Creative Self-destruction: The Climate Crisis and The Myth of 'Green' Capitalism

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By Christopher Wright, University of Sydney and Daniel Nyberg, University ofย Newcastle

The upcoming Paris climate talks in December this year have been characterised as humanityโ€™s last chance to respond to climate change. Many hope that this time some form of international agreement will be reached, committing the world to significant reductions in greenhouse gasย emissions.

And yet there are clear signs that the much-touted โ€œsolutionsโ€ of emissions reduction targets and market mechanisms are insufficient for what is required.

In our new book, Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction, we look at reasons why this has come about. We argue that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the worldโ€™s resources in ever more creativeย ways.

Innovating environmentalย destruction

The disconnect between business and climate action was symbolised by the announcement earlier this year that a significant portion of funding for the Paris meeting comes from major fossil fuel companies and carbon emitters; a situation French climate officials admitted was financiallyย unavoidable.

While perhaps unsurprising, this announcement hints at a deeper problem we now face โ€” the global economic system of corporate capitalism appears incapable of achieving the levels of decarbonisation necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. Humanity is locked into a process of โ€œcreativeย self-destructionโ€.

Our economies are now reliant upon ever-more ingenious ways of exploiting the Earthโ€™s fossil fuel reserves and consuming the very life-support systems we rely on for our survival. This is evident in the rush by some of the worldโ€™s largest companies to embrace deep-water and Arctic oil drilling, tar-sands processing, new mega-coalmines, and the โ€œfrackingโ€ of shale and coal-seam gas. These examples highlight both the inventive genius of corporate capitalism, and the blindness of industry and government to the ecological catastrophe they areย fashioning.

Incorporatingย critique

Our book shows how large corporations are able to continue engaging in increasingly environmentally exploitative behaviour by obscuring the link between endless economic growth and worsening environmental destruction. They achieve this by challenging perceptions of the climate crisis; invariably framing it as a topic of partisan debate rather than a serious social, economic, and political issue to be addressed. But, more importantly, by reinventing the daily ritual of โ€œbusiness as usualโ€ as a perfectly normal and ecologically soundย process.

Through the narrative of โ€œgreenโ€ capitalism, corporations and the market are portrayed as the best means of responding to the climate crisis. In this corporate imaginary, โ€œgreenโ€ products and services, increased โ€œeco-efficiencyโ€, and the ingenuity and technological mastery of business entrepreneurship will save us fromย catastrophe.

Lobbying and corporate political activity obstruct more meaningful proposals for emissionsย reductions.

Moreover, citizens are enrolled as constituents in corporate campaigns, and as consumers and โ€œecopreneursโ€ in the quest for โ€œgreen consumptionโ€. We are the brands we wear, the cars we drive, the products we buy; and we are comforted to find the future portrayed as โ€œsafelyโ€ in the hands of theย market.

The sparkling image of corporate environmentalism and business sustainability promises no conflicts and no trade-offs. Here, it is possible to address climate change while continuing the current global expansion of consumption; there is no contradiction between material affluence and environmental wellย being.

In proposing that corporate initiatives are enough, such a vision also fits well within neoliberalism – the dominant economic and political system of our time. Alternatives, such as state regulation and mandatory restrictions on fossil fuel use, are viewed as counterproductive and even harmful. It seems there is no alternative to theย market.

Echoing Fredric Jameson, โ€œit is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end ofย capitalismโ€.

Business asย usual

So this is how the environmental destruction built into our economic system is concealed. Dealing with this epic contradiction of capitalism would require material trade-offs that challenge identities andย interests.

This is why the alternative to โ€œbusiness as usualโ€ is much harder to imagine and much easier to dismiss as the enemy of social well being โ€“ what critics so often characterise as going back to living in caves or a return to the โ€œdark agesโ€.

Such is the supremacy of our current capitalist imagery that it exacts a powerful grip on our thinking and actions. It is a grip strengthened by the promotion of every new โ€œgreenโ€ product, a grip tightened through the establishment of sustainability functions in business and government, a grip defended with every โ€œoffsetโ€ we purchase for a flight to a holidayย destination.

Ultimately, the โ€œsuccessโ€ or otherwise of the Paris climate talks appears unlikely to challenge the fundamental dynamics underlying the climate crisis. Dramatic decarbonisation based around limits upon consumption, economic growth, and corporate influence are not open forย discussion.

Rather, global elites have framed the response around an accentuation of these trends. Until this changes, the dominance of corporate capitalism will ensure the continued rapid unravelling of our habitable climate.
ย 

Christopher Wright, Professor of Organisational Studies, University of Sydney and Daniel Nyberg, Professor of Management, Newcastle Business School, University ofย Newcastle

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.ย Image by artist Theodore Bohla, which features on the bookย cover.

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