How We Sold Our Future E-Book

Jens Beckert

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 340

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

For decades we have known about the dangers of global warming. Nevertheless, greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. How can we explain our failure to take the necessary measures to stop climate change? Why are societies, despite the mounting threat to ourselves and our children, so reluctant to take action?

In this important new book, Jens Beckert provides an answer to these questions. Our apparent inability to implement basic measures to combat climate change is due to the nature of power and incentive structures affecting companies, politicians, voters, and consumers. Drawing on social science research, he argues that climate change is an inevitable product of the structures of capitalist modernity which have been developing for the past 500 years. Our institutional and cultural arrangements are operating at the cost of destroying the natural environment and attempts to address global warming are almost inevitably bound to fail. Temperatures will continue to rise and social and political conflicts will intensify. The tragic truth is: we are selling our future for the next quarterly figures, the upcoming election results, and today’s pleasure. Any realistic climate policy needs to focus on preparing societies for the consequences of escalating climate change and aim at strengthening social resilience to cope with the increasingly unstable natural world. Civil society is the only source of pressure that could build the necessary strength and support for climate protection.

How We Sold Our Future is a crucial intervention into the most pressing issue of our time.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Table of Contents

Dedication

Title Page

Copyright

Quote

1 Knowledge without change

Notes

2 Capitalist modernity

Notes

3 Big Oil

Notes

4 The hesitant state

Notes

5 Global prosperity

Notes

6 Consumption without limits

Notes

7 Green growth

Notes

8 Planetary boundaries

Notes

9 What next?

Notes

Acknowledgements

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.

Global air temperature over the past thousand years

Figure 2.

Global net greenhouse gas emissions in gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalents per year (m…

Chapter 2

Figure 3.

Growth in global GDP per capita per year

Figure 4.

Global energy consumption from 1800 to 2022 in terawatt-hours

Figure 5.

Economy, state, population

Chapter 6

Figure 6.

Energy use per person vs GDP per capita, 2021 (Note: Energy refers to primary en…

Chapter 8

Figure 7.

Global extraction of raw materials, 1970–2024, by material groups

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Dedication

Title Page

Copyright

Quote

Begin Reading

Acknowledgements

End User License Agreement

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Dedication

For Beatrice and JasperWhat world will you live in?

How We Sold Our Future

The Failure to Fight Climate Change

JENS BECKERT

Translated by Ray Cunningham

polity

Originally published in German as Verkaufte Zukunft: Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheitern droht. © Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin 2024. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin.

The right of Jens Beckert to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This English edition © Polity Press, 2025

The translation of this book was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6510-8

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024939848

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com

Nature always loses. When it comes to economic matters, that’s the rule.

– Renato Valencia*

*

Valencia is Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador in Quito. Cited in Catrin Einhorn and Manuela Andreoni, ‘Ecuador Tried to Curb Drilling and Protect the Amazon. The Opposite Happened’,

The New York Times

, 14.01.2023 (

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/climate/ecuador-drilling-oil-amazon.html

).

1Knowledge without change

Imagine Glacier Bay National Park in the south of Alaska, a spectacular landscape dominated by huge glaciers, with massive slabs of ice crashing into the Arctic Ocean. In 2022, Alaskan author Tom Kizzia watched this spectacle of glacial calving from a cruise ship.1 He observed that this was once a sublime way to experience the power and beauty of untouched nature; today, however, it is impossible not to see in the breaking ice the accelerating and uncontrolled destruction of nature. Every roll of ‘white thunder’ feels like another loss.

We are surrounded by disturbing images of disrupted natural processes and the devastation of nature – the foundation of human life. These images often show tremendous suffering: we see families in Pakistan paddling boats through flooded villages; desperate people on the roofs of their flooded houses in Germany’s Ahr Valley; or Californians standing aghast in front of the ruins of their burnt homes. None of these natural events can be causally attributed to climate change directly, but the significant rise in extreme weather events with disastrous consequences is indeed the result of human-induced global warming, caused by an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The broader public has known that the destruction was coming for close to forty years; we have not stopped it.

