Global Intifada

Many Muslims are still stuck in the rut of imitating Western paradigms in an uncritical fashion. This applies to areas in political science (liberal democracy), ethics (utilitarianism), science, and even economics (embracing capitalism). Research is beginning to come out that does a decent job of showing that the type of economic growth that propelled Europe forward is not necessary possible to replicate in other regions of the world, especially since the formation of economic cores that are highly developed has a tendency to produce the formation of economic peripheries that are underdeveloped. A classic case of this is the manner in which the British profited off India at the expense of its local agriculture and textile manufacturing. In a previous post, I highlighted ways in which I though that capitalism would is an unsustainable economic model for Muslims. In this post, I elaborate on the ecological aspect of its long term inviability.  Perhaps the biggest problem with blindly adopting Western economic models is that even if it is economically sustainable does not mean that it will be ecologically sustainable.

If we were to theorize the massive economic development of the Muslim world, what would it look like? How would it effect what the ecosystems?

A good indication of the possible effects of such massive economic upheaval would be countries that are currently undergoing them, such as India and China. If these two countries are indications of the ecological costs of economic growth, then the future for other third world countries developing looks dim.

” A fourth of the country is now desert. More than three-fourths of its forests have disappeared. Acid rain falls on a third of China’s landmass, tainting soil, water, and food. Excessive use of groundwater has caused land to sink in at least 96 Chinese cities, producing an estimated $12.9 billion in economic losses in Shanghai alone. Each year, uncontrollable underground fires, sometimes triggered by lightning and mining accidents, consume 200 million tons of coal, contributing massively to global warming. A miasma of lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other elements of coal-burning and car exhaust hovers over most Chinese cities; of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are Chinese.

The government estimates that 400,000 people die prematurely from respiratory illnesses each year, and health care costs for premature death and disability related to air pollution is estimated at up to 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Four-fifths of the length of China’s rivers are too polluted for fish. Half the population—600 or 700 million people—drinks water contaminated with animal and human waste. Into Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze, the nation annually dumps a billion tons of untreated sewage; some scientists fear the river will die within a few years. Drained by cities and factories all over northern China, the Yellow River, whose cataclysmic floods earned it a reputation as the world’s most dangerous natural feature, now flows to its mouth feebly, if at all. China generates a third of the world’s garbage, most of which goes untreated. Meanwhile, roughly 70 percent of the world’s discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.” (Mother Jones)

If China’s growth and its correlated ecological decline is a paradigm for the future of other developing or underdeveloped countries, then the future is indeed blink. They are placed in a horrible catch 22: they attempt to develop and in doing so harm their country’s ecological systems or they remain stagnant and suffer the indignity of remaining underdeveloped and ripe for being taken advantage of by multinational companies looking for cheap resources and labor. China’s way to deal with the ecological-economic tension is to simply embrace growth and ignore ecology. The effect on its ecosystems has already become apparent within a relatively short period of time.

Ecological protection is more than just a idealistic value, it has real effects on future economic grown. Ecological destruction expedites Malthusian constraints which in turn effects population and economic growth in its own right. The trade off for temporary economic growth and protection of the environment may be a high price to pay for future generations and ultimately self defeating. A better route would be to bring levels of economic growth to bearable levels while developing alternative and more harmonious means to live on the planet. This would require abandoning certain features of a capitalist system, the least of which is the institution of debt-driven economies, which creates powerful incentives for growth; incentives that seem to inculcate the human species with disregard to life and nature. It is high time that Muslims began to ponder over these problems and develop solutions before the harm to the environment is irreparable.

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