Is the post-fossil era necessarily post-capitalistic? – The robustness and capabilities of green capitalism

Stephan Bosch and Matthias Schmidt

Ecological Economics, 2019, vol. 161, issue C, 270-279

Abstract: Our central target is to show that capitalism is not only much more robust to crises than presumed by its critics, but also features promising capabilities with regard to solving the environmental crisis. To elaborate this thesis, we analyse how far capitalism can survive given the end of fossil energy carriers and may maintain its productivity under the preconditions of a regenerative energy system. In a further step, we demonstrate that crises may actually provide the prerequisites of the economy's transformation towards sustainability. We argue that especially competitive capitalism as analysed by Schumpeter offers excellent preconditions for generating environmental innovations. However, we will also point out the numerous social problems of green infrastructure projects. In the last section, we assume that markets alone will not suffice to concertedly solve the global environmental crisis. Here, political action is needed that pools societal forces with regard to the ecological challenges, hence specifically promoting desirable innovations. The usefulness of state measures is to be judged in correlation to the respective specific national political and economic contexts. A generalised opposition to capitalistic social orders disregards the complexity of these contexts and is at danger of omitting decisive determinants of crisis management.

Keywords: Fossil fuels; Capitalism; Energy transition; Renewable energies; Innovation; Energy policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:161:y:2019:i:c:p:270-279

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.04.001

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