On 21 September 2006 UK über-entrepreneur and Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson pledged approximately £1.6 billion, the equivalent of all the profits from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains for the next ten years, to fighting climate change. Since then, Branson has restated his commitment to action on global warming, including investment in technologies for sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this paper, I critically examine and engage with Branson's announcements as a specific entrée into a dialog about so-called ‘green capitalism’. I am particularly interested in the role of the entrepreneurial subject in environmental policy and environmental action. There are glaring problems associated with green capitalism as a mash-up of environmentalism with capitalism. One of these is the tethering of environmentalism to a political economy whose mantra is growth for growth's sake, or, in Marx's terms, accumulation for accumulation's sake. This has been discussed by some as the problem of capitalism's ecological metabolism or ‘metabolic rift’. Yet, while accumulation for accumulation's sake may well be anathema to progressive environmentalism and sustainability, I argue that this is not only an objective, quantitative problem but also one of the qualitative dimensions of produced nature and the cultural politics of environmentalism. Appreciation of this can be gleaned by reexamining Marx's discussion of the role of the bourgeois subject in the relentless drive to reproduce and expand capital accumulation via anarchic, entrepreneurial investment. Green capitalist orthodoxy relies on this source of innovative dynamism, but in the process obscures or overlooks the fact that accumulation for accumulation's sake is by definition guided by the anarchic and amoral search for profitable realization of surplus value. Moreover, in order for green capitalism to succeed, its legitimacy must be secured. I argue that this legitimacy derives in part from specific performances of green capitalism by entrepreneurial elites, also made evident by Branson and his commitments to climate action. All of this raises questions about the political, cultural, and ecological character of green capitalism, issues brought to the fore by Branson's brand of climate activism.
References
1.
AltvaterE, 1993The Future of the Market: An Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature after the Collapse of ‘Actually Existing Socialism’ (Verso, London)
2.
BaileyI, 2007a, “Market environmentalism, new environmental policy instruments, and climate policy in the United Kingdom and Germany”Annals of the Association of American Geographers97530–550
3.
BaileyI, 2007b, “Neoliberalism, climate governance and the scalar politics of EU emissions trading”Area39431–442
4.
BaileyIRuppS, 2005, “Geography and climate policy: A comparative assessment of new environmental policy instruments in the UK and Germany”Geoforum36387–401
5.
BakkerK, 2005, “Neoliberalizing nature? Market environmentalism in water supply in England and Wales”Annals of the Association of American Geographers95542–565
6.
BakkerKBridgeG, 2006, “Material worlds? Resource geographies and the ‘matter of nature’”Progress in Human Geography305–27
7.
Bayliss-SmithT P, 1982The Ecology of Agricultural Systems (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
BentonT, 1989, “Marxism and natural limits: An ecological critique and reconstruction”New Left Reviewnumber 17851–58
11.
BentonT (Ed.), 1996The Greening of Marxism (Guilford Press, New York)
12.
BlaikieP MBrookfieldH C, 1987Land Degradation and Society (Methuen, London)
13.
BourdieuP, 1984Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)
14.
BoydWPrudhamS SSchurmanR, 2001, “Industrial dynamics and the problem of nature”Society and Natural Resources14555–570
15.
BoykoffM TGoodmanM, 2008, “Conspicuous redemption? Reflections on the promises and perils of the ‘celebritization’ of climate change”Geoforum (in press), doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.04.006
16.
BraunB, 2005, “Environmental issues: Writing a more-than-human urban geography”Progress in Human Geography29635–650
17.
BrownW, 2006, “American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization”Political Theory34690–714
18.
BuckD, 2007, “The ecological question: Can capitalism prevail?”, in Coming to Terms with Nature: Socialist Register 2007 Eds PanitchLLeysC (Monthly Review Press, London) pp 60–71
19.
BumpusA GOvermanD, 2008, “Accumulation by decarbonization and the governance of carbon offsets”Economic Geography84127–155
20.
ButlerJ, 1990Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, New York)
21.
