Neoliberal climate strategy treats ineffective measures as a feature, not a bug.

Evidence

Note well that each neoliberal component of the full-spectrum strategy does not by itself actually ameliorate global warming. Denialism postpones the issue; carbon permit trading does not actually reduce CO2 emissions in actual practice; and geoengineering just treats the symptoms of global warming without curtailing emissions. What might at first seem to be a serious defect of the neoliberal strategy is, in fact, the crux of its ultimate rationale. If nature and society evolve in complex and impenetrable ways, then humanity should be prevented from joining together to impose unilateral policies to deal with the perceived root problem. For which humans can actually understand where the market is taking us? Better to defer all political action to the market, which will come to some eventual accommodation to the transformation of nature in good time. But this would never happen under pure passive laissez-faire. Instead, neoliberals must mobilize to capture the state and impose the spectrum of interim “solutions” so that people can come to believe that something is being done to stem the crisis, even if, strictly speaking, no such thing has occurred. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 936

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion — that the evident failure of each neoliberal climate tactic is the crux of its rationale, because it preserves faith in the market as the only legitimate knowledge source — is dense and paradigm-shifting.
• XREF: Directly extends the reader’s core question of how neoliberalism survived 2008: survival through performative ‘something is being done’ pseudo-solutions. — connects to: Voluntary climate pledges rely on reputation pressure, not sanctions, for compliance. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2939; Science denialism, carbon trading, and geoengineering together form a coordinated neoliberal climate strategy. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 926
• SEED: The performative-crisis-management angle: interim solutions designed to signal action without effect as a general technique, beyond climate.

Broader Connections

• Science denialism, carbon trading, and geoengineering together form a coordinated neoliberal climate strategy. #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 926
• Voluntary climate pledges rely on reputation pressure, not sanctions, for compliance. #exemplifies (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2939