Fossil Capital Research Articles

From planetary scenarios to planetary sensing: Models, observations, and political legibility

This paper explores the political uses of images generated by Earth System science. It argues that images of possible climate futures, maps of potential worlds of heatwaves and wildfires, are made legible to policymakers by an alliance with a class of climate-economy models that associate scientific estimates of climate impacts with a prescribed international policy and technology mix. While environmental models have successfully mobilized policymakers in the past by providing images of “planetary scenarios” accompanying different emissions pathways, with climate change a political actor outside the administrative state is required to overcome the entrenchment of fossil capital. The paper suggests such actors are empowered not by the rhetoric of scenario modeling but by the emerging practice of “planetary sensing,” where activists and stakeholders directly mobilize the planetary images generated by Earth System science as they work to evacuate prisons, track pollutants, and repair pipelines.

The language of late fossil capital

ABSTRACT This essay studies the propaganda language of contemporary – or late – fossil capital. Whereas the traditional understanding of propaganda focuses on the dissemination of information (or disinformation) in order to promote a political cause or ideology, I argue that the main form and vehicle of propaganda for late fossil capital is the massive use of terms and tropes, together with particular rhetorical devices, for example, the interpellation of the individual consumer as responsible for mitigating climate change. The essay studies the language of fossil capital based primarily on marketing material by fossil fuel companies, in the US and other Western countries, such as advertising and advertorials, current and archived websites, social media, corporate sustainability reports, as well as material produced by industry organisation such as the American Petroleum Institute and the Heartland Institute. A large part of the material is taken from two North American legal complaints, Connecticut v. Exxon Mobil Corporation (2020) and City of New York v. Exxon Mobil Corp. et al. (2021).

The end of the experiment? The energy crisis, neoliberal energy, and the limits to a socio-ecological fix

The present energy crisis is one which is rooted in the contradictions of the neoliberalisation of energy. The UK is one of the pioneers of energy neoliberalisation and has been experimenting with different market arrangements since the 1980s, yet has found itself particularly exposed to the impacts of a global energy price shock. Through an analysis of policy documents, regulatory reports and historical energy policy literature, I identify how privatisation, regulatory experiments and market engineering under a neoliberal policy paradigm helped to create the conditions for the present crisis. Drawing on Hall's conception of policy paradigms, I argue that the neoliberal policy paradigm, for energy, is locked in a cycle of interventions at the second order to manage the contradictions of the third order priority of securing privatised energy markets and maintain legitimacy for the neoliberal energy system. The current energy crisis has led to the government making increasingly extreme second order interventions to stabilise the energy system to secure the interests of electricity capital and fossil capital. The present crisis, however, exposes the limits to a socio-ecological fix (for people, and for capital) within neoliberal hegemony.

“The Crime of Innocence”: Baldwin, Bataille, and the Political Theology of Far-Right Climate Politics

ABSTRACT Recent work on the global far right has highlighted its coordination with fossil capital, what Clara Daggett calls “fossil fascism.” The far right has embraced climate denial as part of its fantasy of a conspiracy against the white race, while fossil capital has embraced the far right as its most enthusiastic defender in the face of calls for decarbonization. This paper analyzes the political theology of fossil fascism, arguing climate denial is of a piece with the far right’s broader denial of historical and contemporary violence. The paper draws on James Baldwin and Georges Bataille to understand climate denial as the will to innocence in face of the scientific fact that combustion of fossil fuels in past acts of racial domination has ongoing climatic effects in the present. The will to innocence intensifies the very violence it disavows, and resisting fossil fascism may require retrieving the theological concept of guilt.

Whose climate intervention? Solar geoengineering, fractions of capital, and hegemonic strategy

Proposals for slowing climate change by reflecting sunlight back to space, known as solar geoengineering (SG), are gaining traction in climate policy. Given SG’s capacity to slow warming without reducing carbon emissions, prominent criticism suggests that it will enable fossil fueled business-as-usual. This assessment is not without merit, yet the primary funders of SG research do not emanate from fossil capital. We analyze sources of funding for SG research globally, finding close ties to mostly US financial and technological capital as well as a number of billionaire philanthropists. These corporate sectors and associated philanthropies comprise part of ‘climate capital’ – the fraction of the capitalist class nominally aligned with climate action. We argue that SG is being positioned as a tactic for enabling incremental, market-driven decarbonization, explore key institutions advocating this approach in US climate policy, and conclude that SG is poised to serve as a tool for class compromise between fossil and climate capital.

