“Our planet: Too big to fail”: The semiotics of capitalist responses to climate change

Abstract

In September of 2020, the Financial Times organized its inaugural “Moral Money Summit,” a gathering of world leaders in business and finance with an interest in sustainable investing. At this online event, the head of sustainable finance at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) premiered a film highlighting “the importance of nature to our global economy and the catastrophic risks to our financial systems if we choose to ignore it.”¹ Its title, “Our Planet: Too Big to Fail,” borrowed from the language used during the 2008 financial crisis to justify government bailouts for the world's largest banks, based on the belief that these financial institutions were so large and interconnected that their failure would spell the demise of the greater economic system. This wordplay not only underscored the importance of climate action to an audience of “sustainability” professionals, it introduced a narrative on climate change that frames banks and businesses as integral to achieving planetary health and justice.

Applying the notion of something “too big to fail” to the natural world, the title announced a communicative strategy found throughout the film: that of “translating” the stakes of the climate crisis into the terms of the financial sector. “Ecosystems are assets. We're really talking about an asset management problem,” one interviewee claimed. Over images of melting glaciers, the film opens with an admission of guilt, the narrator's declaration that, “our finance sector has unwittingly bankrolled the destruction of the very natural systems that it relies upon.” It calls financiers to rectify past misdeeds by taking the interests of nonfinancial “stakeholders” into account and aiding governments with the transition to a sustainable economy.

Claims that finance ought to play a leading role in managing climate change are central to financiers’ arguments legitimating the need for “ESG” and other forms of “sustainable” investing (Campisano, 2020). ESG is an investment strategy that proposes to take “nonfinancial” data on environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) issues into account when determining the value of company stocks.

ESG and other assets labeled “sustainable” emerged through the language practices of financialized capitalism, which reflect and animate assumptions of the market economy, treating costs associated with things like public health or the environment as “externalities” that need not be accounted for on financial balance sheets. Perceived as “nonfinancial” in nature, information about a company's environmental and social impact thus appears to require translation to be understood and acted upon within the financialized capitalist system. Accordingly, arguments for the importance of ESG metrics are often framed as a “translation” of climate scientists’ warnings into the language of finance. Linguistic anthropologists have long argued that translations are never merely different ways of saying “the same thing.” Rather, they are interdiscursive achievements that carry out social action to political effects (Gal, 2015). Analysis of modes of communication on climate change in corporate and financial spheres reveals how the future of climate action is entangled with the profit-driven webs of global finance.

Using the terms of the market economy to underscore the importance of our planet's natural systems might appear, at first, to be another example of how speakers rely on the language of capitalism to value practices, lifeforms, and modes of personhood in the neoliberal era (Gershon, 2018). But I suggest that in discourses about sustainable finance, the effects of this sort of “translation” are different in at least one critical aspect. Arguments for ESG are often founded on the claim that the climate crisis has become so severe, the need for action so urgent, that national governments no longer have the means to manage on their own but require the funds and global networks of the financial system. This assertion marks a shift beyond the neoliberal principle of limited government regulation, toward integrating financial actors directly into governance, giving banks and businesses the power to determine which types of climate action merit funding.

How can ESG narratives, like those in the WWF film, assert that finance should take on a more powerful role in managing the climate crisis, while simultaneously acknowledging the sector's complicity in environmental degradation? I suggest that this discursive leap is made possible, in part, by framing this message as a “translation.” Presented as an account of climate change told in the language of financiers, these narratives assert commensurability between climate scientists’ messages of urgency and the language of market capitalism (and the systems of valuation it entails). Using financial terms to justify climate action, speakers engage in a semiotic practice that assimilates planetary health into market-based modes of calculation. Speakers thereby take a political stance in a contest between capitalist values of continual growth, on the one hand, and environmental sustainability on the other.

Told in the language of finance, the story of climate change begins and ends with global capitalism. The immense power consolidated in global banks and businesses is not evidence of a failed neoliberal experiment with minimal government regulation, but rather, a force that—if used for good—has the power to solve climate change. The semiotic form of the “translation” precludes other conclusions, including the possibility that finance should be subject to stricter legal standards or that unbridled growth is incompatible with planetary health. In this telling, finance's complicity in the climate crisis is not a systemic and ongoing issue, but a mistake from the sector's naïve past, having “unwittingly” bankrolled environmental destruction. This claim opens a space for finance's hero narrative, asserting that errant financial institutions must right past wrongs by joining forces with the public sector to foster a transition toward a sustainable (capitalist) economy. The dutiful language of responsibility obscures a tacit bid for increased power. Adding the moral weight of climate science to financiers’ message, the translation offers up sustainable finance as a redeemed form of capitalism.

ESG is not a public form of regulation. It encompasses a number of private metrics, used to label and add value to company stock and financial products like green and social bonds. Arguments about the importance of considering nonfinancial measures are never (only) about the gravity of climate change. They simultaneously work to sell ESG products, adding to the value of the metrics themselves. At events like the Moral Money Summit, financial professionals and corporate leaders listen for the sales pitch woven into narratives on the urgency of the climate crisis, to gauge whether ESG remains a gamble or if the market has matured such that failure to get on board risks alienating clients. In these spaces, the search for profit in climate action is not hidden but foregrounded.

