Learning Loss: Money and the Social Structuring of (In)Action in the Face of Climate Change

Hannah Pool

Despite unprecedented global resources, climate action remains inadequate. As capitalism drives fossil fuel expansion and prioritizes short-term growth over sustainability, finance is at the core of every decision: At the individual level, adaptation depends on personal finances; at the community level, resources are mobilized through collective investments; and internationally, climate finance becomes abstracted into vast, unmeasurable sums that obscure lived realities. The result is a process of learning loss: Systems and individuals adapt to denial, neglect, or avoidance rather than to sustainability, which both reinforces vulnerability and forecloses alternative futures. The project explores how money structures responses – and non-responses – to climate change at the individual, community, and global levels. It asks how financial resources determine the ways people and institutions experience and react to climate change. Using an embedded case study and multi-sited ethnography in the Ahr valley and Fiji and at the global climate negotiations, the project connects interviews with sites of prior fieldwork to trace how money circulates across levels. It focuses on how financial categories – insurance, charity, loans, community funds, carbon credits, or loss-and-damage pledges – shape both immediate responses to climate-induced sudden-onset events and long-term adaptation strategies.