Session Organizer

Williams CARROLL
University of Victoria

This session explored the intersections between (a) networks, structures and practices of capitalist class power (and resistance to it), as centred in large corporations; (b) the political economy of fossil capital as a way of life that has reached global scale; and (c) the accelerating climate crisis, whose urgency seems to be matched by its intractability at least within the strictures of capitalism itself.

In ‘Extreme Extractivism and the Fossil Fuel Corporate Elite in Eastern Canada’ JP Sapinski and Darin Brooks used a power structure approach to draw linkages between fossil capital corporations based in eastern Canada and the broader Canadian and global corporate elite, to map the structure of the fossil fuel industry at the national and transnational levels. They also traced corporate ownership relations to ascertain the constellation of financial interests in the sector within and outside of Canada. Finally, they examined how extreme carbon extractivist projects turn into flashpoints of contention where local communities mobilize to defend the land, air and water on which they depend, and join together to create a broad movement of resistance across the country and the world.

In ‘Environmental Meaning of the Financial Turn: A Cross-National Study of the Finance-Economy-Environment Nexus’ Patrick Greiner, Julius McGee and Ethan Gibbons explored the ramifications of financialization for the environment-economy relationship, in a series of fixed effects regression analyses for 172 nations between 1960 and 2014. They found that although financialization decouples GDP per capita from CO2 emissions per capita, no such decoupling occurs when economic activity attributable to manufacture is the criterion variable. Given the absolute rise in manufacturing activity during this period, these findings suggest that the ongoing pressure that economic growth places on the environment is not mitigated by financialization.

In ‘Regime of Obstruction: Fossil Capital and the Construction of Hegemony in a Northern Petro-State’ William K. Carroll reported on an interdisciplinary study of a regime of obstruction within contemporary Canada. Rooted in the political economy of fossil capitalism, and conjoined to a panoply of hegemonic practices that reach into civil and political society, the regime is driven by the quest for profit through the carbon extraction that continues to fuel capital accumulation globally. It combines several modalities of power – economic, political and cultural – operating at different scales to form an historical bloc supporting business-as-usual. The paper concluded with a brief consideration of prospects for crafting an alternative historical bloc around ‘energy democracy’, as a socially just escape route from impending climate catastrophe.

In ‘Electric Car, the Social Production of a Green Innovation’ Rodrigo Wolffenbuttel traced the innovation networks around three experiences of electric car implementation in Brazil: one relating to technological development, another dedicated to urban car-sharing and a third focused on monitoring the impacts of electric cars on the energy distribution system. The study was attuned to both the facilitation of technological innovation and the regulation of relevant markets. Among the interesting findings was the observation that these networks were mobilized by outsiders to the established automobile industry in Brazil.

Although there was little time for discussion after these presentations, the session was successful in taking up Corporate Power, Fossil Capital and Climate Crisis from a number of angles.