CarneyJ, 1993, “Converting the wetlands, engendering the environment: The intersection of gender with agrarian change in the Gambia”Economic Geography69329–348
22.
CarsonR, 1994Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA)
23.
CastreeN, 2003, “Environmental issues: Relational ontologies and hybrid politics”Progress in Human Geography27203–211
24.
ClarkBYorkR, 2005, “Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change, and the biospheric rift”Theory and Society34391–428
25.
ColbornTDumanoskiDMyersJ P, 1996Our Stolen Future (Dutton, New York)
26.
CookeF M, 2002, “Vulnerability, control and oil palm in Sarawak: Globalization and a new era?”Development and Change33189–211
27.
DennisR AColferC P, 2006, “Impacts of land use and fire on the loss and degradation of lowland forest in 1983–2000 in East Kutai District, East Kalimantan, Indonesia”Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography27(1) 30–48
28.
EhrlichP R, 1968The Population Bomb (Ballantine Books, New York)
29.
EkinsPBarkerT, 2001, “Carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading”Journal of Economic Surveys15325–376
30.
FosterJ B, 1999, “Marx's theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology”American Journal of Sociology105366–405
31.
FosterJ B, 2000Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature (Monthly Review Press, New York)
32.
FriedmannH, 2005, “From colonialism to green capitalism: Social movements and emergence of food regimes”Research in Rural Sociology and Development11227–264
33.
GajdaAKiefferS W, 2007, “Celebrity meets science: Hollywood's environmentalism and its effect”Geological Society of America Today October, 44–45
34.
GandyM, 2002Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
35.
GoldmanM, 2005Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT)
36.
GoldmanMSchurmanR, 2000, “Closing the great divide: New social theory on society and nature”Annual Review of Sociology26563–584
37.
GordonH S, 1954, “The economic theory of a common property resource: The fishery”Journal of Political Economy62124–142
38.
LittleGriscom A, 2008, “The Environmental Defense Fund's Fredd Krupp on the best capitalist climate solutions”Wired Magazine 25 February
39.
GuthmanJDuPuisE M, 2006, “Embodying neoliberalism: Economy, culture, and the politics of fat”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space24427–448
40.
HallS, 1988, “The toad in the garden: Thatcherism among the theorists”, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Eds NelsonC CGrossbergL (University of Illinois Press, Chicago, IL) pp 35–57
HardinG, 1968, “The tragedy of the commons”Science1621243–1248
43.
HarveyD, 1974, “Population, resources and the ideology of science”Economic Geography50256–277
44.
HarveyD, 1982The Limits to Capital (Blackwell, Oxford)
45.
HarveyD, 1989, “From managerialism to entrepeneurialism: The transformation in urban governance in late capitalism”Geografiska Annaler, Series B71(1) 3–18
46.
HarveyD, 1996Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Blackwell, Malden, MA)
47.
HarveyD, 2005A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
48.
HendersonG, 2004, “‘Free’ food, the local production of worth, and the circuit of decommodification: A value theory of the surplus”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space22485–512
KruegerRGibbsD, 2007The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe (Guilford Press, New York)
54.
LarnerW, 2000, “Neo-liberalism: Policy, ideology, governmentality”Studies in Political Economy63 (Autumn) 5–26
55.
LarnerW, 2003, “Neoliberalism?”Environment And Planning D: Society and Space21509–512
56.
Latour, 1993We Have Never Been Modern (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Brighton, Sussex)
57.
LeffE, 1995Green Production: Toward an Environmental Rationality (Guilford Press, New York)
58.
LivermanD, 2004, “Who governs, at what scale and at what price? Geography, environmental governance, and the commodification of nature”Annals of the Association of American Geographers94734–738
59.
McAfeeK, 1999, “Selling nature to save it? Biodiversity and green developmentalism”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space17133–154
60.
McCarthyJPrudhamS, 2004, “Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism”Geoforum35275–283
McDowellLCourtJ, 1994, “Performing work: Bodily representations in merchant banks”Environment And Planning D: Society and Space12727–750
63.
