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Planetary challenges:
The fossil fuel industry, climate change and the disruption of the world
Christopher Wright
The University of Sydney Business School
The University of Sydney
NSW, 2006
AUSTRALIA
Daniel Nyberg
The University of Newcastle Business School
The University of Newcastle
NSW, 2308
AUSTRALIA
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Introduction
The extraction and combustion of coal, oil and gas has defined the last two centuries of global
industrial development and the growth of modern corporate capitalism (Malm, 2016; Wright
and Nyberg, 2015). Fossil fuel-based energy not only underpinned the Industrial Revolution of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but unleashed the massive expansion of global
production and consumption since the Second World War; the so-called ‘Great Acceleration’
(Steffen, et al., 2015). We now live in a new geological epoch; the Anthropocene, in which
catastrophic climate disruptions may well presage the end of organised global society (IPCC,
2018; New, et al., 2011). However, this is also an era in which communities and civil society
are increasingly mobilising in response to these existential threats. While the fossil fuel
industry, made up of some of the largest and most powerful corporations, has enjoyed over a
century of growth and steady profitability, it now faces perhaps its most fundamental challenge;
a growing social recognition that its business model threatens the very basis of life on this
planet.
In this chapter, we explore the role of the global fossil fuel industry and its impact upon
the natural environment. We outline how the industry, broadly defined, has maintained its
economic dominance through a rapacious extractivism and the enrolment of national
governments as allies in the industry’s expansion (Klein, 2014). However, over the past forty
years, the political recognition of climate change as a pressing policy issue has challenged the
industry’s position. Engaging with a neo-Gramscian perspective on corporate political activity
(Levy and Egan, 2003), we outline how major fossil fuel corporations and their industry
associations have over time responded to the threat of carbon regulation through corporate
political activities aimed at minimising and delaying regulatory risks. We conclude the chapter
by exploring how growing climate activism, technological innovation, and market and
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regulatory pressures for decarbonization might impact the future of this most critical industry
in an increasingly climate disrupted world.
Fossil fuels as the lifeblood of capitalism
The fossil fuels of coal, oil and gas have underpinned the extraordinary expansion of economic
and social relations that have occurred across the world over the last two hundred years. Indeed,
such is the pervasive impact of fossil fuels across energy, resource extraction, manufacturing,
transport, agriculture and food production, that it is hard to imagine how our societies could be
organised differently. Our current, global market economy is fundamentally defined by fossil
fuels.
The origins of this date back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in
the late eighteenth century. It was during this period that new technologies set in train a path
of industrial development founded on what Malm (2016) calls ‘fossil capital’. The key
innovation here was the coal-fired steam engine, developed by the Scottish engineer James
Watt, and seen by many as ‘the most important invention in the creation of the modern world’
(Freese, 2004: 44). While the coal-fired steam engine was similar in energy output to the
existing waterwheels that dominated British cotton textile production at that time, the major
advantages the new technology offered were greater consistency of power output (not subject
to the vagaries of river flow), spatial independence (in that textile factories could now be
located away from major water courses), and the ability of industrialists to relocate to areas
where cheaper, more plentiful labour was available (Klein, 2014; Malm, 2016).
Indeed, as Malm (2016) cogently argues, the growing adoption of coal-fired steam
power was not only a source of energy production but also a projection of growing social and
economic power for an emerging capitalist class. Coal-fired steam engines opened up a period
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of rapid industrialisation across manufacturing and helped to expand global markets through
the transformation of transport (through, for example, the development of railways and steam
shipping). As Klein (2014) notes, no longer were industrialists tied to a specific geographic
location, nor were shipping lines and navies limited by the direction of the wind. Coal-fired
steam engines now freed up capitalist endeavour not only facilitating industrialization but also
access to new global sources of materials, labour and markets. The fossil fuel energy of coal
now reinforced the expansion of the British Empire and, during the later nineteenth century,
the economic development of other imperial powers.
With the expansion of the railway, steel and chemical industries during the second
Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, oil emerged as
another key fossil fuel in the transformation of transportation as well as an input into the
chemical industry. As Mitchell (2013) demonstrates, the emergence of large oil companies in
the US and Britain were critically tied to the ambitions of imperial expansion and
transformations in the nature of capitalism. Prior to the First World War, oil production was
primarily centred in the US, Russia and Burma, however it was the discovery of very large
reserves of oil in the Middle East that had significant global implications. For instance, the
opening up of oil reserves in Persia and Mesopotamia (now Iran and Iraq), followed the
political negotiations of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later renamed British Petroleum) and
its ability to convince the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill to repower the British
Navy on fuel oil rather than coal. The centrality of oil to economic expansion was reinforced
in the post-war settlement under the League of Nations which, with the fall of the Ottoman
Empire, accorded much of the Middle East as protectorates of the Western powers and secured
the central role of the major oil companies (Mitchell, 2013).
