Book Review: Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations. Processes of Creative Self-Destruction by Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg

Abstract

Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations. Processes of Creative Self-Destruction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015; 254 pp. 9781107435131, 21.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk). In December 2015 world leaders gathered to proclaim climate change was a threat that they were (finally) going to do something about. After two weeks of speeches and haggling, the deal was done, the world saved. Never mind that the text was silent on fossil fuels, and that in the following week the UK government expanded fracking, the US rescinded a forty year old ban on oil exports and Australia gave new permits for coal mines. Those are minor pesky details; corporate capitalism has the best interests of everyone--rich, poor, black, white, the unborn generations to come, other species--at heart. I jest, of course. Gallows humour is all one can muster after reading this excellent and alarming book, which clearly lays out the processes of creative self-destruction and the myths we choose to believe and propagate. The authors start as they mean to continue --on page one they state We are destroying ourselves. It is as simple as that. Economic growth and the exploitation of nature have long gone hand--in-hand, but they now constitute the most ill-fated of bedfellows. In line with the work of Naomi Klein (2014) (whom Wright interviewed on her recent Australian tour) they argue that 'the particular neoliberal variant of late capitalism that now dominates the global economy places humanity at a strategic disadvantage in responding to the threat of climate change' (p. 4), given its demand for ever-higher levels consumption. Wright and Nyberg are not however, misty-eyed hippies dreaming for a return to social democracy of the post-war period, but rather business professors with many years of research into the corporate world under their belts. Through nine chapters they set out their case, which involves 'revoking Schumpeter's concept of 'creative destruction' as a source of economic and social dynamism' and instead characterising 'the link between economic growth, corporate innovation, and environmental destruction as a process of 'creative self-destruction' in which economic expansion relies on the continued exploitation of natural resources' (p. 6). They give clear descriptions of climate change, corporate capitalism, the successful incorporation of mainstream environmental critique in the 80s and 90s via the win-win rhetoric of 'ecological modernisation' through the success of corporate political activity (coalition-building and doubt-mongering), to the present impasse. The book has many strengths. Its third chapter, on 'Climate change and the corporate construction of risk' would be a useful reading for undergraduates, as would the fifth chapter on 'justification, compromise and corruption, which uses the work of Boltanski and Thevenot (2006) on 'legitimate orders of worth' around to great effect. The same could be said of the eighth chapter, which skewers three myths--corporate environmentalism, corporate citizenship and corporate omnipotence. The empirical meat of the book, based on extensive interviews with 'sustainability managers' in large Australian corporations, is fascinating. The authors illustrate their main theoretical points, while also letting people speak for themselves. …