Green Bonds and the Contradictions They Reveal

In this paper, I argue that green bonds point to an emergent process in which environmental thought is metabolized by financial engines. Through a semiotic analysis of this debt instrument, I look at how dominant capitalist institutions like the World Bank and JP Morgan are attempting to address climate change, and where they are falling short. Complicating narratives of good and evil, I demonstrate that outcomes of green bond issuance are widely variable -- that sometimes they accomplish what nothing else can, while simultaneously stymying necessary transformations. By tracing these oppositional tendencies, I find that green bonds reveal new contradictions in the dynamics of financial capitalism.