Crisis, Continuity and Change: Neoliberalism, the Left and the Future of Capitalism Noel Castree School of Environment and Development, Manchester University, Manchester, UK; noel.castree@man.ac.uk Abstract: This essay’s point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental “crises” of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world-scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O’Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of “crisis talk” in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that “neoliberalism” has seemingly been de-legitimated. My answer is that a “post-neoliberal” future is probably a long way off. I make my case in two stages and at two geographical scales. First, I examine the British social formation as currently constituted and explain why even a leading neoliberal state is failing to reform its ways. Second, I then scale-up from the domestic level to international affairs. I examine cross-border emissions trading— arguably the policy tool for mitigating the very real prospects of significant climate change this century. The overall conclusion is this: even though the “first” and “second” contradictions of capital have manifested themselves together and at a global level, there are currently few prospects for systemic reform (never mind revolution) led by a new, twenty-first century “red- green” Left. Keywords: economic crisis, environmental crisis, social formation, emissions trading, climate change, Britain, the EU A crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear (A. Gramsci 1971:276). The world can and has been changed by those for whom the ideal and the real are dynamically contiguous (W. James 1956:42). Introduction Gramsci’s famous dictum, formulated in a prison cell on the eve of the Great Depression, remains instructive almost 80 years later—or so I want to argue. To say that we live in remarkable times is not only a clich´ e but an understatement. Talk of “crisis” has, in the space of three short years, become commonplace at all points of the compass. But unlike the 1930s, the idea of crisis has not one but two world-historical referents. Beginning in August 2007, the butterfly effect caused by the “credit crunch”—which within a year led to a virtual meltdown of Antipode Vol. 41 No. S1 2009 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 185–213 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00722.x C  2009 The Author Journal compilation C  2009 Editorial Board of Antipode.