Abstract
This essay explores how promises of money from global
institutions and governments have financialised people’s hopes
and expectations of government action to adapt to climate
change and slow the emission of greenhouse gases. Because of
the cultural power of money in our understanding of the world,
climate finance has had the particular job of signifying action
while delivering very little. In order to move forward with the
actual material changes to energy, infrastructure, production and
income distribution that lie at the heart of an effective response to
climate change, we need to accept that largely fictional promises
of money that ‘can change things’ are a phantasmagorical
expression of meaning—a firewall that prevents real change.
In making this point, the essay traces the small disbursement
figures for the main pots of climate finance and in doing so offers
a stringent critique of the obfuscating power of the language of
finance
institutions and governments have financialised people’s hopes
and expectations of government action to adapt to climate
change and slow the emission of greenhouse gases. Because of
the cultural power of money in our understanding of the world,
climate finance has had the particular job of signifying action
while delivering very little. In order to move forward with the
actual material changes to energy, infrastructure, production and
income distribution that lie at the heart of an effective response to
climate change, we need to accept that largely fictional promises
of money that ‘can change things’ are a phantasmagorical
expression of meaning—a firewall that prevents real change.
In making this point, the essay traces the small disbursement
figures for the main pots of climate finance and in doing so offers
a stringent critique of the obfuscating power of the language of
finance
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis |
| Editors | Steffen Böhm, Sian Sullivan |
| Place of Publication | Cambridge, UK |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Chapter | 20 |
| Pages | 255-276 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800642621, ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781800642638 |
| ISBN (Print) | ISBN Paperback: 9781800642607, ISBN Hardback: 9781800642614 |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Sept 2021 |