Striking Fossil Capital: Towards a Theory of the Climate Strike

Striking Fossil Capital: Towards a Theory of the Climate Strike

Who is the Anthropos in the Anthropocene?

This is a series of three interwoven philosophical reflections on the identity of the anthropos in the Anthropocene. Who is this anthropos? I argue that it does not indict humanity as such but rather a certain way of being human. Moreover, this mode of being human does not extend to all human beings, but rather only to a fortunate few who disproportionately benefit from fossil capital. I respond to this crisis by considering philosophical and, for want of a better word, spiritual, resources in indigenous traditions as well as Zen.

The forces of fossil capital: Sister Carrie and American literary naturalism’s industrial middle-class ideology

ABSTRACT Through the nineteenth century, Western industrial nations transitioned to fossil fuels following the formation of what Andreas Malm terms ‘fossil capital’, a distinct form of capitalism based on the extraction and consumption of coal, oil, and gas. In America, the industrial operations of fossil capital – in addition to igniting our contemporary climate crisis – reshaped society in the image of a productive engine through social applications of the thermodynamic principles of energy conservation and entropy. Through a reading of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), this essay considers American literary naturalism as an aesthetic response to the emergence of American fossil capital. It argues that Fredric Jameson’s understanding of naturalism as a narrative form that expresses class anxieties through an ‘entropic trajectory’ invites a thermodynamic interpretation of American naturalism which foregrounds its relationship to fossil capital’s environmental and socioeconomic transformations. The essay examines how Dreiser’s text naturalises the urbanisation, subjectivities, and class stratification of American fossil capital by framing each as a manifestation of thermodynamic principles. In doing so, this essay proposes a reconsideration of American literary naturalism that highlights the form’s ideological function in the establishment of a fossil-fuelled industrial middle class fixated on productivity.

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“This oil thing touches everything”: World-Literary Crime Fiction and Fossil Capital

Graeme Macdonald a montré que, si toute la littérature-monde peut se lire comme « une littérature du système-monde capitaliste », elle peut également se lire comme une « pétro-littérature », tant « le pétrole et ses constituants sont omniprésents dans la matière même de la vie moderne et dans la façon dont celle-ci s’organise ». Partant de ce constat, cet article entreprend de lire la littérature policière non seulement sous l’angle de la littérature-monde, mais aussi dans la perspective d’une « pétro-littérature ». Par ses images, ses formes et ses représentations du capitalisme fossile, cette littérature permet de comparer plusieurs contextes nationaux différents et d’examiner leur imbrication dans le circuit global de la pétro-modernité. L’article porte en particulier sur Shadow of the Shadow de Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Black Water Rising d’Attica Locke, Murder at Cape Three Points de Kwei Quartey et Nairobi Heat de Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, autant de romans dont les intrigues criminelles se situent sur fond d’extraction pétrolière ou mettent en scène des fortunes issues de l’industrie pétrolière. L’approche comparatiste met ainsi en lumière plusieurs moments clés dans l’histoire du capitalisme fossile. Elle révèle également que les représentations des inégalités géographiques de la pétro-modernité à l’ère du néo-libéralisme reposent sur une tension entre le centre et la périphérie, entre la ville capitaliste comme site de production et les zones frontières semi-périphériques où a lieu le processus d’extraction lui-même.

“The coal beneath the flesh”: Coal Fictions and the Ontology of Fossil Capital

Cet article montre que les fictions littéraires émanant des communautés de mineurs de charbon reflètent de manière frappante l’ontologie du capitalisme lié aux énergies fossiles. Il se concentre sur des textes de fiction écrits dans les années 1930 par des auteurs des marches du pays minier du nord-est de l’Angleterre et du Pays de Galles. Au Royaume-Uni, cette période fut celle d’une crise de l’industrie charbonnière, touchée non seulement par les conséquences de la Grande Dépression mais aussi par les débuts de la transition du charbon au pétrole en tant que principale source d’énergie dans l’économie mondiale. Dans les récits étudiés ici, l’image du corps du mineur (épuisé par le labeur, blessé par les accidents de puits, pénétré par la suie) devient le lieu signifiant de l’inscription locale de ces pressions systémiques mondiales. Mais l’article montre également que le corps du mineur trouve son pendant dialectique dans le corps surmené et exténué de la ménagère enfermée dans la sphère domestique. Cette association duelle des corps offre une expression figurée à la relation entre travail salarié et travail non rémunéré de reproduction sociale, et sert à révéler la violence genrée constitutive de la logique du capitalisme fondé sur les énergies fossiles.

