2015/01/28 by Noel Castree, Brett Christophers · 162 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · #Business #Capital (architecture) #Capitalism #Climate Finance #Climate change #Criticism #Developing country #Ecology #Economic growth #Economics #Finance #Futures contract #Geography #Housing Market and Economics #Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism #Land Use and Ecosystem Services #Law #Leverage (statistics) #Market liquidity #Political science #Subject (documents)
paper · open access · doi:10.1080/00045608.2014.985622
published in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(2), 378-386 (American Association of Geographers)
openalex publication_date 2015/01/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Since the onset of the global economic crisis, financiers and the institutions regulating their behavior have been subject to far-reaching criticism. At the same time, leading geo-scientists have been insisting that future environmental change might be far more profound than previously anticipated. Finance capital has long been a crucial mechanism for melting present solidities into air to create different futures. This article asks what the prospects are for the switching of credit money into green infrastructures—a switching increasingly recognized as necessary for climate change mitigation and (especially) adaptation. Most research into geographies of finance has ignored ecological questions and few contemporary society–nature researchers examine major fixed-capital investments. Unlike those geographers who criticize capitalism without offering feasible alternatives, we take a pragmatic view underpinned by democratic socioenvironmental values and attempt to identify leverage points for meaningful change. This programmatic article identifies reasons and examples to be cautiously hopeful that liquidity can be fixed in less ecologically harmful future infrastructures, thereby addressing crucial extraeconomic challenges for the century ahead.