Figure 1. Global air temperature over the past thousand years

Source: Based on IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, New York, 2021, p. 6, Figure SPM.1.

Quite the opposite. Over this time period, annual global carbon dioxide emissions have not decreased, they have almost doubled. In the past thirty years alone, as much carbon dioxide was emitted into the atmosphere as in the previous two hundred years combined.2 The result is a steep rise in the global average temperature, a development that climate researchers refer to as ‘the great acceleration’. To date, the temperature has risen by almost 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to the early nineteenth century (see Figure 1). On our current path, with greenhouse gas emissions continuing to surge worldwide, the global average temperature is expected to increase by a further 1.3 degrees Celsius over the next eighty years – assuming that current climate action pledges are actually honoured.3

Human changes to the biosphere are damaging – or eliminating altogether – parts of the ecological niche in which our cultures can survive in relatively stable conditions. Global warming is now inevitable, and it is unclear if societies can adapt to the dramatically changed foundations of life that will result.4 The increased incidence of floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires, together with declining biodiversity and rising sea levels, has the potential to significantly destabilize our societies. We will be confronted with questions of social inequality as never before: inequality both between the global North and the particularly hard-hit global South and between affluent and poorer social groups. Climate refugees, water scarcity, famines, and – in rich countries, too – ever higher costs for protecting people against natural disasters will lead to new distributional conflicts and to the very real possibility of severe social disorder.

We by no means understand all the causal chains in the highly complex climate system, and must constantly refine and adapt our climate models to take account of new knowledge. Nonetheless, one thing is certain: we know where the journey is heading and how drastically living conditions on Earth will shift. In short, climate change is no longer just a research problem for the natural sciences. Nor is its solution simply a technical challenge. We have already developed many safe and effective technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We also know which policy choices, changes in economic activity, and behavioural shifts would make a difference. The greatest challenge, rather, is social and cultural. If we know what to do and how to do it, why don’t societies act? That is the central question of this book.

The answer requires understanding the key social, political, and economic processes that drive our societies. I will sketch my answer by looking above all at the growth and profit rationale behind our capitalist economic system, together with its distribution of power, and the problems of political legitimacy in democratic political systems. Questions of cultural identity and status competition between consumers must also take centre stage. I will try to establish that the dominant role of power and culture in determining the social effects of climate change and how we fight it requires attending to the insights of social science. Natural scientists make the basic problem crystal clear and engineers propose technical solutions, but social scientists are uniquely equipped to investigate the economic, political, and cultural obstacles preventing us from taking urgent action against an ever-growing threat.

How do the workings of a capitalist market economy, of a parliamentary democracy, and of an individualistic culture shape the way we interact with the natural environment?5 My thesis is simple: the power and incentive structures of capitalist modernity and its governance mechanisms are blocking a solution to climate change. They are responsible, of course, for much else too. Other fundamental social problems also come up against power structures that impede their solution: witness the persistent and scandalous forms of poverty and social inequality. But while we can always hope that poverty and social inequality will be lessened at some point in the future and that a fairer world will emerge, the temporal dimensions of climate change are different. The world is warming rapidly and the catastrophic consequences of postponing action are irreversible. As the Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty remarks, the problems of climate change ‘confront us with finite calendars of urgent action. Yet powerful nations of the world have sought to deal with the problem with an apparatus that was meant for actions on indefinite calendars.’6

The ‘finite calendar’ has not spurred resolute action for the simple reason that the problem does not change the prevailing power and incentive structures, or not sufficiently. The fact is that the short-term gains of avoiding the costs of climate action exceed the current benefits of future climate security. This is because the positive effects of costly climate protection measures would only kick in when we are old, or dead, ‘merely’ benefiting later generations. Some people may also think that they can personally avoid the consequences of climate change, that they are protected by their wealth or by geography, that only ‘others’ will be affected. At best, an idealistic interest in the wellbeing of future generations – probably manifested most strongly when we picture the future lives of our own children and grandchildren – creates incentives to align our behaviour to more distant time horizons.

