It may indeed be cheaper to save the world.

Have capitalists woken up to both the cost of inaction and the opportunity of action? 

Modern economic growth and rising demand for goods at relatively lower prices has led to inevitable exploitation of nature, and consequent climate change. There is no denying that unfettered capitalism has contributed to over extraction of natural resources and increasing emission of greenhouse gases. Should uncontrolled capitalism persist till 2050, the aim of restricting average global temperature within 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels may remain a pipe dream. Emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide will see continued climate extremes leading to the loss of lives and livelihoods. No wonder, climate emergencies have become frequent.  

Many environmentalists believe that the long-term solution to tackling climate crises is to uproot capitalism because ‘we cannot solve the problem by what caused it’. It is argued that tackling the climate crises without replacing an economic system that is partially responsible for the excess greenhouse gases stuck in the atmosphere may remain elusive. General consensus is that without ensuring nature’s well-being, human well-being is unlikely to be achieved. However, with only few decades at hand in averting catastrophic climate change, the possibility of putting a new economic system in place may seem improbable. 

Despite capitalism being well entrenched, reforming capitalism seems the only practical way to avoid the system from collapsing. Passionate capitalists fear that policy reforms may kill the market. But policy shifts in favor of climate-oriented technologies and investments have created new business opportunities. Whether such efforts add up to make an impact at global scale has yet to be fully ascertained. Some trends are noticeable, the UK economy grew by 60 percent between 1990 and 2017 while its carbon emissions declined by 40 percent. The task lies in replicating and escalating such transformative processes and practices. Although climate financing may have been slow, the Paris Agreement has triggered a process of change. 

Climate Capitalism is about how to transform world’s dominant economic system while ensuring that the wheels of progress don’t come to a halt. From renewable power to green cement, from electric cars to carbon capture – emission-reducing technologies have tossed new opportunities for private capital and government regulations to work in tandem. The process to harness the forces of capitalism to achieve zero emissions has already begun. Although these are still early days for capitalism to wear a natural look for addressing impending climatic concerns, a faint ray of optimism seems to have been generated. 

It has been over two decades that industrial capitalism has been critiqued for neither pricing nor accounting its negative externalities. It liquidates natural capital and calls it profit, undervaluing both natural resources and living systems. Akshat Rathi chronicles the political maneuverings that made possible China’s lead in building fleet of electric cars, India’s success in promoting solar power, America’s success with reversing climate damages in the oil industry, and the Danish quest for pushing wind turbines. All such initiatives combined; it has been estimated that 2% of global GDP is enough to make the carbon dioxide problem go away! Far from being linear, however, there are disruptive elements that play upon power politics to brittle the path to zero emissions. Politics, technology and finance would need to align in the right direction. 

With climate emergencies threatening life, public perception on the global climatic accords and green initiatives remains grossly skeptical. Holding an optimist position, Akshit argues that we cannot insulate ourselves from the transformation - from fossil fuels to clean energy – coming our way. From the bureaucrats to the billionaires, and from the doers to the enforcers, there are multiple actors on the capitalist platform who would need to merge differences in reforming the economic system towards shaping a climate-conducive capitalism.

Climate Capitalism conveys optimistic narrative which contends that it’s cheaper to save the world than destroy it. It goes without saying that the time for uncontrolled capitalism is long over. What kindles a ray of hope is that capitalists themselves have woken up to both the cost of inaction and the opportunity of action. 

Climate Capitalism 
by Akshat Rathi
John Murray/Hachette, London
Extent: 260, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in The Hindu on April 19, 2024.

Mind over matter that seriously matters

To achieve climate change goals, a neuro- scientist urges the world to work on the mind.

The greatest paradox of our time is that while climate change has widely been recognized as an urgent problem, it does not press the emergency button for individual and collective action to counter it. Knowing well the root cause and the possible solutions to the problem, why it gets pushed on to others to fix it? Why are we hardwired not to change our behavior and consumer tendencies? Simply put, it is the neuroscience of decision making that works to prioritize short-term survival over long-term consequences. No wonder, the risk of anticipated 2°C rise in temperature before the close of the century remains disconcerting.

In Minding the Climate, Ann-Christine Duhaime, a professor of neurosurgery at the Harvard Medical School, explores why changing behavior in response to the climate crises remains challenging. Having lived life for eons on resource scarcity, human mind responds to better rewards for changing the old behavior. If a behavior isn't perceived as immediately rewarding, we probably won't change it - never mind that we know we should. In a market economy, just giving people information without incentives and rewards doesn’t work to change consumptive behavior. Writing lullabies won’t cure opioid addiction by itself.  

Environmental issues have been known to present challenges for behavior change, in part because the phenomenon and the fix are many steps removed from our immediate sensory perception. While the perception may have started changing due to increasing frequency of climatic events in recent times, we are physiologically not equipped with carbon dioxide sensors to reflect strong personal threatening experience to affect behavioral change. Add to this is the fact that behavior change research has focused on choices that individuals make in their domestic lives, rather than on a more collective and political sphere. Further, the invisibility of greenhouses gases adds to the visible challenge. 

Duhaime presents a systematic study of the human brain – from understanding its evolutionary origin to strategies for its pro-environmental shift. Taking a deep dive into the human decision-making apparatus, she found that the brain is heavily influenced by its evolutionary design but is also exquisitely flexible. The brain design both constrains and frees us. By linking neuroscience with evolutionary biology, consumer psychology, and environmental science, the author reflects hope that humans do in fact have the capacity to change. Minding the Climate is a groundbreaking work on how we might leverage our brains to fight climate change. 

It is a thinking man’s guide to encourage our neurological circuits to embrace new rewards, To demonstrate how indeed this could be possible, the Green Children’s Hospital has been initiated by the author and her colleagues as a prototype that makes connection between the environment and health. No reward is good enough for people to see their loved children have a good life. It works both ways as not only it helps cut down emissions from the sector that contributes 8 percent to the atmospheric carbon load but reminds people that hospital patients looking at trees recover faster than those who look at the brick wall. Such small, incremental steps that individuals take are necessary to look at rewards differently. 

Duhaime is not suggesting quick fix though. The task is to understand how our ingrained tendencies could be overridden by our brain's capacity to adapt. Minding the Climate is a pioneering work on a subject that has so far not been considered in the global discourse on climate change. It is a work in progress,and will only be considered complete when people in the 20-tons-of-carbon-emissions-a-year consider themselves a burden on the society. Our brain has got us to this point, it alone will take us into the future of possibilities. 

Minding the Climate 
by Ann-Christine Duhaime
Harvard University Press, USA 
Extent: 313, Price: Rs. 2996.

First published in The Hindu on July 2, 2023.