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As climate denialism wanes, the green transition now faces a new threat: the false solutions of so-called "green capitalism". Devices such as carbon markets and offsets are showing the limits of any strategy that refuses to tackle existing power structures and inequalities.
By itself, the invisible hand of the market will never be enough to cool our overheating planet. This thesis is laid out by Adrienne Buller, a researcher at the progressive British think tank Common Wealth.
Since 2019, she has been studying ownership models that might allow for a more democratic and sustainable economy. Buller is author of The Value of a Whale (Add publisher, 2024) and co-author with Mathew Lawrence of Owning the Future (Verso, 2022).
What does it mean to put a price on a whale?
A 2019 study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tried to establish the economic value of a whale, and came up with a figure of around two million dollars. The study was well-intentioned: expressing a whale's value would encourage its conservation. But the anecdote illustrates a problem with the way capitalism sees the climate crisis. Everything must be mediated through the market and something can only have value if it has a price. Even the life of a whale.
What does "green capitalism" mean? What are its aims?
On an ideological level, it is based on the view that we can tackle the climate crisis by transforming and decarbonising the global economy without having to address any of the social relationships and inequalities that define capitalism. I suppose its underlying aim is this: to maintain existing systems as much as possible while transforming large swathes of the economy. More concretely, it is a response to the climate crisis based almost exclusively on market mechanisms, be they carbon prices or corporate-responsibility policies (the ESG criteria) rather than on public investments and interventions. In simple terms: if we can set the right price, the market will do the rest.
Over the last ten years, hedge funds (such as BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street) have accrued more and more power. How does their growth influence climate action, or inaction?
A conversation with investigative reporters Stefano Valentino and Giorgio Michalopoulos, who have dissected the dark underbelly of green finance for Voxeurop and won several awards for their work.
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