Since companies, politicians, and private citizens typically align their decision-making with short-term opportunities, we can expect them to overlook or downplay the future negative impacts caused by ignoring environmental damage.7 The common good that is our natural environment remains an exploitable resource sold on the market for profit. Its sale leads to its destruction. This is what I mean when I say that we have ‘sold’ our future.8

Time and again, in political discussions on climate change, we hear statements such as, ‘All we have to do is X’, or, ‘Why don’t we finally agree on Y?’ ‘X’ here might be the expansion of wind power, ‘Y’ setting limits on the use of natural resources or increasing the price of petrol and meat. However, the crucial question is: who is ‘we’? Change requires actors who are willing to act and who command the resources necessary to implement changes in a contested field populated by a multitude of other actors with very different interests and goals. Every political action takes place within a dense thicket of rules, practices, and institutions, but also of values and habits. These bind actors to structures and opportunities that set specific incentives and define the scope for action, thereby shaping decisions. This brings us to the workings of capitalist modernity, which is the social system that has determined how we interact with the natural foundations of life for the past five hundred years. It also shapes our current responses to climate change, as I will show in the following chapters.

That our responses are far from adequate to deal with the problem is demonstrated by the uninterrupted rise in global warming (see Figure 1). But what would a commensurate response look like? Implementing climate neutrality immediately? Three degrees of warming by the end of the century? And ‘commensurate’ in whose eyes? An economic cost–benefit calculation would not help here, because the assumptions involved are far too arbitrary.9 Rather, something like a norm is needed, and in fact such a thing does exist: most countries in the world have committed to climate targets, in particular under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which has been ratified by over 190 countries. This set the goal of limiting the increase in the global average temperature compared to pre-industrial levels to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible, and in any event to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Commensurate action would therefore mean acting to achieve this goal.

How, then, are we doing? A well-known graph used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) illustrates the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions necessary to achieve the Paris climate targets (see Figure 2). This graph serves to show how the measures taken so far are woefully inadequate. Although the climate protection measures taken to date are indeed flattening the curve of increasing emissions, they are far from sufficient.10 What is needed is an emergency brake, and this is nowhere in sight. And so, in all likelihood, not a single one of the signatory states to the Paris Climate Agreement will succeed in meeting their agreed climate targets.11 Some actors clearly acknowledge this, while, for political reasons, others maintain the illusion that we are on the right track, fearing that without this illusion, even the current inadequate commitments would weaken and resignation would set in.

This book seeks to understand why it has not been possible to do what the future health of the world requires. My reflections have led me to a pessimistic conclusion: the necessary measures are not being taken and will not be taken. I hasten to add that we cannot see into the future and have all too often been surprised by significant social developments. But climate change is not a problem for the future. The destruction has already started. To repeat: we have known about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions for decades. We know that over the past thirty years, despite regular high-level international climate conferences, annual global carbon dioxide emissions have increased by more than half and are hitting new peaks every year. And, truth be told, we also know that the measures currently planned are not sufficient to meet the agreed climate targets. For this to happen, according to the IPCC, annual global emissions would have to be halved by 2030; and by 2050, they would need to be as much as 85 per cent lower.12 In Germany, for example, CO2 emissions would have to fall by 6 per cent each year between now and 2030. Since 2010, however, the annual average fall has been just 2 per cent. Theoretically, of course, this could change, but this is not a plausible expectation; it is mere ‘greenwishing’.13

Figure 2. Global net greenhouse gas emissions in gigatonnes of CO2 equivalents per year (mean values)

Source: IPCC, Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers, ed. by The Core Writing Team, Hoesung Lee, and José Romero, Geneva, 2023, p. 22.

