2026.7 - Jesse Goldstein
"Capital, creativity and control in the struggle for a livable world"
From climate denial to delay to deferral… and now increasingly silence, the prevailing means of justifying climate inaction continue to evolve, while underlying environmental conditions deteriorate. As an environmental sociologist I have been researching and writing about various chapters in the history of attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, from cleantech’s non-disruptive disruptions to net zero’s climate deferrals, focusing on the stories that we tell ourselves, and that we are told, about how to ‘make an impact’ or ‘save the planet’.
A battle between capital and creativity pits the general intelligence, capabilities and world-making aspirations of regular people against people with institutionalized wealth and power who would prefer to preserve their privileges as opposed to the planet.
We are at an impasse. As emissions continue to rise, we are now facing a powerful veil of climate silence intent on wishing the crisis away in favor of a fresh wave of fossil fueled industrial development. Artificial intelligence and the data centers it requires are being sold as a general purpose technology while their felt effects center on increased costs of living, displacing workers, degrading cognitive capacities and cultural products, and imposing an impenetrable web of surveillance across the world - all with anticipated ecological costs at a scale that’s hard to fathom.
In this session I will introduce conceptual tools that help make sense of this long and largely futile attempt to make capitalism greener, while ending with a tentatively optimistic provocation that data center and AI resistance could provide an opportunity to develop a more critical popular assessment of technology as not universally good or always leading towards “progress,” which could create an opening for broader engagement with degrowth environmentalism.
Speaker bio:
Jesse Goldstein is an environmental sociologist and author of Planetary Improvement: Cleantech Entrepreneurship and the Contradictions of Green Capitalism, a critical examination of the clean tech movement and the limits of market-based approaches to environmental change. His research focuses on the political economy of green capitalism, technology, and the sociology of knowledge, interrogating the narratives that shape how we understand innovation, impact, and progress. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Lost The Plot:
Lost The Plot is a monthly seminar series - virtual and free - that talks about the systemic issues of climate change. Open to all but targeted at professionals working in climate and sustainability who want to more deeply connect with climate - which often is quite absent from our careers - and examine what it is We are all doing (and NOT doing) to address this generation-defining challenge. We seek to dispel the technooptimist standpoint inherent to the broader effort today, and instead look critically at the sociopolitical systems that have prohibited stronger and more meaningful action to date. Each month a different speaker will lead a unique discussion, come for one or all, and view whichever you miss on YouTube after. Learn more at www.lost-the-plot.com .