Selling our future
Jens Beckert is director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, and his book How We Sold Our Future: The Failure to Fight Climate Change was published in German in 2024, followed by an English translation (Beckert, 2025).
A review on
Earth.Org described the book as “a sober, rational assessment of what
influences have impacted the world’s failure to address climate change, and
what this means for our shared future”. Beckert asks “what are the social,
political, and economic drivers and structures that brought us to this point?”
and “examines each of the social and political structures responsible for and
affected by the situation” (Lee, 2025).
Beckert’s
book is of modest length, with nine chapters: Knowledge without change, Capitalist
modernity, Big Oil, The hesitant state, Global prosperity, Consumption without
limits, Green growth, Planetary boundaries, and What next? The book provides
extensive notes and references. The chapter titles give an indication of the
content and this post will try to provide a view based primarily on excerpts
from the final chapter.
Beckert
stresses the need to understand “the forces at work in business and politics,
as well as among citizens and consumers, that shape the fight against the
climate crisis and prevent adequate responses”. Societies have until now been
able to take for granted the continuity of the natural foundations for life,
but climate change is creating a ‘new unreliability of nature’. However, the unfolding
crisis has not yet triggered appropriate action: “The fight against climate
change is failing owing to the power and incentive structures of a social
configuration geared towards profit-making, consumption and unlimited growth.” Our
social and economic structures are powerful and deeply embedded, and they limit
our responses to climate change. We need an ‘emergency stop’ on the pressures
for economic growth, which could be provided by “politically agreed and
enforced climate protection measures” along with lifestyle changes away from excessive
consumption. No such effective action is
taking place, but nevertheless societies have to react. “Anything else would be
to accept the collapse of civilisation.”
In Beckert’s
view “there is no way round restrictions on economic growth and excessive
consumption, especially in highly developed countries” if we are to live within
the planetary boundaries, and “such restrictions are not compatible with the
existing structures of capitalist modernity.” He seeks “practicable ways of taking pressure off the Earth’s ecological
systems” and believes “we simply do not have time to first overturn the
existing social order, then build a new one, and then finally tackle the
climate problem”. We can only find partial solutions and they will change with developments
and experience and “will remain inherently controversial”. Approaches are
needed which are politically feasible and will “buy time for societies to adapt
to climate change, accelerate the defossilization of energy production, and
curtail the growth of resource consumption”. Climate change should be seen as a
more-or-less problem, rather than as an either-or issue. Measures which buy
time can provide “the opportunity for social and technical developments to emerge
that open up new political options”, and minds may also be focussed by the
increasing frequency of climate related events such as drought, extreme summer
heat, and floods. Social and political structures will “confront intensifying
conflicts within and among societies” over issues relating to water,
agriculture, raw materials, and unwelcome lifestyle changes.
The
necessity for “short-term adaptation and damage repair” will divert financial
resources from other tasks including climate mitigation. This will undermine
the “ideal of perpetually increasing prosperity” and its promise for the
future, and foster polarization and conflict. Beckert quotes Mike Davis who
described the possibility of growing turbulence driving elite publics to wall
themselves off from the rest of humanity, abandoning global mitigation in
favour of ‘selective adaptation for Earth’s first-class passengers’.
In the chapter
on capitalist modernity, Beckert wrote that while “the catastrophes of climate
change are seen as problems for a distant future or for other people, then
there are no material incentives for effective climate protection: not for
business, nor for the state, nor for citizens.” In the final chapter he
proposes that for climate mitigation and adaptation to have a chance of being
implemented, the steps involved must use the rationales “of the various spheres
of action and their reciprocal channels of influence.”
In the
economy, investment is motivated only by the prospect of profit, and the power
to shift or refrain from investment means that companies must be allowed to
make ‘acceptable’ profits. The path to profit can however be altered through
subsidies for climate-friendly business models, financial sanctions on
greenhouse gas emissions, and regulation. The ability to regulate depends on
political power, which in turn depends on “maintaining economic prosperity, tax
revenues, and the loyalty of the electorate.” The legal system has a role in protecting
the rights of future generations and preserving natural resources in the face
of political and business interests.