This is because the changes needed would require radical reforms to our economic, political, and social structures. This kind of far-reaching transformation is nowhere in sight, and in any event would take a long time to implement. If a robust response to climate change comes at all, it will certainly come too late. The projections made by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which include the measures currently planned for the energy transition, show that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels will peak in 2025 at 37 billion tonnes, but then – and this is the kicker – they will fall only to 32 billion tonnes by 2050.14 CO2 savings are primarily being made in highly developed industrialized countries. Germany, for example, is planning to reduce its CO2 emissions by two-thirds by 2030 compared to 1990.15 As things stand, this is not likely to happen. But even if plans in Germany and perhaps some other countries do succeed, the impact will be limited. Globally, 60 per cent of energy demand will likely still be covered by fossil fuels in 2050.16 Based on its own data, the IEA therefore expects global temperatures to rise by a total of 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

I could have written this book as a parable, looking back on a past, idealistic society from a desolate future – this would probably have been interpreted as doom-mongering on my part. Instead, I propose something different: namely, considered realism based on empirical evidence. To paraphrase Walter Benjamin: I want to help ‘organize’ the pessimism that arises from sober observation of the situation17 – to give it a conceptual structure that allows us to better understand the mechanisms behind the inadequate response to climate change. This ‘considered realism’ will include both a recognition that we will not be delivered from this clear and present danger and a collective mourning for what we will lose.18 My hope is that a realistic perspective of this kind might help spark a change in political behaviour and strengthen our psychological capacity to adapt to the consequences of the altered living conditions on this planet.

So, to be blunt: the world is heading for further significant global warming. The consequences for nature and for humanity will be severe, but cannot be precisely specified in advance. Because the social consequences of climate change are so numerous and interdependent, we cannot know exactly how they will play out. At best, social scientists can develop a range of scenarios and anticipate how they might evolve – like strategists in a war room. My scenario does not postulate social collapse, but it does assume that climate change will exacerbate what is generally referred to as ‘social stress’ and will intensify social conflicts. Considerable economic, political, and social turmoil lies ahead. Although this will take different forms in different regions, societies overall will be thrown into unrest by increasingly virulent distributional conflicts. In a world that is 2 or 2.5 degrees warmer, and in which a significant proportion of our prosperity will have to be spent on repairing climatic damage and adapting to climate change, it will be much more difficult to organize a democratic social order, or even just peaceful coexistence. The damage caused by climate change (as opposed to financial crises or pandemics) is irreversible and the resultant peril is permanent. The world will be poorer than it is today. There will be greater suffering, and it will be extremely unevenly distributed.

And it will not be a world without capitalism. Even the climate crisis will not bring about ‘the end of capitalism’,19 as some authors proclaim, because it is not a crisis of the economic system. Though this may sound cynical, climate change and the green transformation also represent a huge opportunity for companies. When temperatures go up, more air conditioning systems will be sold and new types of grain will have to be developed. Demand for solar panels will rise, dams will need to be built. It is quite possible that capitalist modernity is shedding its skin once again and adjusting to a new socio-economic regime, one geared towards increased decarbonization of the energy supply and adapted to fit the new climatic conditions, at least in the highly developed industrialized countries. This reorientation will take place precisely in the manner and to the degree permitted by the interests of profit and power, acting in concert with political and cultural structures. Neither the economic pursuit of profit maximization nor the growth imperative will be fundamentally called into question, and the same applies to overconsumption and global inequality. Rather, the pursuit of profit will merely shift its material reference points. Whether this will be compatible with social and political stability in a world that has warmed by 2.5 degrees is an open question. In such a world, the destruction caused to the natural foundations for human life by climate change will be dramatically visible everywhere.

