Green Capital Denial: Insulating The Green Spirit From Capital

Planetary improvement is less about improving the planet in some objective, ‘natural’ sense as it is about improving and sustaining a very distinct mode of inhabiting this planet, of making natures and organizing lives (human and nonhuman alike). Cleantech entrepreneurs envision themselves greening the economy bit by bit, and refuse to see how the economy is actually transforming their visions and ideas, molding any new technologies or the possibility thereof into a commodity form that primarily serves the needs of capital. Through the maintenance of four conceptual and practical separations, cleantech proponents are able to gesture vaguely towards world-making ambitions, while at the same time insulating these visions from their day-to-day business activities and short-term financial projections: (1) a separation between personal and professional commitments; (2) the difference between thinking (about climate change) and doing (something profitable); (3) the difference between abstract and concrete concerns; and (4) the distinction between short-term (fundable) solutions and long-term visions. What emerges is a way of seeing the future as a forever receding horizon of possibility, whose radical transformation is preserved in people’s minds while the perpetuation of an unsustainable status quo is preserved in reality.