Finance and fossil capital: A community divided?

One of the most obvious, but perhaps academically overlooked, communities engaging in the politics of extraction in Canada is the “business community.” While some attention has been paid to the political influence of the Canadian fossil fuel industry—particularly through the work of the Corporate Mapping Project—less has been paid to the broader network of capitalists, through which a political community might arise. Adopting a Poulantzian view of the state as a social relation, this paper explores the degree to which such a community exists in opposition to aggressive climate policy in the Canadian context. This research focuses on the extent to which fossil and financial capitalists form a cohesive network, capable of sharing perspectives and preferences on climate change and the future of oil and gas extraction, and mobilizing collectively to pursue them. The paper draws on a network analysis of connections (shared ownership, lending, and director interlocks) between and within major fossil-fuel based corporations and major financial corporations in Canada, in order to see whether or not relational ties across the sectors are sparse or dense, and whether they are broadly diffused across companies or concentrated among a few key players. The resulting analysis shows that fossil capital is structurally tied to finance, and the sectors are joined through lending, holdings and directorships, with some financial institutions playing more important structural positions within the network than others. As activists are already targeting financial institutions as part of their ongoing resistance efforts against fossil extraction and financial corporations, the findings from this study suggest continued social movement pressure and we provide some finer grained suggestions for which actors to target. The current conjuncture indicates that policy pathways to zero emissions will in part depend on breaking the load bearing joints in the fossil-finance capital network.

From climate change to economic change? Reflections on ‘feedback’

ABSTRACT ‘Feedback’ from climate change into the economy is critical. But what kind of ‘feedback’? Given capitalist structures and inter-state rivalry in the global economy, there is little in the way of overall planning, and certainly no effective power to act for capitalism ‘in general’. The fossil fuel bloc is deeply embedded in the economy, and is not afraid to press its advantage; the emerging renewable economy is gaining strength, but remains subordinate. Yet intensifying climate change and failing climate policy are creating new political pressures. This article addresses efforts to target fossil fuel corporates through divestment campaigns and argues the main ‘feedback’ to date is socio-political. It tracks how the threat of climate policy translates into ‘transition risk’ for investment strategy, and produces a growing loss of confidence in fossil capital. In this, we argue the climate contradictions of capitalist society have destructive effects but offer transformative potential.

“Standing Up for Canadian Oil & Gas Families”: Tracing Gender, Family, and Work In the Alberta Petro-economy

Drawing on the social media content of four pro-oil Facebook groups, we argue that these ‘subsidized publics’ play an increasingly critical role in facilitating oil and gas companies’ continued accumulation of fossil capital. We adopt O’Shaughnessy and Krogman’s (2011) analytical framework to reveal material-discursive contradictions obscured from view in the pages of these online groups. Through deploying gendered and familial discourses, these subsidized publics celebrate traditional gender roles, present oil as a ubiquitous and benevolent force, and blur the divide between oil and gas workers on the one hand, and absentee transnational employers on the other. In an era of advanced neoliberal petro-capitalism, these quasi-public entities are masking the inherently unequal power relationship that exists between the two. Moreover, in projecting a working-class ethos, we argue that these familial and gendered discourses create a homogenizing narrative, advancing the false notion of a “classless and horizontally beneficial” industry (Gaventa, 1982, p. 58). Our analysis disrupts neoliberal representations of de-gendered extraction and highlights the extent to which gender remains a key axis within resource communities.

Resisting colonial jurisdiction: Defending Wet'suwet'en territory from fossil capital

Resisting colonial jurisdiction: Defending Wet'suwet'en territory from fossil capital

The Extractive Logic of Fossil Capital in H. G. Wells's Scientific Prophecy

The Extractive Logic of Fossil Capital in H. G. Wells's Scientific Prophecy

Neuromancer: The Cultural Logic of Late Fossil Capital?

This paper develops a take on the cultural moment of the long energy crisis (1973–1992) through two popular science-fiction texts. It divides the period in two: ‘oil shock’ and ‘oil glut’. Further periodizing Fredric Jameson’s intervention into the discussion of postmodernism and his successive naming of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capital within this framework of crisis, I ask what might be said about postmodernism in light of this moment of fossil-fuelled turmoil in the global system. My essay has two poles each located in a text from the period: Isaac Asimov’s essay ‘The Nightmare Life without Fuel’ (1983) and William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). From oil shock to oil glut, this paper uses Patricia Yaeger’s and Graeme Macdonald’s work on the concept of an energy unconscious in order to begin elaborating the cultural logical of late fossil capital.

