The two limits debates: “Limits to Growth” and climate change

Peak energy and climate change: The double bind of post-normal science

“…Local gains from environmentalism are endangered by the effects of anthropogenic climate change: higher temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, desertification, famines, etc. As a result, industrial society may become unviable even before the exhaustion of its resource base [10].…”

Naturalizing capitalism: The next Great Transformation

“…There is firstly the 'financialization' of capitalist markets and the short-term greed that guides the speculative activity in this sector, that nearly brought down the entire system in the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and is now spreading (in the absence of effective constraint) to the commodities markets, thereby driving up fuel and food prices worldwide. 29 Clearly this process of financialization must be curbed before the markets of capitalism can be brought into ecological alignment. Then there are the powerful vested interests that block every move towards an alternative -at least in the democracies with their parliaments or Congressional bodies that can become prey to sectional interests.…”

“…28 For a discussion of these developments in China, in the context of eco-industrial initiatives, see Mathews and Tan [50]. 29 There is by now an enormous literature on the topic of financialization and its ill-effects -but little effective counter-action. For a review of financialization of the commodities markets, via index-linked investing, see Ghosh [57] and Kaufman [58] for penetrating analyses.…”

“…The issue of growth vs. sustainability has dominated public debate on the future of industrial civilization, ever since the report to the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, was published in 1972-sparking furious debate, and turning it into the founding document for the modern environmental and ecological movement [29]. The two sides to the debate have largely talked past each other.…”

‘Low carbon’ metals, markets and metaphors: the creation of economic expectations about climate change mitigation

“…Between 2000 and 2006, the advent of 'carbon trading', 'carbon offsetting' and so on had come to be seen by many as such an economic solution and had provoked speculations of a 'carbon gold rush' . Since 2008 and the global financial crisis the belief in 'the magic of markets' has, however, come under scrutiny (Giddens 2009; see also Eastin et al 2010) and other approaches have moved up the political agenda to fill the gap. Investment is now increasingly flowing, for example, into so-called low-carbon technologies (or socalled clean energy) and the low-carbon economy.…”