Green Capitalism: How Transnational Actors Sold the World on Free-Market Environmentalism, 1992-2015

• In Event: 50660 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 1: Marxism and Ecology

Abstract

There is a well-established body of literature examining the role of transnational actors in global environmental politics. However, less attention has been given to how these actors have specifically contributed to the diffusion and entrenchment of market environmentalism, shaping their dominance within the sustainable development paradigm. This study addresses that gap by analyzing a select group of influential transnational policy and advocacy networks, including the Club of Rome, Trilateral Commission, and World Economic Forum to investigate their role in constructing and institutionalizing market-based environmental solutions. Using discourse analysis, this research explores how these organizations have been instrumental in aligning sustainable development with neoliberal capitalism. The study seeks to uncover how transnational networks advanced market environmentalism to serve their class interests, shaping both the trajectory of sustainable development and reinforcing U.S. hegemony over the past three decades. Ultimately, this research aims to theorize the emergence of an eco-industrial complex, contributing to scholarship on the intersections of ideology, capital accumulation, governance, and global environmental hegemony. By interrogating the ideological nature of environmental social science perspectives and policy, this research exposes how transnational actors manufacture consent through scientific narratives that are ostensibly apolitical but, in reality, function to reinforce neoliberal environmentalism and capitalist accumulation.

Author

• Engin Burak Yilmaz, SUNY-Binghamton