Fossil Fuels, Capitalism and Green Capitalism

In the previous chapters, I have introduced the idea that capitalism is essentially dependent on the abilities of natural resources, and specifically that of fossil fuels. Let us look into this relationship a bit

34 more in-depth. Earlier in this thesis, I have illustrated how Nancy Fraser describes that capitalism has ingrained a vision of separation between the non-human natural sphere and the human sphere in our societies. A telling example of capitalism’s relation to the ‘natural’ sphere is the way in which fossil fuels have taken up such an important space within the system. Fossil fuels are a highly effective tool in capitalist processes, because of its high ‘Energy Return on Energy Input’, meaning that only a small amount of energy needs to be invested in order to receive much greater amounts of energy in return (Altaver 2007: 39). There are three main reasons for capitalism’s dependency on the use of fossil fuels, namely (1) that fossil fuels allowed for the transition from pre-capitalist systems to capitalist ones, (2) fossil fuels can be used at any and all times, and (3) it can be used flexibly in production, consumption and production – all three factors hold necessary links to the workings of capitalism. Renewable and sustainable forms of energy have been proven to lack such capacities, since they do not take up this important historical space in the capitalist system, are highly reliant on outside factors, such as weather patterns, for their energy returns, and cannot be used in the flexible ways that the properties of fossil fuels have allowed it to do. It can thus be argued that capitalism relies on fossil energy, because of “the congruence of its (fossil fuel) physical properties with the socioeconomic and political logics of capitalist development” (Altaver 2007: 41). Andreas Malm has even gone so far to argue that the use of fossil fuels can be seen as the material form of capitalism, since fossil fuels and the technologies they power are productive forces imbedded in certain property relations (Malm 2021: 55-56).

Following the lines of argumentation as provided by Altaver and Malm above, I will argue that fossil fuels are a necessary factor of the capitalism we have come to know in the current world, since they have allowed necessary processes within the capitalist system to take place in the past, and continue to do so today. Making the transition to a capitalist social order has been done through the input of fossil fuels, because the local availability of natural resources did not matter anymore, since it would cost relatively little to transport energy resources all around the globe. This allowed for increased capital investments, as well as relocating production facilities all around the globe. With fossil fuels’ attribute that they can be used at any time of the day, any time of the year, it allows for production processes to be organised in such a way that it is able to move beyond the biological and natural rhythms or humans and nature. Finally, the fact that fossil fuels can be used in different processes, such as production, consumption and production – all three of which are very much necessary to the workings of a capitalist system – further solidifies fossil fuel’s necessary position in our current system.

Unfortunately, fossil fuels and the extraction, production and use thereof have proven to be destructive forces for our environment, depleting the earth of its natural resources, polluting the air that we all need to breath, and sometimes even directly damaging ecosystems by exposing them to oil

35 leaks. Green and renewable energy sources that are currently available to do not have the same advantages as fossil fuels when it comes to efficiency and flexibility, since systems of solar-, wind- and hydraulic energy all depend on changeable variables related to weather patterns. Even if technologies that do safeguard the continuity of energy production from green energy sources were to become readily available on a large scale in the future, I have tried to point out in the previous chapters that it is of the highest necessity that action is to be taken right now. Waiting on technologies that may or may not be available in the future is not a premise one should want to build their framework for securing environmental sustainability around.

Following the line of argumentation provided by Huber (2008: 113), I believe that fossil fuels power the forces and relations within a capitalist system in an internal matter. Rather than externally posing barriers or setting conditions, the focus on fossil fuels within a capitalist system locates nature and natural resources as an internal and necessary basis for the capitalist mode of production, instead of viewing nature as an external factor. As explained above, fossil fuels allow for a high degree of efficiency and flexibility within capitalist processes. Here is where a contradiction comes in: with this high degree of productivity comes “a concentrated production of industrial waste and pollution, a vast increase in material and energy throughput, and the degradation of the most seemingly natural processes – climate, soil fertility, and hydrological cycles” (Huber 2008: 113). The properties of fossil fuel consumptions that make it fit for a central place in the capitalist system are also the properties that are so detrimental and destructive for the environment.

The main focus of my thesis is green capitalism, not just ‘regular’ capitalism. Here is where the problem with a capitalist system relying on fossil fuels comes in. As mentioned in the previous chapter, green capitalism is a system that retains some properties of the current capitalist system, but it differs on the factor that it seeks for economic growth to be in harmony with the available natural resources of our earth. This means, among other factors, that fossil fuels will have to be replaced with clean and renewable energy sources. If one is to accept the premise that capitalism indeed depends on the unique characteristics of fossil fuels, in that coal, gas and oil allow for constant growth and accumulation of capital, capitalist characteristics cannot be easily transferred to a system based on renewable energy sources (Bosch and Schmidt 2019: 270-271). Renewable energy sources are still limited in their total power generating capacity when compared to fossil fuels, thus in order for environmental sustainability to be secured, “the world’s aggregate energy consumption will actually have to be reduced” (Wallis 2009: 37). My argument is that it would be very hard to transition into a state of environmental sustainability if the underlying processes of capitalism, that have depended heavily on the properties of fossil fuels are not changed. The growth imperative, which I believe to be the most important of such processes, will be discussed in the next section.

36 In short, I have tried to highlight capitalism’s peculiar relationship with fossil fuels and sought to illustrate that it can be described as a sort of dependence. I have also discussed the limited properties of renewable energy sources that are available to us today, and tried to make the point that they cannot just take over the role of their fossil counterparts in a green capitalist framework. As mentioned above, making use of renewable based energy on a global scale would mean that the overall energy consumption is to be reduced, which would be a problem when taking into account the process of my next section, namely that of the growth imperative of green capitalism.