In the post Second World War decades, the power of the fossil fuel industry grew
dramatically given post-war economic expansion, the emergence in the US of consumer
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lifestyles requiring ever-increasing quantities of energy (e.g. the expansion of the automobile
industry), and the concentration of a cartel controlling the world’s oil supply. Oil became the
primary fuel for the world’s transportation sector and the so-called ‘Seven Sisters’ (British
Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New
Jersey, Standard Oil of New York and Texaco), which dominated the world oil industry up to
the mid-1970s, became the most wealthy and powerful companies in the world. Moreover, they
skilfully used their position at the centre of global energy supply to leverage nation state
support for their continued growth and expansion. In the Middle East, the oil companies
emphasised their strategic role in maintaining energy supplies in the growing Cold War
tensions between the West and the Soviet Union (Mitchell, 2013). As part of this geopolitical
strategy, the oil companies contributed closely to US and UK foreign policy initiatives which
undermined local nationalist attempts to gain greater control over oil reserves and the
maintenance of Western-friendly dictators and puppet regimes (Abrahamian, 2001). Thus, the
long history of post-war conflicts and wars across the Middle East since the late 1940s has
derived in large part from the battle by Western nations to ensure access to plentiful and cheap
oil reserves.
In recent decades, the globalization of economic activity and continued economic
growth have relied upon ever-increasing consumption of the world’s fossil fuel reserves (see
Figure 1). The emergence of Asian economic powerhouses such as Japan, South Korea and,
most recently China and India, have broadened the scale of fossil fuel consumption. Integrated
global distribution networks of pipelines, tankers, refineries, ports and rail systems have further
reinforced fossil fuel investments and path dependency. In many countries, the importance of
fossil fuel energy has led to the creation of state-owned and run fossil fuel corporations such
as Statoil (now Equinor) in Norway, Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia, Sinopec in China, Pemex
in Mexico, Gazprom in Russia, and Petrobras in Brazil (Victor, et al., 2012). Moreover, given
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the centrality of fossil fuel energy to economic growth, national governments have played a
central role in assisting the expansion of coal, oil and gas development through public financing
of infrastructure, financial subsidies, discounted royalties and favourable tax regimes; a system
critics have labelled ‘fossil fuel welfare’ (Lenferna, 2019). Fossil fuel subsidies alone are
estimated at around US$330 billion dollars per annum globally (Coady, et al., 2017).
Figure1. Global fossil fuel consumption, 1965-2018
Source: BP. (2019) BP Statistical Review of World Energy. London: BP.
Today, fossil fuel enterprises dominate the lists of the largest and most powerful
companies in the world (see Table 1), with China, the US, the EU, India, Russia and Japan the
world’s largest consumers of fossil fuel energy (Table 2). The world’s hunger for fossil fuel
energy has also led to the development of new non-conventional reserves such as tar sands, the
-
2000.0
4000.0
6000.0
8000.0
10000.0
12000.0
1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016
Bil
lion
s of
tonn
es o
f oi
l equ
ival
ent
Oil Consumption Gas Consumption Coal Consumption
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hydraulic fracturing of shale and coal-seam gas beds (‘fracking’), new ‘mega’ coal mines, and
deep-water and Arctic oil drilling (Kitchen, 2014). For instance, the rapid uptake of gas
fracking has been argued to have not only resulted in a massive increase in US domestic gas
and oil production but also an energy shift away from coal-fired power generation which
advocates argue represents a global energy revolution (Gold, 2014).
Table 1. Ten largest global corporations by revenue, 2017
Company Revenues (US$bill)
Walmart $514.41
Sinopec Group $414.65
Royal Dutch Shell $396.56
China National Petroleum $392.98
State Grid $387.06
Saudi Aramco $355.91
BP $303.74
Exxon Mobil $290.21
Volkswagen $278.34
Toyota Motor $272.61
Source: Fortune. (2019) 'Fortune Global 500', Fortune, 22 July, https://fortune.com/global500/2019/.
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Table 2. Leading consumers of fossil fuels, 2018
Region Coal consumption
(Mtoe)
Global share
Oil consumption
(Mtoe)
Global share
Gas consumption
(Mtoe)
Global share
Total fossil fuel
consumption (Mtoe)
Global share
China 1906.7 50.6% 641.2 13.8% 243.3 7.4% 2791.2 24%
US 317 8.4% 919.7 19.7% 702.6 21.2% 1939.3 17%
EU 222.4 5.9% 643.9 13.8% 393.7 11.9% 1260 11%
India 452.2 12% 239.1 5.1% 49.9 1.5% 741.2 6%
Russia 88 2.3% 152.3 3.3% 390.8 11.8% 631.1 5%
Japan 117.5 3.1% 182.4 3.9% 99.5 3% 399.4 3%
Source: BP. (2019) BP Statistical Review of World Energy. London: BP.
