Finance, Sustainability, and the Climate Crisis

Achieving true sustainability in a capitalist economy is a process that must by necessity involve the financial industry. But is that industry, and the structures and systems that surround it, equipped to usher in a sustainable society? Or is it calibrated to do the exact opposite? Finance, Sustainability, and the Climate Crisis explores this dilemma through a Marxian framework, demonstrating how current financial systems and their regulatory safeguards are fundamentally incompatible with the task of tackling the challenges posed by climate change. Drawing on 25 years of experience in the finance industry, Cengizhan Kaptan offers an in-depth analysis of the structures of sustainable finance, the Paris Agreement, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and 2050 net-zero targets. With the dialectical logic of Marx and Hegel, he exposes out the push and pull of regulation and deregulation in our financial systems. Diagnosing the failings of the capitalist era as terminal, he proposes a new model of collaboration between philosophy and the social sciences, vital in the fight to secure sustainability in a post-capitalist world.