Nuclear Deficit: Why Nuclear Weapons Are Natural, but Scotland Doesn’t Need Nature

This article argues that millennial Scottish culture has been animated in large part by a push to overcome a historiographical compulsion built into the modern British state’s understanding of nature. This understanding of nature became the foundational principle of government during the Financial Revolution and British unification in the 1690s–1710, then was made the subject of a universal history by the Scottish Enlightenment of the later eighteenth century, and has remained in place to be extended by neoliberalism. The article argues more specifically that the British association of progress with dominion over the world as nature demands a temporal abstraction, or automation, reducing the determinability of the present, and that correspondingly this idea of nature ‘softens’ conflict in a way that points to weapons carrying perfectly abstracted violence. Nuclear weapons become an inevitable corollary of the nature of British authority. Against this, twenty-first century Scottish cultures, particularly a growing mainstream surrounding independence or stressing national specificity, have noticeably turned against both nuclear weapons and the understanding of nature these weapons protect. These cultures draw from a 1980s moment in which anti-nuclear action came both to be understood as ‘national’, and to stand in relief to the British liberal firmament. These cultures are ‘activist’ in the literal sense that they tend to interrupt an assumption of the eternal that stands behind both nuclear terror and its capture of nature as dominion over the world. A dual interruption, nuclear and counter-natural, can be read in pro-independence cultural projects including online projects like Bella Caledonia and National Collective, which might be described as undertaking a thorough ‘denaturing’. But if the question of nature as resources for dominion has been a topic for debate in the environmental humanities, little attention has been paid to this specifically British ‘worlding’ of nature, or to how later constitutional pressures on the UK also mean pressures on this worlding. Andreas Malm’s Fossil Capital (2016), for example, a powerful account of the automation of production in the British industrial revolution, might be related to the automation of ideas of progress pressed during the Scottish Enlightenment, and entrenching a dualism of owning subject and nature as object-world that would drive extraction in empire. Finally, this article suggests that this dualism, and the nature holding it in place, have also been a major target of the ‘wilderness encounters’ that form a large sub-genre in twenty-first century Scottish writing. Such ‘denaturing’ encounters can be read in writers like Alec Finlay, Linda Cracknell, Thomas A. Clark, and Gerry Loose, often disrupting the subject standing over nature, and sometimes explicitly linking this to a disruption of nuclear realism.

Fossil capitalism, climate capitalism, energy democracy: the struggle for hegemony in an era of climate crisis

With the highest per capita carbon emissions among the G20, Canada presents the interesting case of a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state. In these circumstances, a regime of obstruction, with a distinctive political-economic architecture, has taken shape. This regime is constituted through modalities of power that protect revenue streams issuing from carbon extraction, processing and transport while bolstering popular support for an accumulation strategy in which fossil capital figures as a leading fraction. It incorporates a panoply of hegemonic practices at different scales, reaching into civil and political society, and into Indigenous communities whose land claims and worldviews challenge state mandated property rights. This article first highlights findings from a seven-year collaborative investigation of the modalities through which fossil capital’s economic and political-cultural power is exercised at different scales; then outlines how the passive-revolutionary project of ‘climate capitalism’ is taking shape in the Canadian context as a response to climate crisis; and finally considers how a project of energy democracy might hold the potential to catalyze the formation of an alternative historical bloc.

Destroy what destroys the planet: Steering creative destruction in the dual crisis

In the contemporary dual crisis, economic crisis policies cannot be dealt with in isolation from the rampant and acute ecological crisis – and vice versa. In this article, we challenge the hegemonic positions in purported attempts to solve the crises so far: in the economic realm, the Keynesian episode of 2008–2009 as well as austerity policies, and with regard to the ecological crisis, ecological modernization and green economy. Instead, we will propose that both the economic and the climate crises can be ‘solved’ through the destruction of a particular kind of capital, that is, fossil capital. Given that capital destruction in general seems to be an essential part of overcoming capitalist crises historically and given the urgent need to demolish large parts of the fossil infrastructure in order to avert climate change, we discuss in this article the possibilities to politically steer the processes of creative destruction so that crises policies benefit the economy and the environment to highest possible extent.