CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION IN FANTASY AND REALITY
CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION IN FANTASY AND REALITY

Summary/Abstract: Current attempts at climate change mitigation do not amount to physical climate change mitigation because they are trapped in a logic of commodity fetishism, which is the dominant fantasy of the utopia of money. Policy options such as cap-and-trade schemes and carbon taxes, corporate ‘strategies’ such as the triple bottom line, and economic ‘solutions’ such as decoupling are all products of environmental accounting, which projects ‘sustainable’ fantasies at the global climate change problem while conforming to the fetishistic logic of the utopia of money. This essay will argue that, instead of pursuing the paths dictated by environmental accounting and accumulating tiny changes which won’t make a difference, we start by understanding what measures (and concomitant utopian visions) are necessary to produce physical climate change and proceed through a utopian conversation of what sort of society could enact those measures.

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