Green Capitalism is a temporary cover-up with capitalist support to uphold the neoliberal apparatus that degrades the very same environment for corporations and elites to gain profit through marketization.

Smith 19 [Tibbe Smith was a professor at Lund University in the Human Geography department. Serves as a critical coordinator at Clean Clothes Campaign, a clothing brand that prioritizes sustainability and planetary well-being. “The Hegemony of Green Capitalism: A critique of the imaginary that the environmental crisis can be solved by capitalism,” 07/2019, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338047199_The_Hegemony_of_Green_Capitalism_A_critique_of_the_imaginary_that_the_environmental_crisis_can_be_solved_by_capitalism, DOI:10.13140 / RG.2.2.11373.33762, accessed 6/26/2023] junkwon

Green capitalism, along with green growth, appear to bridge the gap from irresponsible business practices to an idea about the corporation as a moral citizen (Wright & Nyberg 2015: 169). This process is a form of ‘passive revolution’ in the Gramscian sense (Gramsci 2007), to ensure the hegemony of capitalism. It serves to characterise the response to the environmental crisis by the international political elites (Swyngedouw 2011; Wanner 2015). “A Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ has taken place over the past few years, whereby the elites have not only acknowledged the climate conundrum and, thereby, answered the call of the ‘people’ to take the climate seriously, but are moving rapidly to convince the world that indeed, capitalism cannot only solve the climate riddle, but that it can actually make a new climate by unmaking the one it has co-produced over the past few hundred years.” (Swyngedouw 2011: 270). Likewise, Wanner writes “Sustainable development emerged as a passive revolution to maintain capitalist hegemony and economic growth in the light of environmentalist critiques about disastrous social and environmental consequences of industrial modern capitalism and calls for ‘limits to growth’” (2015: 27). ¶ There is no mentioning of limits, crisis, or inequality in the documents by P4G. Thereby they can be ignored and pose no challenge for P4G. While the initiative claims to address the major problems of our time, they only focus on a selected five SDGs, none of which concern climate change, biodiversity loss or inequality. Rather, these are renamed and framed for business. It is evident that sustainable development for P4G does not concern the physical limits of the planet. Instead it puts business at the forefront of sustainable development and gives more power to business elites. ¶ 6.2 Neoliberalization and the Ideological State Apparatus ¶ The reinvention of capitalism as green capitalism (Wright & Nyberg 2015: 4) was an unavoidable development under the regime of neoliberal capitalism (Heynen& Robbins 2005). P4G is a good example of the neoliberalist tendencies that are on the rise globally and in Danish politics. While it may not be obvious, neoliberalization transfers power to the market as trust in the market overrules other priorities traditionally attributed to the Danish state. Consistent with the neoliberalization of society, through which governance is directed to favor capitalist interests, natural and common resources are privatized and commodified (valorized) (Heynen & Robbins 2005). The agenda in P4G is professed to lead to wider prosperity and wellbeing, thereby presenting ideology of green capitalism and green growth as the interest of all. This relies on the idea of the trickle-down effect, fostered by the doctrine of neoclassical economics. This theoretical field underpins the ideology of neoliberal processes, and takes place in the ideological state apparatus of education (cf. Althusser 2014) and shapes the formation of a common sense (cf. Gramsci 2007). From there neoclassical economics and neoliberal ideology influence the political apparatus, the state, and manifests in policies, ministries, civil service organs, and public administration. The state thereby simultaneously produces and becomes an instrument of the economic superstructure (Jessop 1977: 355). Making the connection between neoliberalism, green growth and the role of the state and state apparatuses, provides an understanding of P4G and its role in maintaining the hegemony of capitalism. P4G functions as a state apparatus to maintain the present economic structure.