Schumpeter in the twenty-first century: creative destruction and the global green shift

Schumpeter’s evolutionary account of the technoeconomic dynamics of capitalism has been put to the test by himself in his analysis of the nineteenth-century wave of development associated with iron and railroads, and by later scholars in the subsequent waves involving steel and electricity, then oil and automobiles, and finally information technology. Now there is a new wave or surge emerging based on pervasive greening technologies and activities, which is creating new industries from power generation to transport and agriculture. This new surge is coincident with the choices made by China in favour of renewable energy and resource recirculation through its relentless drive for industrialisation and the search for energy and resource security. There is much more at stake than a substitution of one technology by another driven by a change in relative prices (e.g. a carbon tax). The Schumpeterian account that builds on Schumpeter’s insights spelt out in CSD provides the best and most plausible account of this current global green shift and its Chinese driver.