Carbon Markets in a Climate-Changing Capitalism

The promise of harnessing market forces to combat climate change has been unsettled by low carbon prices, financial losses, and ongoing controversies in global carbon markets. And yet governments around the world remain committed to market-based solutions to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. This book discusses what went wrong with the marketisation of climate change and what this means for the future of action on climate change. The book explores the co-production of capitalism and climate change by developing new understandings of relationships between the appropriation, commodification and capitalisation of nature. The book reveals contradictions in carbon markets for addressing climate change as a socio-ecological, economic and political crisis, and points towards more targeted and democratic policies to combat climate change. This book will appeal to students, researchers, policy makers and campaigners who are interested in climate change and climate policy, and the political economy of capitalism and the environment.

• Introduces the notion of 'climate-changing capitalism' as a new way of conceptualising the co-production of capitalism and climate change
• Develops a critical and interdisciplinary perspective on capitalist relations with nature to show the shortcomings of dominant economic thinking and the advantages of a political economy approach
• Delivers a multi-dimensional evaluation of climate policy that will allow readers to assess the impact of carbon markets on climate change as a socio-ecological, economic and political crisis