Green Devaluation: Disruption, Divestment, and Decommodification for a Green Economy

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that taking up questions of value can help political ecologists and economists develop a more powerful analysis of the green economy, as it introduces new urban, industrial, and technological dimensions into a self-identified green capitalism. More specifically, I maintain that processes of green devaluation, decommodification, and techno-industrial replacement are as important in understanding green economic development as new value enclosure and green growth. Twenty-first-century green economic politics have been marked by Schumpeterian ambitions and zero-sum intra-capitalist struggles, alongside a more general hardening of anti-fossil fuel industry politics from both grassroots climate justice activists and, increasingly, mainstream investors. I explore three interrelated initiatives—disruptive innovation in Silicon Valley cleantech, the U.S. fossil fuel divestment movement, and the global financial industry’s stranded assets organizing—as windows into these struggles. Themes of devaluation, obsolescence (both technological and “moral”), and (more or less absolute) decommodification carry through this discussion as activists struggle to translate quantitative advances against fossil fuels into a more profound qualitative break. Understanding these fights is essential to developing more effective engaged scholarship on climate change and a just energy transition.

KEYWORDS:

• Green devaluation
• fossil fuel divestment
• green economy
• decommodification
• obsolescence

Acknowledgements

Thanks very much to Richard Walker, Kelly Kay, Miles Kenney-Lazar, and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to student representatives from Oberlin Fossil Fuel Divestment, especially participants in my 2015 Environmentally Responsible Investing course, for their many insights into campus divestment activism.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 My interpretation of obsolescence here diverges from Weber (2002), who examines economic obsolescence classification in real estate and argues that obsolescence works more in the realm of exchange values than use values, especially in contrast to blight classifications.

2 I draw on Marx 1867 [2004] “moral depreciation” here but in an inexact way; his moralische translates more nearly to “human” or “social.”

3 Again, with abolition as the closest non-divestment parallel, although the replacement demanded now is more specialized than commodified “free” labor power.

4 Carbon Tracker (2015b) estimates a $2 trillion “danger zone” in unneeded capital expenditures through 2025, planned spending that must be curtailed to avert 156 GTCO₂ of emissions.