PART 1 of this answer argued that environmental destruction is driven by the fundamental contradiction in capitalism — between the forces and relations of production and its relentless drive for profit. Capitalism depends on continued growth, without which it would collapse. Non-exploitative capitalism is a contradiction in terms. There is not a single “human ecology” — every social system has its own ecological dynamic, and capitalism’s is a particularly destructive one. 

Just as capitalism, as an economic system, depends on exploiting workers, so too does it depend on exploiting the resources — living and non-living — of our planet. That was something recognised by Marx and Engels with their concept of the “metabolic rift” between humans and nature. 

Marx focused on agriculture, the depletion of soil nutrients and the pollution of waterways by run-off and human sewage. He was an early advocate of recycling. Today we recognise that the wider impacts of capitalism threaten the whole planet. As Barry Commoner, a Marxist ecologist and one of the founders of the modern environmental movement wrote a half-century ago (at the same time of the MIT computer models discussed in part 1 of this Q&A):