Policy-makers
have the task of working with the electorate to address problems. This involves
“increasing understanding of measures that entail costs and significant
disruption”. Climate adaptation measures are more likely to be seen as
beneficial by voters, and gain their approval, than climate mitigation
measures. Local flood protection schemes, for example, are seen as a collective
good. Such adaptation measures can increase awareness and “gradually create a social
climate that strengthens a readiness to act”. Attitudes to climate policy
differ between social groups, and policy may have greater success if it takes a
multi-layered approach that recognises differing interests. A similar argument
applies to the distribution of financial burdens: the cost of “carbon taxes,
heat pumps or electric vehicles” may be easy for the wealthy to bear, but can
“overtax household budgets all the way up the ladder to the upper middle
class”. The higher the cost of climate policies, the greater is the danger of
divisions in society that will fuel authoritarian populism and thus block
effective action. Avoiding a tone of moral superiority, targeted structural
policy, cushioning financial burdens, compensation to individuals and
assistance to individual regions can all help to gain widespread political
support for climate policy. The issue of support for the global South is
particularly difficult as it is “almost impossible to convince an electorate
that scarce tax money should be spent outside one’s own country”. Here it may
be helpful to make clear the interconnection between the global South and
North, and between climate and migration policies, as may already be seen at
the Mexican-American border.
The key
political message of the book, according to its author, relates to the shift in
the relationship between state and economy in most countries over the last
forty years towards steering social development through market forces. This has
led to “worsening social inequalities within countries” and a “crisis in public
infrastructures”. The demands facing public services as a result of climate change
show how misguided the pro-market policies have been. The state’s fiscal
headroom needs to be expanded through “higher public debt earmarked for climate
policy, differentiated interest rates, and an increase in overall tax revenue.”
Tax increases for the wealthiest will be necessary, and will meet with
political resistance.
Climate
protection policy also needs support through individual behaviour, but this
will only change significantly if public infrastructures are changed in the
right way, for example by providing reliable user-friendly public transport.
The market cannot be expected to provide these things. Not only prudent
behaviour, but virtuous behaviour is needed from citizens, as illustrated by
the problem of collective goods in economic theory. However “economic theory
promotes a narrow view of human behaviour, as people often act
altruistically”. However, in business
and in politics, “this kind of altruistic behaviour is too often blocked by
systemic restraints”. Unselfish behaviour can flourish not only among family
and friends, but also in civil society, where examples are provided by the
various national and international climate movements.
Effective
policy to address the global problem of climate change may not emerge from
international conferences, but rather from democratic civil society, where
ethical behaviour is promoted through social networks in the community, family
and friends, and civil engagement. Thus local politics is important even though
climate change is global, and social projects can help to shape cultural
attitudes towards environmentally friendly behaviour which business and
political leaders cannot completely ignore. “A widespread readiness to support
measures against the overexploitation of natural resources can only be engendered,
if at all, with the involvement of civil society: that is, from the bottom up,
not from the top down.”
Visions of
future society, perhaps in a post-growth economy, can build support for change
“and put beneficial civil pressure on business and politics.” Government policy
and corporate behaviour “will only accommodate the protection of natural
resources if and when it’s compatible with the principles of profit and of
holding on to power” but the actions of citizens may have some effect in cushioning
the effects of climate change and helping societies to adapt to new conditions.
Even the “faint
hope of delaying and further mitigating climate change makes active engagement
in the pursuit of this goal a rational step, and also a moral duty. The extent
to which we actually succeed will determine how our children and grandchildren
live, and how they judge us.”
References
Beckert, J.
(2025) How We Sold Our Future: The
Failure to Fight Climate Change. Translated from the German by R.
Cunningham. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Lee, J.,
2025, ‘How We Sold Our Future: The Failure to Fight Climate Change’, Jan Lee,
Feb 2025, Earth.Org, online, accessed 24 February 2025
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