How much is a whale worth?
It seems like a self-evidently ridiculous question, borderline obscene—whales are majestic creatures whose worth transcends the human impulse to quantify, obviously! Yet it is one which has been seriously considered by economists in an effort to convince governments and corporations to value wildlife. In her new book, The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism, Adrienne Buller dissects the asinine logic of “green” capitalist thinking, from putting a dollar value on cetaceans to carbon offsets to financial products like “sustainability-linked bonds.”
The director of research for the London-based progressive think tank Common Wealth, Buller sees market-based corporate “green” initiatives as distracting at best—and, at worst, actively destructive. The Value of a Whale takes a bracing look at how corporate interests are using the superficial trappings of climate activism to reinforce their own power. As one might imagine, it’s not the most uplifting read in the world. But it’s a galvanizing, tough book, one that asks us to not accept a simulacrum of improvement for the real thing.
WIRED talked with Buller about whale pricing, evil economists, and reasons to find hope for the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
WIRED: Could you define “green capitalism” for those who haven’t read the book, or might not be familiar with the expression?
Adrienne Buller: The way I define it in the book is intentionally a working definition. It addresses a phenomenon we’re seeing in the US and in the UK where the corporate sector and financial firms have realized overt climate denialism and obstruction is not a viable strategy, so they’re slowly transitioning toward trying to shape and control climate policy.
There are two core tenets of green capitalism I identify. The first is that it’s an attempt to resolve the climate crisis in a way that minimizes disruption to our existing ways of organizing the economy, to existing distributions of wealth and power. The second tenet is pursuing decarbonization in a way that makes sure that there are still opportunities for profit-making and rent extraction in that decarbonized future. In contrast to, for instance, moving away from private car ownership to mass transit as a climate solution, the green capitalist framework is more about making sure we can transition to electric vehicles when we’re moving away from fossil-fuel-driven cars so that private companies can keep profiting.
What motivated you to critique green capitalism?
I’d been working in the climate and finance civil society space for several years, and I started out at a totally nonpolitical watchdog company that helps financial firms understand how they should align their portfolios with the goals of the Paris Agreement. I ultimately came out of that experience feeling very cynical about whether that type of approach will actually deliver any kind of material change. But I found the experience really interesting in terms of crawling inside the heads of people working in finance and getting to grapple with how they understand this problem. That’s what the book tries to do.
