We cannot just buy, invest or build our way out of the climate and environmental crisis. Nevertheless, money is still very much at the heart of the problem. Investment is vital. Financial resources need to be directed to the best available solutions, adaptations and restorations, as much as we can possibly find. But the money seems to be going elsewhere.
The often-used argument that “we don’t have enough money” has been disproven so many times. According to the International Monetary Fund, the production and burning of coal, oil and fossil gas was subsidized by $5.9 trillion in 2020 alone. That is $11 million every minute, earmarked for planetary destruction. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world launched unprecedented financial rescue packages. These recovery plans were seen as a huge opportunity to set humanity on a brand-new course for a more sustainable economic paradigm. They were called “our last chance to avert a climate disaster,” as the enormous size of the investments would make it impossible for us to undo their consequences in the future if we got that funding even slightly wrong.
However, in June 2021, the International Energy Agency concluded that out of the historic global recovery plan, only a bleak 2% had been invested into green energy, whatever “green” means in this case. In the European Union, for instance, those 2% might well be spent on fossil gas from Vladimir Putin’s Russia or on burning biomass made from clear-cut forests as these activities — along with many others — are at the moment considered green in the brand-new EU taxonomy.
