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What Is Disaster Capitalism? A Cycle of Crisis, Exploitation, and Privatization
— Teen Vogue
How crises can be turned into opportunities for profit
In the midst of a major crisis, regular people are understandably focused on the everyday challenges of surviving such traumatic events. They’re busy assessing damage, recovering whatever items they can, making arrangements if they can afford to, and figuring out how to manage their personal losses. Klein points out that people in these circumstances rarely have the capacity to also worry about private industries pushing local policy proposals that might negatively impact their lives….
Disaster capitalism and the future of the climate crisis
If the United Nations’ 2021 climate report is any indication, the entire planet is in for a whirlwind future. Though it’s still feasible to prevent the planet from becoming completely uninhabitable, saying it’s crunch time is a massive understatement. What is unavoidable is a climate future that stands to send more unprecedented emergencies, inconsistency, and destruction our way. Klein and Villanueva agree that means the conditions that give rise to disaster capitalism could develop even more frequently.
“I think there’s no doubt that we’ll continue to see disaster opportunism. We now have more and more companies that see this as a growth sector,” says Klein. “In the era of climate disruption, we do know that these shocks from the natural world are going to be coming. And they actually aren’t natural — they’re supercharged by our pollution. And there are certainly industries that understand that this is going to mean much more opportunity in the sector, and they’re preparing for it.”
