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Scientific article
English

On Climate Rent

Contributors

Felli, Romain

Published in

Historical materialism, vol. 22, no. 3-4, p. 251-280

Publication date

2014

Abstract

As environmental degradation becomes a growing concern, this article argues that the development of international law on climate change expresses the deep social contradictions between accumulation and reproduction under capitalism. These contradictions are translated into the creation of a form of public property over the right to emit greenhouse gases (and not the ‘privatisation' of the atmosphere). This public property is unequally distributed amongst states in an imperialist manner. The distribution of these rights at the domestic level amounts to the distribution of rights to climate rent. Contrary to popular accounts of the ‘commodification' of nature, I argue that emission rights are not ‘commodities', and emissions trading and carbon markets are not ‘accumulation strategies'. These are merely depoliticised forms in which climate rent is extracted and circulates to preclude political debates about the goals of production.

Keywords

  • Value theory
  • Imperialism
  • Climate change
  • Climate governance
  • Carbon trading
  • Rent
  • International law

UNIGE affiliation entities

UNIGE research groups

Funding

  • Swiss National Science Foundation - 148071

Citation (ISO format)

FELLI, Romain. On Climate Rent. In: Historical materialism, 2014, vol. 22, n° 3-4, p. 251–280. doi: 10.1163/1569206X-12341368

Main files (1)

Article (Accepted version)

Identifiers

Additional URL for this publication

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1569206x-12341368

Journal ISSN

1465-4466
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8downloads

Technical informations

Creation

04/12/2014 11:55:00

First validation

04/12/2014 11:55:00

Update

14/03/2023 22:21:14

Status update

14/03/2023 22:21:14

Last indexation

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