However, predictions about the future are only marginal to the purpose of this book. The main focus, as mentioned, is on our inadequate response to climate change. I hope to contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon through the analysis of economic, political, and cultural processes. The fact that I concentrate on climate change and only touch on other environmental crises, such as pollution or biodiversity loss, does not mean that these are any less important. Rather, I believe that in many respects the way climate change has been handled exemplifies the approach to ecological crises in general. Climate change, like many other ecological crises, is what social scientists call a wicked problem.20 The nature of wicked problems is such that there is no easily identifiable solution. This is what distinguishes them from tame problems, such as the hole in the ozone layer a few decades ago. In that instance, there was a clear cause which could be tackled using a comparatively straightforward measure: the phasing out and replacement (e.g. in refrigerators) of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).21 Climate change is not tame, but, rather, is characterized by complex interdependencies on numerous levels that do not allow for a single universal solution. As with all wicked problems, climate change requires a step-by-step search for solutions and pragmatic ways of coping with it. This is why this book cannot offer simple messages along the lines of: ‘the situation is serious, but here are ten ways to stop climate change.’

Instead, I seek to show how mechanisms in the economy, in politics, and in society block any adequate response to climate change. To do this, I demonstrate how the economy, politics, citizens, and consumers are in a conflictual relationship with each other, while at the same time depending on each other and mutually benefiting from the contribution they each provide. To a significant degree, they contribute to and manage their conflicts by tacitly tolerating the destruction of the natural foundations for successful human coexistence. Nature cannot ‘defend’ itself because it has no voice of its own. The climate crisis, as we will see, makes manifest the irreconcilable contradictions between the modus operandi of capitalist modernity and the preservation of the natural foundations for life. My analysis of these conflictual relationships is also intended to broaden our understanding of how it might still be possible, even if there is no ideal solution, to act wisely and responsibly in these muddled and bewildering circumstances.

This book is organized as follows. In Chapter 2, I lay the foundations of my argument. I describe the institutional and cultural mechanisms that spread throughout capitalist modernity and that determine the actions of companies, the state, citizens, and consumers in the climate crisis. Next, in Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6, I show how these mechanisms translate into economic, state, and consumer behaviour and lead to the current inadequate response to climate change. In Chapters 7 and 8, I then address the widespread idea that the ecological crisis can be solved by a regime of ‘green growth’. I do not deny that the decarbonization of energy consumption is tremendously important, but I show why, under the conditions created by an economic system designed for continuous and permanent growth, even this path does not lead to an adequate response.

Finally, in Chapter 9, I turn to possible options for action. My considered realism does not by any means lead of necessity to a state of resignation. Yes, the climate policy measures of the past thirty years have been inadequate, but if they are implemented consistently and rigorously, the global warming we can expect will probably be in the range of 2.2 to 2.9 degrees Celsius. This is not nothing, given that without them we would have ended up with warming between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees Celsius.22 At the end of the book, I consider how climate protection can best be promoted under the conditions prevailing in capitalist modernity and how societies can adapt to life under altered climatic conditions. As already stated, lower greenhouse gas emissions certainly represent a worthwhile outcome.23 The onset of some consequences of climate change could possibly be delayed, and the consequences themselves could be less severe. This would buy us time, time during which the social and technological conditions for action might change. In addition, precautions could be taken to better prepare us for what is to come.24

It falls to all concerned citizens, and not least to those of us in the social sciences, to identify potential political strategies without seeking to cover up the fact that we will not succeed in actually stopping climate change. How can societies shaped by capitalist modernity influence the collective social processes that determine how we interact with nature? Ultimately, it is a matter of encouraging business, politics, and citizens to treat the problem with much greater urgency and recalibrate the use and distribution of scarce economic resources. This will be a huge challenge in a world made more politically and socially volatile by climate change, as the resources required to make a difference will be that much greater. This will involve tradeoffs: between financing measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and measures to adapt to climatically altered living conditions; and also between all spending on climate policy and spending on the countless other social challenges that will still be with us – from poverty and dilapidated infrastructure to underfunded public healthcare systems. However, we must bear in mind that the problem is not just financial: we will also need to mobilize society’s political and moral resources to set sustainable transformations in motion and to build the social resilience that will be needed in a world we have permitted to warm by more than 2 degrees.