Proponents of sustainable finance argue that companies with higher ESG ratings are more profitable (Sels, 2021; Tew, 2020). They assert that low ESG ratings are associated with hidden costs, low employee morale, high turnover rates, and decreased productivity, as well as expenses associated with managing regulatory issues (Mishra, 2020). This emphasis on profitability—underscored in the adage that sustainable finance allows investors to “do well by doing good”—draws attention to one key difference between ESG and other calls for ethical business practices. ESG is a valuation technique that allows analysts to treat moral concerns as market indicators. This, Stefan Leins (2020, 3, 1) argues, set the stage for ESG to become a tool of speculation “that does not primarily empower moral considerations, but rather optimizes financial gains,” allowing financiers to create profit out of the “social contention and crises of capitalism.” The effects of ESG metrics radiate into the world, shaping the projects that banks fund and the initiatives prioritized by corporations eager to be included in portfolios of ESG stocks.

Similarities between the “translations” used to support sustainable finance and corporate communication on climate change shed light on the obstacles that impede efforts to incorporate nonfinancial ESG criteria into business. The narrative arc presented in the WWF film shares generic conventions with speeches corporate leaders have delivered at industry gatherings and climate forums over the past decade. I first encountered this discursive form, which we might call the “Speech of the Repentant Capitalist,” during fieldwork at a company I call “Baylone,” one of the world's largest food corporations. At a meeting of industry leaders in 2017, the company's CEO delivered a speech declaring the corporation's intent to take a leading role in addressing issues of planetary health. This formal address took a three-part structure, similar to the language in the WWF film and speeches the CEO of Unilever has been giving at least since 2014 (see also Catanoso, 2014; Tripathy, 2022 on moral narratives in finance).

Repentant capitalist speeches begin in a somber tone, with an admission of (industrywide) culpability, for misdeeds committed before their consequences were clear. Baylone's CEO solemnly acknowledges the food industry's implication in the “unprecedented and unexpected” depletion of planetary resources. Then comes an ultimatum, which translates climate scientists’ warnings into the stakes of business. Unilever's CEO claims that “Left unchecked, climate change has the potential to become a significant barrier to our growth,” because companies “cannot prosper in a world with runaway climate change.”² These speeches then shift in tone, to deliver a future-focused call to action, asserting that there is still hope if businesses take responsibility for their environmental impact and partner with the public sector to promote sustainable growth. Baylone's CEO claimed that his company would “inspire a revolution,” holding themselves accountable, not only for financial profits, but also for the social and environmental value that they create and share with nonfinancial stakeholders. Like the ghosts of Christmas whose visits compelled Scrooge to change his miserly ways, the three-part structure of the repentant capitalist speech traces the steps toward capitalist conversion, which renders a company, or an industry, fit to lead a global transformation toward sustainability.

When I first heard the Baylone CEO's speech, this frank admission of fault gave me pause. Unaware of the similarities between his claims and discourses that circulated widely at corporate and financial events, I wondered who he aimed to convince: Shareholders? Employees? Potential clients? I have written elsewhere about the ways the Baylone employees rallied around the CEO's words, citing them in their slides, referencing his speech over lunchtime discussions (Yount-André, 2021). But the uptake of his message among shareholders and consumers tells a different story, revealing practical obstacles that impede the transformation to a sustainable economy promised in corporate and financial spheres.

Baylone had little trouble achieving a AAA ESG rating. Yet, narratives of sustainable capitalism remained central to company discourses, as the CEO set his sights on “stakeholder capitalism,” symbolized by the company's pursuit of “B-Corp” status, a private certification awarded to companies that demonstrate that they prioritize sustainability and the interests of nonfinancial stakeholders. Within Baylone, the CEO's message of sustainability had a palpable impact: it allowed him to advance through the corporate ranks and Baylone employees regularly voiced their alignment with the CEO's objectives in presentations, PowerPoints, and everyday discussion. But 1-year into the COVID pandemic, the CEO was ousted by the board of directors, under pressure from “activist investors” who blamed him for chronic underperformance.

Consumers remained skeptical of Baylone's efforts at sustainability, evidenced by lackluster sales and derisive reactions online to Baylone advertisements presenting its message of sustainability to the general public. Unlike its larger competitors, Nestle and Unilever, Baylone's commitment to sustainability was not accompanied by sales growth. The CEO may have convinced many of his peers and employees with his tale of redemption and revolution through sustainable capitalism but without financial returns it was all for naught. The CEO's removal sparked much debate in the business world. Journalists speculated about what it would mean for the future of stakeholder capitalism. LinkedIn users decried the company's choice to prioritize short-term profits over long-term solutions. Some pointed out that Baylone's 2020 performance was impressive according to accounting measures that treat social and environmental metrics as equally important as economic performance.

Whatever financiers’ narratives about sustainable finance say about the importance of nonfinancial variables in determining a company's value, by law, shareholder primacy reins. Benefits promised in narratives of sustainable capitalism all hinge on a scenario in which commitments to the environment are accompanied by boundless growth. In this system of private metrics and voluntary measures, the momentous task of managing the climate crisis is reduced to a side hustle for banks and businesses working to profit from crises of capitalism. Attending to the semiotic modes through which corporate and financial professionals “translate” the need for climate action into business terms reveals how their moral narratives obscure tensions inherent to this hierarchy of priorities. Framed as a responsibility that banks and businesses can no longer disregard, achieving planetary health and justice is recast as the self-evident domain of the private sector, to be managed by global economic elites with aims of capitalist accumulation.