EconomicS

Given the centrality of the market advanced by green liberalism the suitability of economic ‘solutions’ has to be discussed more comprehensively. Though widely propagated as a solution to scarcity and physical limitedness of the world, market mechanisms have not managed to show to lead to sustainability in any meaningful sense. ‘Green capitalism’ would need a drastic transformation, in which goods and services become emission-neutral. For many ecologists it is hard to imagine a free market inciting such transformation (Westra 1998:198f.). The accumulation of capital and the aim of unlimited growth contradict a philosophy of modesty that is necessary to remain within planetary boundaries (see More 1998).[The critique of money and wealth as a driving force in politics has a long tradition. Lane points at Socrates problematising the love for money and comments that today “love of money is rooted in and reinforced by the general way in which current financial and economic models operate” (Lane 2011b:120; see Plato 1982). Prominently, the term ‘sustainable’ capitalism can be presented as an oxymoron (Harvey 2014, cf. Jackson and Victor 2015).