Notes

1.

Tom Kizzia, ‘End-Times Tourism in the Land of Glaciers’,

The New York Times

, 22.11.2022 (

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/glaciers-alaska-climate-change.html

).

2.

Our World in Data, ‘Cumulative CO

2

Emissions’ (

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions

).

3.

UN Environment Programme,

Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window – Climate Crisis Calls for Rapid Transformation of Societies

, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, 2022 (

https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2022

).

4.

Luke Kemp et al., ‘Climate Endgame: Exploring Catastrophic Climate Change Scenarios’,

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

119:34 (2022), pp. 1–9, here p. 3; Timothy M. Lenton et al., ‘Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming’,

Nature Sustainability

6 (2023), pp. 1237–47.

5.

As this indicates, I am focusing here on the democratic countries of the global North. This is justified because these countries bear almost all of the responsibility for the increase in CO

2

concentrations in the atmosphere to date and are still the largest emitters relative to their populations. Only in

Chapter 5

do I address the problem from the perspective of the global South.

6.

Dipesh Chakrabarty,

The Climate of History in a Planetary Age

, Chicago and London, 2021, p. 12.

7.

On the problem of the short-term nature of corporate decisions, see Natalie Slawinski et al., ‘The Role of Short-Termism and Uncertainty Avoidance in Organizational Inaction on Climate Change: A Multi-Level Framework’,

Business & Society

56:2 (2017), pp. 253–82. On the question of the conditions under which organizations institutionalize extremely long-term time horizons, see Frederic Hanusch and Frank Biermann, ‘Deep-Time Organizations: Learning Institutional Longevity from History’,

The Anthropocene Review

7:1 (2020), pp. 19–41.

8.

The temporal and spatial structures particular to climate change also go some way towards explaining why the response to climate change differs so markedly from that to other crises, such as the coronavirus pandemic or the outbreak of war in Ukraine. In both cases, radical measures were taken immediately and with the expectation of rapid impacts.

9.

This is the approach taken in (and at the same time a problem with) the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model developed by William Nordhaus, which attempts to calculate economically optimal global warming: William D. Nordhaus, ‘Rolling the “DICE”: An Optimal Transition Path for Controlling Greenhouse Gases’,

Resource and Energy Economics

15:1 (1993), pp. 27–50.

10.

Relevant academic studies: Anita Engels et al. (eds),

Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023: The Plausibility of a 1.5°C Limit to Global Warming – Social Drivers and Physical Processes

, Hamburg, 2023; Joost de Moor and Jens Marquardt, ‘Deciding Whether It’s Too Late: How Climate Activists Coordinate Alternative Futures in a Postapocalyptic Present’,

Geoforum

138 (2023), 103666 (

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.103666

). And a journalistic article: ‘Goodbye 1.5°C’,

The Economist

, 5.–11.11.2022, p. 13.

11.

See Climate Action Tracker (

https://climateactiontracker.org

/). The fact that climate protection targets are invariably missed and other political promises are also broken shows that much of the summit drama around climate change policy is purely symbolic. However, similar to the declaration of human rights in the late eighteenth century, climate targets create a normative basis from which existing practices and regulations can be criticized and pressure for action can be built up.

12.

McKinsey & Company, ‘Global Energy Perspective 2021’ (

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/oil%20and%20gas/our%20insights/global%20energy%20perspective%202021/global-energy-perspective-2021-final.pdf

).

13.

On the important concept of plausible climate expectations, see Engels et al. (eds),

Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023

.

14.

IEA,

World Energy Outlook 2022

, Paris, 2022 (

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022/key-findings

). The oil multinational ExxonMobil takes a similar view and in its ‘Global Outlook’ expects energy-related CO

2

emissions to fall by 25 per cent by 2050, which would correspond to annual emissions of just under 28 billion tonnes: ExxonMobil, ‘ExxonMobil Global Outlook: Our View to 2050’, 2023 (

https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/what-we-do/energy-supply/global-outlook#Keyinsights

). Even the most optimistic scenarios do not expect greenhouse gases to be removed from the atmosphere over the next twenty-five years on a scale that would neutralize the expected new emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels.

15.

Even if this is successful, the emissions permitted under the German Climate Protection Act would not limit the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees, but with a 67 per cent probability would allow it to rise to 1.75 degrees. See Mario Ragwitz et al.,

Szenarien für ein klimaneutrales Deutschland. Technologieumbau, Verbrauchsreduktion und Kohlenstoffmanagement

, Munich, 2023.

16.

IEA,

World Energy Outlook 2022

.

17.

Walter Benjamin, ‘Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia’, in

Selected Writings

, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Vol. 2, Part 1, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999, pp. 207–21.

18.

On ecological mourning, see, for example, Rebecca Elliott, ‘The Sociology of Climate Change as a Sociology of Loss’,

European Journal of Sociology

59:3 (2018), pp. 301–37; Ashlee Cunsolo and Karen Landman (eds),

Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief

, Montreal, 2017; Carl Cassegård and Håkan Thörn, ‘Toward a Postapocalyptic Environmentalism? Responses to Loss and Visions of the Future in Climate Activism’,

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

1:4 (2018), pp. 561–78.

19.

For example, the journalist Ulrike Herrmann,

Das Ende des Kapitalismus. Warum Wachstum und Klimaschutz nicht vereinbar sind – und wie wir in Zukunft leben werden

, Cologne, 2022.

20.

Reiner Grundmann, ‘Climate Change as Wicked Social Problem’,

Nature Geoscience

9 (2016), pp. 562–3; Dominic Duckett et al., ‘Tackling Wicked Environmental Problems: The Discourse and Its Influence on Praxis in Scotland’,

Landscape and Urban Planning

154 (2016), pp. 44–56; Peter J. Balint et al.,

Wicked Environmental Problems: Managing Uncertainty and Conflict

, Washington, DC, 2011.

21.

The real situation with regard to CFCs is of course more complex. Here I am concerned solely with the problem structure of the ‘hole in the ozone layer’.

22.

Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, ‘Yes, There Has Been Progress on Climate. No, It’s Not Nearly Enough’,

The New York Times

, 25.10.2021 (

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world-climate-pledges-cop26.html

).

23.

David I. Armstrong McKay et al., ‘Exceeding 1.5°C Global Warming Could Trigger Multiple Climate Tipping Points’,

Science

377:6611 (2022) (

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abn7950

).

24.

In this sense, there is also no contradiction between recognizing the failure to meet published climate targets and continuing to endeavour to mitigate climate change. See also de Moor and Marquardt, ‘Deciding Whether It’s Too Late’.

2Capitalist modernity

Today’s response to climate change is determined by social structures that have developed over the past five hundred years. Economic historians describe how these structures developed in a number of key locations from the late fifteenth century onwards, slowly at first, and then with breathtaking momentum.1 Production, trade, and finance hubs formed, for example, in northern Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands. In many cases, these centres were globally networked from the outset, even as most people continued to live in agrarian and locally bound economies only sporadically in contact with these new global hubs.

A key aspect of this early phase of capitalism was the expansion of private property rights through so-called enclosures of large parts of the land used by peasants. This land, which had previously been cultivated collectively as common land, was then assigned to landowners as private property, turning large parts of the rural population into dependent farm labourers or vagabond day labourers. They were then available as labour for the emerging ‘manufactories’ and later for the urban mills and sweatshops in industrial cities.2 The availability of wage labour is a key prerequisite for the development of the capitalist economy.

