Neoliberalism and Climate Policy in the United States ─ From Market Fetishism to the Developmental State

This book analyses the political economy of US climate policy, aiming to explain how the drive to promote accumulation in green markets has been translated under conditions of American neoliberalism, where the state struggles to find a stable and legitimate role in the economy, and where environmental and industrial policy are extremely contentious topics. It focuses specifically on the government’s historical role in promoting and fostering high-tech development, in order for American firms to dominate and monopolize these markets, chiefly through intellectual property rents. Forces within the federal government have attempted to ensure US dominance over emergent green energy markets, but have had to do so in the context of the anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-environmental, and anti-state tendencies of American neoliberalism. The result is an odd dynamic within the nature and dysfunction of contemporary US climate politics and policy.

This original book conceptualizes US climate policy not as environmental policy (with regulation as its primary objective), but rather as innovation policy (with capital accumulation and market domination as its main objective). It argues that US climate policy must be understood in the context of the government’s broader strategy over the past four decades to dominate and monopolize novel high-tech markets, and its use of immense amounts of state power to achieve this end.

Robert MacNeil is Lecturer in Environmental Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Australia.