Is Capitalism Up for the Task of Ecological Coexistence?

I'm not convinced yet. This essay by Bill McKibben makes the point that the Koch Brothers and the US Chamber of Commerce have a lock on Congress right now: two capitalist forces putting inertial pressure on the emerging fact of ecological coexistence.

But I think there's a bigger reason than this. Capitalism is inherently reactive. It builds on existing objects such as “raw materials” (whatever comes in at the factory door, e.g.). This is reflected in the ideology of “the consumer” and its “demands” that capital then “meets.”

Rather than simply evaporating everything into a sublime ether (Marx HT Macbeth: “all that is solid melts into air”), capitalism also requires and keeps firm long term inertial structures such as families (Braudel; think of the Medicis). The Koch Brothers and GE would be two modern examples.

One part of capital as a hyperobject is its revolutionizing of its mode of production, all the time. But the other part is tremendous inertia. And the tremendous inertia happens to be on the side of the modern. That is, the political ontology in which there is an “away.” But there is no “away” in the time of hyperobjects.