It is a bad enough that capitalism and the commodification of everything and the destruction that their very model of economic has cause, but now they also wish to take the terms of tjhe ecology movement to progress their agenda. Ecology has been hijacked by loads of household name high street companies, who freely peddle the words ‘Green’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ on the labels of their products as a sales gimmick to try and trick those who engage in ethical consumption.

However, during the last few years within what I would broadly describe as the ecology movement, I have come across a number of work situations where I have noticed people charging completely over the top fees for work related to ecology and environmental issues. On at least half of the occasions the people charging for delivering ecology related workshops have been paid amounts of money that are more akin to what a city based lawyer would earn. Personally I find it both cynical and unacceptable that people believe that they should charge the fees that they do, for work which to all intents and purposes is about moving us away from the anti-people/planet practices. After all this is not capitalism and the greed of capitalists that has gotten us into the social and ecological crisis that we are currently in.

People have to make a living

It is certainly true that many people who charge high prices for ecology related workshops have to make a living, they have bills to pay, food to buy and other costs related to everyday living, I am not in any denial about this in any way whatsoever. But, when people are putting in estimates to schools in run down areas that basically amounts to people being paid hundreds of pounds for a few activities that will last for a couple of hours, then this really is a complete and utter rip off for schools that have much smaller activities budgets than they did before the Bankers credit crunch of 2008.

To give you an idea of the type of thing I am refering to. I was asked to do a workshop for a local school in my area, the workshop in question was to make a willow play dome for the children and deliver two seed bomb making sessions. The first estimate received from the school was over £300 pounds for the sessions, which lasted around two and a half hours. My estimate for the work was £60 pounds, with all materials included. I would have liked to have not charged for this work, but as I mentioned above, we all have bills to pay and me emphatically included. Also, the money I earned from doing this work has enabled me buy materials to deliver other workshops in my local area.

Keeping capitalism out of ecology

Since we are aware that Capitalism has caused our social and ecological crisis. It would seem fairly straight forward to not engage with it as much as we can and put forward our own models such as the gift economy, Letts schemes, credit unions etc. I really believe that if we fail to move away from capitalism and the cynical profiteering of Greenwash in all of its sly and cunning forms, then people will still see capitalism as something viable and flexible that is able to work with social and ecological issues. Which is certainly is not.  Later this year I and others are planning to deliver useful skills workshops at either no cost whatsoever, or costs that amount to a couple of quid per workshop. For those who cannot pay a skills swap will take place where people without money will be asked to help us out on our community growing project for an hour or so. I believe that the ethics and principles of permaculture can provide us with a working baseline in dealing with capitalism’s intrusion into ecology

Steve