In 2023, I was introduced to Adrienne Buller’s The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism.
It’s an extraordinary take down of the dominant ways we are approaching climate change and ecological crisis.
Since I worked as a consultant for oil & gas companies in 2009, I’ve been looking for somebody who could name things I’ve been grasping at. Buller meets what I’ve been looking for.
The bottom line: We cannot solve climate or ecological crises with tools (i.e. markets) designed for efficiency.
Here’s my quick summary:
- When we focus on carbon markets or even the price of carbon — we’re actually participating in the illusion that markets and prices on things can guide investment to a low carbon future. This totally mis-reads the situation.
- Our society, culture, infrastructure, mobility need to be completely re-worked. The massive shifts and scale of investment needed to tackle the climate crisis won’t be allocated by putting a price on carbon.
- Buller draws our attention to the larger distribution, justice and political questions that are vital to be asking as we think about climate crisis and appropriate responses. Focusing on carbon markets (and/or prices) is a distraction.
- As evidence, she points to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and how after many years the carbon reductions from this market-based system have been nominal / minimal — if at all. She also talks about the challenges with additionality, substitutability and so much more. To poke fun at it, she talks about how economists at the IMF have put a price on the value of a whale (based on the eco tourism of whale watching & the carbon sequestration value).
If you are intrigued by — but maybe hesitant about — carbon pricing, offsets, or the the talk about all we have to do is “internalize” externalities — then Buller gives you the analysis you’ve been looking for.
While this podcast host only gets into a piece of her argument, it gives a taste.
I hope to convene a book club and/or host a conversation with Adrienne in 2024.
Her analysis is so important to inform where we spend our time — and to see that the mainstream solutions we’re pursuing right now aren’t going to get us where we hope to go.
To give you a start into Buller’s work, you might consider
Today, asset managers are the dominant owners of corporations and other assets throughout the global economy…
Or this simple Explainer. https://www.common-wealth.org/publications/explainer-whats-the-deal-with-asset-management
My question for 2024: