Abstract
Max Koch’s new book joins regulation theory to environmental political economy. At its core is the project of exploring how different forms of capitalism development affect the natural environment. Rather than assuming a priori that capitalism cannot solve the problem of climate change, Koch argues that this is an empirical question. To answer this, he argues, the mode of production should be linked instead both to modes of regulation (Fordism, post-Fordism) and to energy regimes. By doing this, Koch believes, critical analysts can understand global warming as a political and social issue, and more accurately assess the potential for change.
The book makes recent discussions about the relationship between capitalism and the environment more accessible to Anglophone readers. In particular, German academics have contributed towards debates over the specific form that this relationship currently takes. Koch agrees with Görg and Brand that ‘[d]ifferent accumulation regimes correspond not only to organised forms of capitalism, particular consumption norms and modes of societalisation, but also to specific forms of appropriation of nature by society’ (p. 44).
So, can capitalism after all solve the energy crisis? While Koch argues that this is in principle possible, his critique of market-based solutions to climate change leaves little room for easy optimism. What is needed, Koch states, is a new political settlement, a new regulatory regime comprising new global institutions and moving away from financialized, deregulated modes of control. Comparing state performance with respect to CO2 emissions, Koch does refer to some current examples of ‘best practice’, namely Sweden and particularly Cuba (p. 133).
Because of the broad historical and cross-cultural sweep of his argument, Koch does not go into these current comparisons in much depth, yet these are relevant to the potential of capitalism to overcome its current energy crisis. While there are substantial differences in emissions, these raise the question of whether ‘best practice’ can be attained by all, or whether the system merely displaces its environmental crisis elsewhere. Analogously, we might think about Europe’s financial crisis: not all states can be Germany because the surplus of one relies upon the deficit of another, so generalizing one state’s model to the rest may not be possible.
In terms of CO2 emissions, counting these at the level of production may obscure the tendency of rich states to outsource their emissions to poorer ones. This can be seen most starkly when emissions are broken down into component parts; for example, across all sectors the European Union’s emissions are falling slightly but the same is not true of transportation, which cannot be outsourced: those heavy goods vehicles will still be driving up the M6, even if the goods they carry are now produced in China.
And the transport sector may prove the most problematic for ‘green capitalism’. Even if electric vehicles became widely used, this would shift the problem back towards energy generation; by producing additional demand for electricity, most of which is currently supplied by fossil fuels. The currently unsustainable levels of motor vehicle use are massively unequal, concentrated among richer members of the richest countries. Should the poor begin using motor vehicles anywhere near as much as the rich do, it is hard to see how sufficient energy (green or not) could be generated to support this. Decarbonizing transport, and equalizing access to it, will require fundamental changes in consumption and production systems, which are embedded in an economy that subsidizes fossil fuels and seeks to minimize the ‘friction of distance’.
Koch’s book will hopefully serve to encourage debate around such issues, and about the relationship of the current energy regime to other environmental issues. While climate change has become ‘the environmental issue’, other environmental issues have not gone away and may sometimes be aggravated by some types of climate mitigation measure. Questions of political agency need also to be addressed. Koch describes well the current inequalities within multinational governance; yet how might these be overcome given the power of vested interests such as oil companies, motor companies, and other energy-intensive corporations?
Even if a ‘green capitalism’ is theoretically possible, we might question whether it is actually feasible or likely. Koch refers to the possibility that ‘GDP growth is decoupled from the emission of CO2 and other environmentally harmful substances’ (p. 122). Firstly, it is possible that climate change might be solved within a capitalist framework, perhaps through a mixture of technical and social fixes, but other environmental crises involving other ‘harmful substances’ might then develop. Secondly, there is a well established critique of GDP and growth more broadly that might helpfully be brought into the discussion.
However, Koch’s book does an excellent job in bringing together different literatures in a context that raises these further questions. I look forward to it generating debate, perhaps connecting with the literature on welfare regimes, a comparative tradition in social policy as yet weakly connected to discussions of energy regimes. In insisting that climate change is a political and social question, and one which demands critical interrogation of production and consumption, Koch reinforces the need for social science and social policy to take seriously the climate challenge – and the pressing social questions it raises, not least inequality and social justice.