If only Owen Jones were capable of observation

According to Owen Jones the desecration of the environment is all about profit and the pursuit of it:

This is not a bug of capitalism: it is a central feature. The remorseless search for profit – and an economic system that enables the capture of our political systems by multinational companies with bottomless pockets – represents a fatal threat to our health, to our lives, and to our planet. Without a determined effort to drive back the political power of these corporate titans – which means questioning the very fundamentals of our economic system – our planet will continue to perish. Time is not on our side.

It’s necessary to be remarkably unobservant to end up in this position. A consideration of economic systems where profit did not, or does not, exist gives us places which are vastly more polluted than those where profit is sought. Looking east from the Berlin Wall in 1989 did not reveal a green and verdant environment after all.

It’s possible to be a little more detailed as well. Richer people in richer places have more income to devote to environmental preservation. That blend of capitalism and markets produces richer people better than any other economic system. Therefore the capitalist environments are cleaner - that environmental Kuznets curve. Again with the detail, that we consumers prefer cleaner environments means that those trying to profit from our choices are edged toward being cleaner.

But back to basics here. How can anyone observe such stinking messes as the Aral Sea and claim that it’s the pursuit of profit that damages the environment? From which we must conclude that Owen doesn’t observe.

But then we knew that.