McMorrowJTalipM A, 2001, “Decline of forest area in Sabah, Malaysia: Relationship to state policies, land code and land capability”Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions11217–230
64.
MalthusT R, 1993An Essay on the Principle of Population Ed. GilbertG (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
65.
MansfieldB, 2004a, “Neoliberalism in the oceans: ‘rationalization’, property rights, and the commons question”Geoforum35313–326
66.
MansfieldB, 2004b, “Rules of privatization: Contradictions in neoliberal regulation of North Pacific fisheries”Annals of the Association of American Geographers94565–584
67.
MansfieldB, 2007, “Privatization: Property and the remaking of nature–society relations”Antipode39393–405
68.
MarxK, 1977Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (Vintage, New York)
69.
MeadowsD H, Club of Rome, 1972The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind (Universe Books, New York)
O'ConnorJ, 1998Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (Guilford Press, New York)
76.
O'ConnorM, 1993, “On the misadventures of capitalist nature”Capitalism, Nature, Socialism47–40
77.
O'ConnorM (Ed.), 1994Is Capitalism Sustainable?: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology (Guilford Press, New York)
78.
ParksB CRobertsJ T, 2006, “Globalization, vulnerability to climate change, and perceived injustice”Society and Natural Resources19337–355
79.
PatzekT WPimentelD, 2005, “Thermodynamics of energy production from biomass”Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences24327–364
80.
PearceD WTurnerR K, 1990Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD)
81.
PimentelDPatzekT W, 2006, “Editorial: Green plants, fossil fuels, and now biofuels”Bioscience56875
82.
PrattG, 2004Working Feminism (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA)
83.
PrudhamW S, 2005Knock on Wood: Nature as Commodity in Douglas-fir Country (Routledge, New York)
84.
RobbinsP, 2004Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (Blackwell, Malden, MA)
85.
RobbinsPFraserA, 2003, “A forest of contradictions: Producing the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands”Antipode3595–118
86.
RobertsJ T, 2001, “Global inequality and climate change”Society and Natural Resources14501–509
87.
SayerA, 2003, “(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space21341–357
88.
SayreN, 2005, “Ecological and geographical scale: Parallels and potential for integration”Progress in Human Geography29276–290
89.
SchnaibergA, 1980The Environment, from Surplus to Scarcity (Oxford University Press, New York)
90.
SchnaibergAGouldK A, 1994Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict (St Martin's Press, New York)
91.
SmithN, 2008 [1984] Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space3rd edition (University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA)
92.
SmithN, 1996, “The production of nature”, in Future/Natural: Nature/Science/Culture Eds RobertsonGMashMTicknerLBirdJCurtisBPutnamT (Routledge, London) pp 33–54
93.
SwyngedouwE, 1999, “Modernity and hybridity: Nature, regeneracionismo, and the production of the Spanish waterscape, 1890–1930”Annals of the Association of American Geographers89443–465
94.
The Guardian2007, “Virgin boss offers $25m reward to save Earth”, 9 February
95.
ThriftN, 2000, “Performing cultures in the new economy”Annals of the Association of American Geographers90674–692
96.
ThriftN, 2001, “‘It's the romance, not the finance, that makes the business worth pursuing’: Disclosing a new market culture”Economy and Society30412–432
97.
TietenbergT H, 1980, “Transferable discharge permits and the control of stationary source air pollution: A survey and synthesis”Land Economics56391–416
98.
TurnerM D, 1993, “Overstocking the range: A critical analysis of the environmental science of Sahehan pastoralism”Economic Geography69402–421
99.
WattsM, 1983Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
100.
WattsM, 2002, “Green capitalism, green governmentality”American Behavioral Scientist451313–1317
101.
WhatmoreS, 2002Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (Sage, Newbury Park, CA)
102.
WolfordW, 2004, “Of land and labor: Agrarian reform on the sugarcane plantations of Northeast Brazil”Latin American Research Review31147–170
103.
WrightM W, 2006Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism (Routledge, New York)
