My group and I plan to edit the article Commodification of Nature by adding some sources relevant to the article that we have discussed in class. The references relevant to this project are John Bellamy Foster's Ecology Against Capitalism, Bill McKibben's "A World at War: We Need to Literally Declare War on Climate Change," and Elliot Sperber's "Clean, Green, Class War: Bill McKibben’s Shortsighted War on Climate Change." These articles provide academic voices who believe that the commodification of nature may actually have negative consequences on both capitalism and the environment.
Criticisms of Reductionism
The intellectual John Bellamy Foster makes the argument that commodification of nature, due to its reductionist principles, leads to a greater loss of nature rather than protecting it by its attempts to internalize cost. Commodifying nature requires a simplification of it that directly imperils biodiversity. Reductionism further requires that nature be put into direct terms of value that might not be capable of expressing the total value nature holds. Many intellectuals, such as Kant, have argued that nature holds some inherent value. This innate value of nature cannot fit into a typical neoliberal cost-benefit analysis and so is not represented within the market place. This would mean that nature is priced below its actual value and so becomes more endangered by being undervalued.
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