Greening The Economy Or Economizing The Green Project? When Environmental Concerns Are Turned Into A Means To Save The Market

TitleGreening The Economy Or Economizing The Green Project? When Environmental Concerns Are Turned Into A Means To Save The Market
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2015
AuthorsKenis, Anneleen, and Lievens, Matthias
JournalReview of Radical Political Economics
VolumeForthcoming in 2015
Date Published2015///
Keywordsclimate change, climate justice, green economy, green growth, hegemony, post-politics
Abstract

The ‘Green Economy’ is fast becoming the new alpha and omega to solve both the environmental and economic crisis at the same time. Policy makers, corporations, political actors, and NGO’s are increasingly uniting behind the slogan of the Green Economy. Or would it be better to speak about ‘green capitalism’? Going green is not only important in the fight against environmental destruction, it also makes a country “stronger, healthier, safer, more innovative, competitive and respected”, argues Thomas Friedman, the well-known New York Times columnist. “Is there anything that is more patriotic, capitalist and geostrategic than this?” Indeed, the rationale underlying the project of the Green Economy is that if the market could become the instrument for tackling the environmental crisis, the fight against this crisis could be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. While the discourse on the Green Economy claims to reconcile in one single project the struggle againstthe environmental crisis and the attempt to solve the economic crisis, these two elements are not standing on the same footing: greening the economy is for a big part considered as a means for the specific end of saving the market. Focusing in particular on the Green Economy’s impact on climate change, this paper analyses the Green Economy as a hegemonic project that tries to retranslate environmental concerns into a new jargon, and to turn environmental antagonism into a new motor for capital accumulation.

URLhttps://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/433021/2/Kenis+%26+Lievens+-+2014+-+Greening+the+economy+or+economizing+the+green+project+-+pre-print.pdf