By: Adrienne Buller

About: The Illusion of “Green Capitalism” and ESG type movements

https://www.amazon.com/Value-Whale-Illusions-Green-Capitalism/dp/1526162636/

Overall review: 👍

Notes:

“This is a story of ineffectual efforts, distractions, and piety to the status quo.”

This book is actually not exactly about the value of a whale (though apparently a whale is worth $2M, and during their lives whales sequester more CO2 per pound than a tree), and is actually about the excessive framing of all climate concerns through purely economic lenses. In effect, Buller’s point is that ESG and what she calls “green capitalism” is an oxymoron and more of the same won’t improve the situation we’re already in. Baller claims that our environmental woes aren’t the result of denialism, but of a world “defined by the imperative of the economy… rather than one where a thriving economy is a vehicle for life to flourish.”

“Rather than appraise our economy from the perspective of supporting life … we appraise life, and any action taken to protect it, in economic terms.”

Buller claims that global carbon credit markets are

1. inefficient (95% of all offset programs under the Kyoto Protocol failed to generate a reduction in emissions)
2. neo-colonial, in that wealthy members of the Global North use their wealth and power to consume the resources (carbon offsets) of the Global South, and very little economic value flows to the communities that create them, instead being siphoned off by the corporate entities that claim to be making foreign investment and impact
3. an abrogation of responsibility to actually take steps to decarbonize - its a lot easier to throw money at a problem and buy salvation for one’s sins than rectify their behavior.

Even index funds like BlackRock aren’t solutions to the issue. Despite rhetoric that “climate risk is investment risk,” in practice they are passive participants in corporate governance, and prefer little to no change in their portfolio balances, so therefore are unwilling to advocate for large changes that may rock their value. Large fossil fuel companies like Total will play financial games with ESG products like Sustainability Linked Bonds (SLBs) that tie the bond’s interest rate to the company’s net emissions - this is kind of a larp because in the terms they usually have carte blanche on what they can spend the proceeds from the bond sales on, and often they choose to maintain the overall investment ratio in fossil fuel production.

I appreciated her PoV in the book, and am somewhat convinced to reject the neoliberal idolatry of ESG and other capitalist grifts to cash in on green issues. However, if the solution to our problems isn’t traditional capitalist initiatives, what should it be? Buller doesn’t really have a conclusion there. She does mention that the majority of emissions come from the consumption of the global affluent, but her blanket recommendation of “wealth redistribution” seems as hand wavey as the “just make a market for carbon, bro” arguments she was complaining about. And she chides Bill Gates & co for hoping for “innovation” and “growth” as a kind of get-out-of-jail free card, but she in turn seems to be inhaling a lot of degrowth hopium - maybe rich people should just abandon their excessive lifestyles and move down the consumption curve with all the poor people. That doesn’t (to me) seem like a tenable solution. Overall, well worth the read. I don’t really agree with her conclusions, but I can certainly appreciate Buller’s level of agitation.