On Climate Rent

Abstract

As environmental degradation becomes a growing concern, this article argues that the development of international law on climate change expresses the deep social contradictions between accumulation and reproduction under capitalism. These contradictions are translated into the creation of a form of public property over the right to emit greenhouse gases (and not the ‘privatisation' of the atmosphere). This public property is unequally distributed amongst states in an imperialist manner. The distribution of these rights at the domestic level amounts to the distribution of rights to climate rent. Contrary to popular accounts of the ‘commodification' of nature, I argue that emission rights are not ‘commodities', and emissions trading and carbon markets are not ‘accumulation strategies'. These are merely depoliticised forms in which climate rent is extracted and circulates to preclude political debates about the goals of production

Environment, not planning: the neoliberal depoliticisation of environmental policy by means of emissions trading

“…These arguments rest on the fear that politicising the implementation of pollution reduction measures will lead to the growth of the administrative state, an inability to maximise the value of production, and thus to curtailing the freedom of investors to decide 'what should be produced, by whom and for whom' by handing these decisions over to a political authority. This is the real contribution of emissions-trading schemes to neoliberal policy-making, and not their contribution to the 'commodification' and 'privatisation' of nature (see also Felli 2014). Conversely, those social and political movements believing that the content of production should be politicised could seize the possibility offered by the implementation of GHG-emissions reductions.…”

“…5 Depoliticisation of economic production is central to understanding the choice of emissions trading as an instrument for environmental policy. In fact, the neoliberal nature of these mechanisms is not about the fact that they are used to 'commodify' or even to 'privatise' nature (Felli 2014), but rather about their contribution to the reinforcement of the freedom of investors. 6 In this regard, emissions trading is indeed not 'epiphenomenal to a broader neoliberal project' (Lane 2012, p. 588), but rather is constitutive of the neoliberal project in socioenvironmental relations (Mirowski 2013).…”

The Internet of Landlords: Digital Platforms and New Mechanisms of Rentier Capitalism

“…This role of platforms as infrastructure and intermediary is where I make the analytical connection to rentierism. Rentiers are defined by their “ownership of the access to a condition of production” (Felli :269) and their ability to derive income (rent) from access to assets. The function of platforms—as crystallised in the above quote by Langley and Leyshon (:11)—is similar to the way “landed property mediates the production and circulation of surplus value” (Kerr :67).…”

NotJustParticipation: The Rise of the Eco‐Precariat in the Green Economy

“…Specifically, they shape who controls access to resources and whose labour produces financialised green environmental services, with implications for class formation and other forms of social differentiation. While the debate continues as to exactly how nature is being commodified under this ecosystem service economy (Felli ; Kenney‐Lazar and Kay ), one thing is certain: the shifting nature of work within the green economy remains relatively unexamined . Certainly, such work goes beyond the voluntary and positively spun notion of “participation” that has long been used to describe voluntary contributions to conservation and development interventions.…”