Capitalism Created the Climate Crisis and Capitalism Will Solve It

While the scientific cause of global warming is well established, the study of the economic and social origins of the climate crisis has lagged behind. Without such critical analysis, we remain in the dark about how we got into this mess and how to get out of it. Capitalism Created the Climate Crisis and Capitalism Will Solve It closes this gap, offering a persuasive and comprehensive discussion, beginning with how the industrial revolution, along with its subsequent innovations and social transformations, ushered in and fed the defining trait of this period: consumerism. Climate specialist Kentaro Kawamori shows how humanity came to overdraw the earth's carbon bank account, putting both the planet and its inhabitants in a hazardous situation.
 
Armed with this background knowledge, readers are prepared for the book's groundbreaking second half--an accounting of the tools capitalism already possesses for addressing the climate crisis. Many of these tools are already in use, in every industry, and around the world. The major shifting landscape of the last decade hasn't even been climate, it's been financial-- investors increasingly understand the importance of viewing climate risk as a financial risk. Consequently, regulatory agencies whose constituents are investors are quickly standardizing and issuing mandatory climate disclosure regulations for business. For their part, businesses are adopting net-zero carbon emission commitments, utilizing clean energy and renewable materials, and putting muscle behind the development of breakthrough carbon-capture technologies.
 
These advances, along with new strategies still in their infancy, promise to leverage the strengths of capitalism to help reverse the damage wrought by overconsumption. And Kawamori delivers even better news that--with the right regulatory and market incentives, repair can happen faster than we think. Capitalism Created the Climate Crisis and Capitalism Will Solve It is a uniquely hopeful