A second far-reaching development was the appropriation of land or wealth from forcibly subjugated populations in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The spread of European-controlled slavery on the American continent, the exploitation both of natural resources and the labour force in the colonies and their use as markets for European goods fuelled the capital accumulation at home that was a prerequisite for the industrialization that began in the late eighteenth century.3

It was only with industrialization that the comprehensive deepening and expansion of the capitalist economy began. From this point onwards, market relations based on wage labour, colonial rule, and technological and institutional innovation spread rapidly.4 This led in the global North to an unprecedented rise in prosperity, but also to a massive expansion in the use of fossil fuels. Somewhat earlier, a fundamental cultural transformation had begun with the Enlightenment, which gave rise to political and normative principles such as the ideas of progress, equality, and individual self-determination – principles that today still shape our understanding of nature as well.

These cultural transformations, together with the expansion of the market economy, thus define the way we interact with nature. When I speak of capitalist modernity,5 I am referring to a model of society that is characterized both by market-based and profit-oriented economic structures and by political and cultural developments, such as a drive towards individualism and the belief in progress, which are closely interwoven with those economic structures. Both aspects are combined in today’s social configurations. In order to answer the question of why modern societies are destroying the natural foundations for life, we must therefore consider not only the economic but also the political and cultural aspects of capitalist modernity.

Let’s start with the economy. The spread of markets as institutions for the distribution of goods, money, and labour is central to the development of the capitalist economy. Markets and competition as such are not inventions of modern capitalism. However, in pre-modern societies, markets were restricted to the exchange of a limited range of goods, and were highly socially regulated because they were considered a threat to the social cohesion of communities.6 According to the sociologist Max Weber, ‘the market was originally a consociation of persons who are not members of the same group and who are, therefore, “enemies”’.7 What is new is the ubiquity of markets, their material, spatial, and temporal expansion, and in particular the widespread inclusion of money and labour into the market system. Also new is the comprehensive global networking of markets. Trade among widely separated regions took place even in the ancient world, but truly global trade networks became more and more comprehensive with the unfolding of capitalist modernity. The globalized economy penetrated the world ever deeper in the twentieth century, and with the collapse of communism and the transformation of China over the past thirty or forty years its triumph seems complete.8

Capitalism brings with it a specific set of mechanisms that determine economic activity. Private property rights enable individuals to appropriate profits and structure societies into classes. Company law limits investors’ liability and thus the risks borne by individuals; this, along with standardization and new forms of corporate organization, encourages the expansion of economic activities.9 At the same time, competition draws economic actors into a process of constant innovation. Entrepreneurs have to innovate to ensure that they do not fall behind their competitors. Those who do not keep up with the pressure to innovate will be wiped out on the market. The economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term ‘creative destruction’ to describe this process, which is also reinforced by the financing of entrepreneurial activities through credit.10 Credit enables the expansion of economic activities by bringing forward future profits, but at the same time requires a strategic orientation towards uninterrupted growth, since interest has to be paid on the borrowed capital. The expansion of markets thus introduces into the economic system a relentless dynamism based on innovation and expansion.

These economic mechanisms often developed through the agency of the state. In Europe, the state created the conditions for the modern capitalist economy by establishing what was initially a national economic space: building transport routes, defining weights and measures, abolishing the privileges of the guilds, and establishing a unitary monetary system.11 At the global level, states supported the international expansion of capitalism, for instance through the rise in trade agreements and the imposition of colonial rule. The structures set up politically served to secure access to markets and resources and thus to enable economic expansion, through specialization, the sourcing of raw materials, the emergence of large-scale production facilities, and the opening up of sales markets. State oppression and gunboats facilitated and imposed modern trading networks and an international division of labour which implanted capitalism as a global economic system. State control was also vital for the emerging capitalist economies of the twentieth century, for example in Asia.12