Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations
Processes of Creative Self-Destruction

Written for researchers and graduate students, this book explores the different processes through which corporations engage with climate change.

Christopher Wright (Author), Daniel Nyberg (Author)

9781107435131, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 September 2015

272 pages, 5 b/w illus. 9 tables
22.6 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg shatter the myth of corporate social responsibility as a solution for our climate crisis. Their compelling and hard-hitting analysis exposes the raw destructive power of capitalism - of unsustainable growth, corporations, and consumption. A stable future is still possible. But not unless the world's elite sit bolt upright and listen hard to Wright and Nyberg.' Peter Dauvergne, University of British Columbia

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity, a definitive manifestation of the well-worn links between progress and devastation. This book explores the complex relationship that the corporate world has with climate change and examines the central role of corporations in shaping political and social responses to the climate crisis. The principal message of the book is that despite the need for dramatic economic and political change, corporate capitalism continues to rely on the maintenance of 'business as usual'. The authors explore the different processes through which corporations engage with climate change. Key discussion points include climate change as business risk, corporate climate politics, the role of justification and compromise, and managerial identity and emotional reactions to climate change. Written for researchers and graduate students, this book moves beyond descriptive and normative approaches to provide a sociologically and critically informed theory of corporate responses to climate change.

Foreword Clive Hamilton
Acknowledgements
1. Climate change and corporate capitalism
2. Creative self-destruction and the incorporation of critique
3. Climate change and the corporate construction of risk
4. Corporate political activity and climate coalitions
5. Justification, compromise and corruption
6. Climate change, managerial identity and narrating the self
7. Emotions, corporate environmentalism and climate change
8. Political myths and pathways forward
9. Imagining alternatives
Appendix
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Climate change [RNPG], Business ethics & social responsibility [KJG], Environmental economics [KCN]