Capitalism Alone Won’t Save the Planet
Climate financing needs government support and oversight to truly affect global warming.
Not just the private sector.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
With every record-smashing day, week, month and year of global warming that goes by, finding solutions to climate change becomes more urgent. Capitalism helped get us into this mess, and it will have to help us get out of it. But it isn’t capable of doing the work alone.
Eco-capitalism hit a notable milestone when green-bond issuance outpaced fossil-fuel borrowing for the first six months of 2023, Bloomberg News reported late last week. Green bonds are debts that supposedly finance clean energy and other climate-friendly projects. Green borrowers raised about $348 billion in the first half of the year, compared with just $233 billion for the oil, gas and coal industries.