How Do We Respond to Climate Change?

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The asset management industry has become both enormous and hugely concentrated over the past couple of decades. BlackRock itself now manages about 10 trillion US dollars in assets. And it's close as competitor Vanguard was around seven last time I checked. So they're nearing kind of 20 trillion mark, which is a full fifth of the entire global industry. They offer this kind of like perfect distillation of the sort of green capitalist logic and mindset.

Paris Marx is joined by Adrienne Buller to discuss how the tech and finance industries are selling us false solutions to the climate crisis that are designed for their own benefit.

Adrienne Buller is the Director of Research at Common Wealth and the author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. Follow Adrienne on Twitter at @adribuller.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Adrienne originally wrote about the problem with the finance industry’s approach to climate change for Novara Media. She recently wrote about the failure of green capitalism for the Guardian and the power BlackRock wields for Jacobin.
Common Wealth recently produced a report on Asset Management Capitalism.
Elon Musk called ESG a scam after Tesla was booted from the S&P 500’s ESG fund.
Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen wrote The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism.

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