The Commodification of Ecological Catastrophe: Between Technocratic Illusion and Ontological Resistance

Ecological catastrophe is not a neutral object. It presents itself as a field of forces where logics clash—logics that, before they can confront one another, must first be distinguished. Two voices, two geographies of thought: Edgar Morin and Ailton Krenak. One treats complexity as a fabric to be mended, the other as a wound that must not be closed too soon. Their words do not answer each other, but they till the same soil—the one where the commodification of the world claims to absorb even its own negation.

Complexity as Domestication: Morin and the Mind in the World

Morin proposes an epistemology in which mind and world intertwine without merging. Green capitalism, in this view, is not a monstrosity but an adaptive complexity—a system that integrates its own contradictions to survive. Reason here is not an instrument of domination but a means of navigating the tangle of causes and effects.

The conditions of knowledge Inherence-separation-communication The mind is in the world which is in the mind The reality of Reality The knowable world The zone of cognitive adequacy

These lines do not describe a method but a stance. The mind is not external to the world: it emerges from it and reshapes it in turn. The commodification of ecological catastrophe thus becomes a phenomenon to be grasped in its totality, including its attempts at self-reform. Green capitalism is not a betrayal but an evolution—an effort by the machine to regulate itself. Morin does not endorse it, but he recognizes its internal logic: an adaptation that keeps the whole alive, even at the cost of new alienations.

The “zone of cognitive adequacy” mentioned here is not a fixed territory. It is that shifting space where human reason strives to grasp a reality that exceeds it. Green capitalism fits into this as an attempt to align the economic with the ecological—not out of altruism, but necessity. The goal is less to save the planet than to save the system that destroys it. Morin does not condemn this contradiction; he places it at the heart of his reflection. Complexity is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be inhabited.

The Machine as Violence: Krenak and Denied Existence

Krenak does not speak of complexity but of the machine. A machine that does not merely produce objects but also manufactures absences—peoples, ecosystems, modes of existence rendered invisible because they cannot be assimilated. Green capitalism is not an adaptation but a continuation: a fresh coat of paint on a structure that remains fundamentally extractive.

THE MACHINE THAT MAKES THINGS — Text based on the live conversation Conversa Selvagem, with Ailton Krenak and Marcelo Gleiser, April 17.

These words do not designate an economic system but an ontology. The machine is not a tool but a way of being in the world that reduces everything to its use-value. It does not merely commodify nature: it denies the very existence of what cannot be turned into a resource. Indigenous peoples, primary forests, rivers—whatever resists quantification becomes an obstacle to be eliminated, not out of malice but logic.

Krenak does not propose reform. He points to a deeper violence: the one that consists in denying that other worlds are possible. Green capitalism, in this light, is not a solution but an illusion—a way of making us believe the machine can regulate itself, when in fact it only reproduces its own conditions of existence. Ecological catastrophe is not a malfunction but a consequence: the result of a system that can only exist by destroying what exceeds it.

Distinguishing to Avoid Confusion

Morin and Krenak do not clash head-on. They inhabit different registers: one speaks of knowledge, the other of existence. For Morin, the commodification of catastrophe is a phenomenon to be understood in its complexity; for Krenak, it is a violence to be rejected in principle. One seeks to tame the machine through reason, the other to expose its imposture.

Their divergence is not a disagreement but a necessity. Before seeking convergence, we must distinguish what pertains to adaptation from what pertains to negation. Morin shows that green capitalism is the machine’s attempt to survive itself; Krenak reminds us that this survival comes at the cost of erasing everything that is not itself.

What Resists Commodification

Neither offers a ready-made solution. Morin suggests that complexity can be inhabited, without guarantee of success; Krenak asserts that the machine cannot be reformed, only surpassed. Their voices do not converge, but they point to the same blind spot: what, in the world, resists commodification.

Perhaps this is their shared summit—not a synthesis, but a question: how to think what, within and beyond us, escapes the logic of the machine? Morin would answer with complex reason; Krenak with useless existence. Yet both refuse to reduce the world to an object of calculation.

Ecological catastrophe is not merely a problem to be solved. It is also—and perhaps above all—an invitation to distinguish what, within it, belongs to the machine, and what, within it, resists.