New School Economic Review, Volume 2(1), 2007, 77-99

THE NORTH-SOUTH ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS: AN UNEQUAL ECOLOGICAL EXCHANGE ANALYSIS
George Howell*
For Gideon Rosenbluth ABSTRACT
This paper offers a political economy problematisation of the current trends of production towards environmental degradation, while offering an environmental critique of mainstream economic thought and capitalist exchange and production. A case is made for a re-appraisal of ‘unequal exchange’ analysis of international trade. First, this essay explains the evolution of economic thought on trade, offering a brief explanation of where ‘unequal exchange’ analysis comes from. In Part two, unequal ecological exchange is introduced and a political analysis of how and why the South1 allows its environmental capacity to be appropriated is discussed. Part Three discusses the ecological impact of the current global trading system, and Part Four looks at the phenomenon of ‘Perverse Subsidies’ and their influence on free trade arguments. Finally Part Five examines responses to the environmental crisis, by questioning mainstream economists’ optimism about the ecological crisis. Further addressing the ‘ecological modernization’ paradigm and the Red-Green approach, in order to show the salience of an unequal ecological exchange methodology for understanding the links between the expansion of global capitalism, environmental degradation and international inequality.

I

INTRODUCTION
At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly (Engels 1876).

This paper offers a political economy insight into the environmental crisis; it draws attention to the political and