D'Alemberte Professor Shi-Ling Hsu has a new book, Capitalism and the Environment: A Proposal to Save the Planet (Cambridge University Press 2021), which will be published later in December. In this book, Hsu argues that capitalism is neither the environmental menace that some on the left believe it to be, nor the panacea for all social ills that some on the right believe it to be. Capitalism is a form of economic governance, which is steered by political choices. Hsu further argues that rescuing the Earth from human-caused pollution and climate change requires harnessing the power of capitalism, not rejecting it, and not idolizing it. Harnessing capitalism and steering it on a path to environmental repair requires a different set of political choices, vastly different from those that have been made by human industrial society. But once the capitalist engine is pointed in an environmental direction, the transformative power of capitalism holds humankind’s best hope for saving the planet from humankind itself.

“I wrote this book because there are widespread misconceptions about capitalism,” said Hsu. “On the left, capitalism has been equated with greed and excess, and environmental destruction. On the right, capitalism is celebrated as the only system in which human virtue can flourish. Both left and right make the mistake of making capitalism into ideology, which it is not. It is, however, the most powerful economic engine for transformation, and if only it can be directed toward protection and repair of the environment, it holds out the best hope for saving humankind from its own errant political choices.”

Hsu is an expert in the areas of environmental law, natural resource law, climate change, law and economics, and property. He has published in a wide variety of legal journals and co-authored a casebook, Ocean and Coastal Resources Law (Wolters Kluwer 2019). Prior to entering academia, Hsu was a senior attorney and economist for the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He also practiced law in California, both for the City and County of San Francisco and the law firm of Fenwick & West in Palo Alto.

Published on December 3, 2021