Table Of ContentPraise for The Value of a Whale
‘A sorely needed corrective in an era of climate politics dominated by d ollars and
models. Adrienne Buller’s The Value of a Whale is critical reading for the important
task of prying the future out of the hands of corporations and technocrats.’
Olúfé.mi O. Táíwò, author of Reconsidering
Reparations and Elite Capture
‘Why do so many of the alleged solutions to climate crisis fail to deliver? In
this tightly argued, precise and deeply researched book Adrienne Buller looks
inside the heads of “green” capitalists, exposing how non-solutions proliferate.
Read this brilliant exposé if you want to understand not only how some of the
world’s most powerful people think and act but also how their solutions differ
from what is really needed to secure a safe and abundant future for everyone.’
Amelia Horgan, author of Lost in Work
‘This is a witty, lucid and beautifully written critique of that contradiction-in-
terms, “green capitalism”. It explains why, despite the farcical diminuendo of
climate denialism, so little has changed. Its searching inquiry into the puri-
tanical reduction of all living matter to economic value, which underpins most
government responses to ecological catastrophe, incisively debunks one of the
most dangerous illusions going. This is the book we have long needed.’
Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine
‘A wonderfully readable attack on the worldview that argues for adding a
dollar value to nature in order to save it. An accessible account of a new phase
of capitalism that we all need to understand.’
Professor Simon Lewis, author of The Human Planet
‘At last! A wonderfully refreshing antidote to the notion that market forces can
solve the climate and nature crises, and the deadly assumption that every idea
must be evaluated in terms of markets, finance, property or profit. Elegant,
incisive and fierce, Buller systematically takes apart the false solutions that
dominate mainstream analysis, from carbon offsets to the commodification of
nature, and gives us the tools to challenge their dominance and to broaden our
understanding of what’s both possible and necessary.’
Caroline Lucas MP
‘Buller offers essential context for understanding how economic dogmas and
market-driven statecraft have warped our understanding of and responses
to the climate crisis – or lack thereof. Crucially, she also presents a p ractical
roadmap for course-correction. The Value of a Whale is an accessible and
expertly curated guide to the increasingly slick, green face of capitalism in the
twenty-first century. This book should be required reading for everyone from
climate activists to policymakers and concerned citizens looking to salvage our
collective prospects for a liveable future.’
Kate Aronoff, author of Overheated
‘This is a book for anyone troubled by our lack of progress on the climate
crisis, from young activists to hard-headed CEOs and investors that face losing
control of companies as the climate breaks down. In her persuasive analysis
of net zero policies that narrowly prioritise efficiency, market pricing and
offsetting – and with unusual clarity and scrupulous integrity – Buller comes to
unsettling conclusions. Read this before it is too late.’
Ann Pettifor, author of The Case for the Green New Deal
‘The Value of a Whale is an urgent and honest intervention, casting a magnifying
glass over the institutions, insider groupthink and non-solutions distracting
and deflecting from the radical ideas and compassion we need to secure a
safe planetary future. For too long, our response to ecological crisis has been
steered by mainstream economic thinking that is not fit for purpose, to the
exclusion of other vital perspectives. As Buller compellingly argues, we are
long overdue a reset.’
Farhana Yamin, Visiting Professor at UAL and
Associate Fellow, Chatham House
The Value of a Whale
The Value of
a Whale
On the Illusions of Green Capitalism
Adrienne Buller
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Adrienne Buller 2022
The right of Adrienne Buller to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 6263 2 paperback
First published 2022
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does
not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or
appropriate.
Cover credit: Christina Li / Shutterstock
Typeset
by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire
Contents
Preface page vi
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: what’s the value of a whale? 1
1 Gatekeepers: economics and the collapse of possibility 18
2 Sirens: distraction and dispossession in carbon
markets 57
3 Titans: assets, power and the construction of green
capitalism 99
4 Alchemists: what’s green is gold 146
5 Time travellers: escaping ecological debt 183
6 Ghosts: valuing a disappearing world 227
Between the devil and the deep blue sea: should
we accept green capitalist solutions? 268
Notes 282
Index 336
v
Preface
I wrote much of this book from my sister’s home in the foot-
hills of Oakland, California. It was August in a summer of
record drought across the Pacific Northwest, fanning wildfires
so immense their smoke cast the sun behind a dense red haze
above my father’s home 4,000 kilometres east in Northern
Ontario. Despite constant insistence of the exceptionalism
of the fires, North America was not unique in playing host
to ‘unprecedented’ blazes. Across Turkey and Greece, and
within the Siberian Arctic Circle, fires raged for weeks, sending
tourists and residents flocking to the sea, and unleashing bursts
of methane from scorched permafrost. In the same summer,
floods tore through Central Europe, causing hundreds to lose
their lives and prompting one resident to say the quiet part out
loud: ‘You don’t expect people to die in a flood in Germany.
You expect it maybe in poor countries, but you don’t expect
it here.’1
Nor was she wrong; the climate and environmental crises
are delivering wholeheartedly on their promise to claim the
lives and livelihoods of those least implicated in their creation.
Heavy rains in the summer of 2021 brought deadly flooding and
vi
Preface
landslides to an already embattled Rohingya people at refugee
camps in Bangladesh; in Jacobabad, Pakistan, temperatures
coupled with suffocating humidity inched past the upper limit
at which the human body is capable of cooling itself, a decade
ahead of scientific predictions. Echoing the premature arrival
of these predictions, I was gripped by the distinct feeling that –
while I had anticipated this kind of summer in my middle age
and had spent years mentally preparing for it – I hadn’t been
ready for it so soon. As it turns out, it’s deceptively easy to
become adjusted to catastrophe.
In a particular shot of irony, it later emerged that the Bootleg
Fire raging in Oregon and California had torn through thou-
sands of square kilometres of forest designated for the ‘carbon
offsets’ of companies including Microsoft and BP. The basic
premise of an offset is that individuals or corporations can pur-
chase the entitlement to continue polluting or burning fossil
fuels by paying someone else to ‘offset’ it in some way. In many
cases, this takes the form of tree planting or forest manage-
ment, such as the Klamath East forest offset in Oregon, owned
and operated by the Green Diamond Resource Company. Not
content to try to unpick the dubious assumptions and, often,
practices underlying these schemes, the Bootleg Fire instead
sent these claims toward carbon neutrality quite literally up in
smoke. I envy it that.
The destruction of thousands of acres of the Klamath East
forest is the essence and the irony of the green capitalist model,
as well as a window into its future. Carbon offsets embody the
logic of what I define in this book as ‘green capitalism’. Green
capitalism is an effort to address environmental catastrophe
through new paths to accumulation while minimising disrup-
tion to our current economic systems and modes of living,
vii
