form of fascism.
The theory of natural capitalism assumes that the four kinds
of capital—fi nancial, productive, ecological, and human—can
be melded into a single economic framework. But, in fact, they
operate by very different rules. Financial and productive forms
of capital work by the laws of greed and smartness. But human
and ecological forms of capital, otherwise known as people and
nature, work by the laws of affection, prudence, and foresight.
Advocates for natural capitalism believe that these radically different
forms of “capital” can be willingly and voluntarily joined,
across many different sectors of the global economy—from mining
and manufacturing to services and information—in time to
head off the worst of the long emergency. It is a gamble that the
considerable global powers of accumulation can be voluntarily
joined with the public interest in long-term sustainability without
the robust convening or supervising agency of governments