One of the stranger ‘pleas’ I heard recently was related to the need for “more money” to save our environment (or ‘save the planet’).  My own immediate reaction – probably odd to most – was that the very last thing we need at the moment is to demand more “money” (or look ‘to money’) to save our environment or the planet – involving more money in the process is possibly the worst thing humanity could do!

On the surface, the plea may seem very reasonable, even ‘sound’.  Human beings are, rather than ‘the planet’, at an extinction threshold.  If we keep on our current pathway and continue to pump gases from fossil fuels into the atmosphere then by the end of the 21st century habitation of large swathes of Earth’s surface (by humans at least) will be impossible. Human (and animal) populations will decline; standards of living and quality of life will fall.  Something needs to be done, and quickly!  

Certainly, resources need to be switched from ‘doing X’ (performing environmentally damaging processes) to ‘doing Y’ (encouraging environmentally friendly processes).  This switching is, in everyday parlance, understood in terms of the requirement for ‘monetary investment’ and greater flows of ‘capital’ towards the desired outcomes.  In short, ‘capital’ should be pulled from environmentally amoral and life-endangering investments and put into ethical, environmentally-sustainable ones.  What could possibly go wrong with that ‘transfer’ of money from bad to good purposes?  

One question, of course, is ‘who’ should do the switching and thus control the new investment?   Well, sadly, at the moment, the head of one of the world’s largest (sovereign) oil companies is now being touted as a ‘leader’ in the field of renewables investment!  This appears perverse, with the poacher being made the game keeper, but it is asserted by those in authority that such individuals (existing planetary ‘leaders’) have the requisite experience to manage such large amounts of money and investments, and conduct the orderly transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy investment.  A radical environmentalist may simply upset the capital ‘investors’ who need to be brought on board, whereas a poor person just wouldn’t have the contacts nor soft skills required.

But there is a more fundamental question and that has to do with contemporary (fetishized) human understandings of what ‘money’ is and how it operates.  Pleas about ‘needing more money’ to save the planet, to my mind, start from the position that ‘money’ is (somehow) something neutral, as if money is just a resource which is ready and wants to be ‘spent’ on any number of alternate things (fossil fuels, guns, or warships, versus flower growing, chocolate, or children’s clothing).

This is such a naïve conception of ‘money’ as a resource (‘capital’ as a possession) which completely overlooks that ‘money’ is, in fact, a social process – a relationship of exploitation in which one person commands the efforts of others.  But, also, ‘money’ is a contradictory process in which the desire to dominate is never satisfied, can never be satiated, and must, instead, relieve itself via constant money-pot ‘growth’ (the accumulation of yet more capital).

Money as an Accumulation Virus

Rather, ‘money’ needs to be thought of as being a virus.  Like coronavirus (Covid-19), money invades cells not with the aim of eating up the available resources and stopping there, but with the aim of multiplying itself, several times over.  The virus just keeps on going until it kills its ‘host’, yet to avoid its own termination in such a calamity it finds escape by movement to other bodies, and yet more cells.  Thus, whilst as much virus can be destroyed within one day (within a single body), as is created, this is fine so long as sufficient newly created virus escapes to invade other bodies.  And so the epidemic progresses, so long as the number of bodies (and cells) invaded continues to grow.

Similarly, ‘money’ invested in environmentally friendly processes may at first seem like they are doing something positive, in switching an economy over to ‘renewable’ energy sources and processes, but for how long will these processes remain ‘renewable’ or ‘sustainable’?

After all, the point of money – the meaning of its social existence – is not to be ‘spent’ but to be secured, saved, consolidated, and accumulated via endless expansion.

In the Moore and Aveling translation of Capital, Marx refers to the capitalist as ‘Mr Moneybags’ because the capitalist doesn’t have a persona of their own but is rather a mere representative of capital (money).  Now, when Mr or Mrs Moneybags makes an investment, s/he is not interested in spending or expending his/her money – s/he does not want it whittled down or away in processes of Bohemian squander!  Rather, his/her aim is to first, sustain the value of money (in the face of inflation or nominal devaluation) and, second, expand and grow its value.  The goal is accumulation (more money), not expenditure.

Thus, an environmentalist campaigner pleading with Mr or Mrs Moneybags to spend their ‘hard earned’ cash on saving the planet without return just doesn’t make sense!  The planet will, now, only be saved with money if Mr or Mrs Moneybags can make an investment with a decent (socially-acceptable – compared to the ‘market’) return.

This sums up what ‘money’ is, and what it seeks (virus-like) to do.  Of course, the mystery of ‘where’ the return (the growth in money) comes from has been known about since the days of Richard Cantillon (writing in the 1720s), as cited by Adam Smith (1776) in the Wealth of Nations.  It arises from the “sharing” (Smith’s term), by the money-owner, in the output created by the waged labourer.  This is a political relationship of both social and natural subordination which the Moneybags, as a family, must sustain ad infinitum if they are to remain ‘the Moneybags’, with attendant social status (praise and recognition) and political means of control.

Making such a relationship the central plank of a plea to ‘save the planet’ is truly topsy-turvy.

My Carbon Capture Plant isn’t Making a Profit?

In the 1930s state-backed employment programmes were often criticised as simply getting men to dig holes so they could be filled in again (‘endless labouring’).  The social goal was to keep the men ’employed’ (busy) and, thus, out of political rebellion.  There was expenditure of taxes (money) with no ‘return’ other than the broader one of ‘saving the system’.  Ultimately state-managed investment had to return capitalism to profitability, and it did so by cheapening labour-power reproduction costs (through mass social housing, health and education, public transport, and utility schemes).  But a key price paid was the requirement to raise labour productivity (to lower commodity values) through the application of machines (technology) driven by, guess what, fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).  An unknown and indescribable cost (at the time) which was easily pushed away, into the future.  Of course, that future has now come around.

Consequently, ‘green’ capitalism has to deal with a necessary transition away from the system’s reliance on ‘cheap’ fossil fuels (to using renewables) or, alternately, find an effective means of reabsorbing the atmospheric pollutant problems caused by fossil fuels (via technologies like ‘carbon capture’).

Money flows into such schemes looking for its entitled ‘return’ and there is, indeed, a ‘return’ to be had (the exploitation of waged labour power to be undertaken), but money invested in carbon capture cannot then envision a quick end to its own business model – the need for fossil fuel pollution becomes part of that very model.  A balance by the chief executive officer of a sovereign oil fund may have to be struck between both processes – the production and absorption of greenhouse gases.

Money Saves Itself

Using or demanding ‘money’ to save the environment forgets that all capitalist enterprises have ‘dual’ aims – they need to do something worthwhile for society.  They need to do something meaningful, such as remove carbon from the atmosphere or provide health services, or tables and chairs, since it is only through such processes that they can achieve their other, more essential or existential, goal, namely, the preservation of ‘money’.  But the latter implies more growth, and consumption of Earthly resources.  There is, in that sense, no ‘sustainable’ position in the investment of ‘money’ as humanity hurtles forward.  The key human (as opposed to ‘monetary’) existential question is: how do we save the planet without, in spite, of ‘money’ – without ‘capital’ investment?  Since that is the only way to save not just ‘the planet’ (which isn’t really going anywhere) but ourselves.