Climate Crisis

Climate change is one of the most urgent and existential challenges to emerge in capitalism's history. It threatens to undermine the basic conditions of capitalist accumulation not to mention human life itself. And yet, emissions continue to rise. Why? Climate change is often termed the climate crisis, but what does it actually have in common with historic crisis events like the 1930s or 1970s? What does this tell us about the possibility of resolving it through global energy transition? What can we learn about the nature of crisis in capitalism more generally?

Jeremy Green is a Professor of Political Economy at University of Cambridge. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the climate crisis, its intimate relationship to capitalism, and how it differs to other crises in capitalist history, and possibilities of overcoming it.

Recommended reading:
1) Jeremy Green, Comparative capitalisms in the Anthropocene: a research agenda for green transition, New Political Economy (2023)
2) Matthew Paterson, 'Climate change and international political economy: between collapse and transformation', Review of International Political Economy (2021)
3) Brett Christophers, 'Fossilised Capital: Price and Profit in the Energy Transition', New Political Economy (2022)
 

Works referenced in this episode:
1) Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital (2016)
2) Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life (2015)
3) Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy (2011)
4) Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (2010)
5) Nathan Rosenberg and Claudio R. Frischtak, Technological innovation and long waves (1984)