Market forces will not halt climate change, argues Gail Whiteman in Nature
In the current edition of Nature, <link people gail-whiteman _blank>Gail Whiteman, Professor of Sustainability and Climate Change, reviews the book Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change by L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen.
Lovins and Cohen maintain that market forces and greed are motivating corporations to take measures to halt climate change. According to Whiteman, however, those measures are far from sufficient: although corporations are increasingly paying attention to sustainability, their carbon footprints remain too big. At the current level of carbon emissions, important ecological thresholds are being breached, which is causing dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate. Whiteman argues that unbridled capitalism disrupts sustainability; the world needs ‘binding international agreements and new governance mechanisms that address […] environmental issues.’
