The Financialization of Nature and the End of the World

Abstract

An accumulation of evidence reveals the extremely real and existential threats posed to Earth and its' inhabitants by the global ecological crisis. Crucial is that the scope of this crisis is not being met with solutions of equivalent urgency and scale. This thesis examines the extent to which 'financialization' contributes to the endurance of climate crisis and the substantially deficient interventions towards achieving effective climate action. International and national bodies have repeatedly announced various pledges to tackle climate crisis whilst simultaneously sustaining contradictory projects, like oil exploration. The extensive influences of financial logics over physical and abstract worlds entail speculating over markets of exploitation and gambling with the literal end of the world. It is no coincidence that neither the ecological crisis or the Global Financial Crisis have caused an exhaustive reorganisation of social structures and values. I argue that the conflicts emanating from the financialization of nature are directly correspondent to the naturalisation of finance. Thus, contemporary transformative politics necessarily must be combined with a natural revolution, that is, an existential system prioritising the interconnectedness of human and ecological needs.