Planetary consequences: Fossil fuel energy and the climate crisis
However, while fossil fuel energy has provided the basis for the expansion of global capitalism,
this also incurred an existential environmental cost. The extraction and combustion of coal, oil
and gas as energy sources has over the last two centuries resulted in the release of huge
quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) (principally carbon dioxide - CO2 and methane - CH4)
(see Figure 3), resulting in an unprecedented human perturbation to the Earth’s carbon cycle
and energy balance (Archer and Rahmstorf, 2010; Mann and Kump, 2015). From a pre-
industrial level of about 280 parts per million (ppm), the combustion of fossil fuels and the
diminution of forests and other carbon sinks, has led to a rapid increase in the atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide. In 2018, atmospheric CO2 concentrations exceeded 410ppm,
a level not seen on this planet for several million years (Mooney, 2018). Moreover, quantitative
research has found that close to two-thirds of cumulative worldwide emissions of industrial
GHGs between 1751 and 2010 are the result of just 90 ‘carbon major entities’ (large fossil fuel
corporations and state-owned entities) with half of these emissions released since 1986 (Heede,
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2014). According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report
(2018), the Earth has already warmed on average by 1o Celsius above pre-industrial levels and
will continue to warm in the future as GHG emissions continue to increase. Moreover, positive
feedback effects will accelerate the process, most notably through increasing methane
emissions from melting tundra and the reduced albedo of shrinking Arctic ice (IPCC, 2014;
The World Bank, 2014).
Figure 3. Global fossil fuel CO2 emissions, 1850-2014
Source: Boden, T.A., Marland, G. and Andres, R.J. (2017) Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Oak Ridge: TN: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy.
Projections of future climate change suggest that on a ‘business as usual’ trajectory, the
average global temperature will increase by as much as 3-5o Celsius this century; a level of
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
10000
1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
mill
ion
met
ric
tons
of
C
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warming some scientists argue would be incompatible with continued organized human
existence (New, et al., 2011). Key impacts of climate disruption will include: more intense and
frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, droughts and wildfires (National
Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2016); the transformation of ecosystems
and widespread species extinction (Kolbert, 2014); crop failures and threats to food supplies
(IPCC, 2019); sea-level rise of as much a metre or more rendering cities and coastal regions
uninhabitable (Hansen, et al., 2016), the mobility of large volumes of people from climate-
threatened regions (Berchin, et al., 2017); and climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ leading
to heightened geopolitical conflict and wars (CNA Military Advisory Board, 2014; Dyer,
2010).
Political responses to this emerging climate crisis have played out in both national and
global policy arenas. While climate science dates back over two centuries, the political
recognition of the issue in the late-1980s led to international negotiations for the reduction of
carbon emissions and increasing pressure on the fossil fuel industry. With the formation of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and the meeting of world leaders
in Rio de Janeiro at the ‘First Earth Summit’ in 1992, a process of on-going international
negotiations over climate change and carbon emissions mitigation was instituted (Andresen
and Agrawala, 2002; Weart, 2011). However, reducing carbon emissions would require
government regulation of fossil fuel use. Thus, a classic ‘tragedy of the commons’ dilemma
was revealed: economic development based on fossil fuel use benefited individual countries
and industries in the short term at the cost of long-term global environmental destruction. The
political implications of climate change also laid bare schisms between the ‘developed’
economies of the global North and the ‘developing’ nations of the South. The climate crisis
was an outcome of historical emissions that had facilitated the developed world’s economic
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wealth, while many developing economies had yet to enjoy these economic gains and would
be most exposed to future climate change impacts.
In the ensuing thirty years, despite a firming of scientific findings suggesting
increasingly dire environmental, social and economic impacts, and regular global meetings of
national governments to reduce carbon emissions, global agreement on a meaningful response
to the climate crisis has remained elusive (Bulkeley and Newell, 2015). Divisions over
decarbonization have continued to this day, with developing economies such as China and
India, now amongst the world’s largest carbon emitters, arguing they should not be penalised
in their drive for economic development. Indeed, despite the landmark 2015 Paris climate
agreement in which 195 signatory nations agreed to limit global warming to no more than 2o
Celsius, tangible measures to implement such ambitions remain illusory (Spash, 2016; van
Renssen, 2018). While a range of factors have underpinned the failure of humanity to confront
the existential threat of climate disruption, a key factor has been the way in which the fossil
fuel industry has been able to mobilise politically on both the national and international levels
to delay the transition to a low carbon economy; a topic to which we now turn.
Defending hegemony: The political economy of fossil fuel dominance
The growing social realisation of the magnitude of human-induced climate disruption
represented an existential threat to the business model of the fossil fuel industry. Climate
science presented a stark choice. To avoid dangerous levels of climate change—in excess of
1.5-2o Celsius warming—would require dramatic decarbonization of the world’s energy,
transport, manufacturing and agricultural and food production industries. This would need to
occur at a pace and scale previously unseen in history, what some have characterised as
requiring a globally co-ordinated emergency wartime response (Delina and Diesendorf, 2013).
However, given the centrality of fossil fuel energy to the expansion of global capitalism, the
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political power of the fossil fuel industry was significant, institutionalised through decades of
collaboration between the industry and political leaders (Coll, 2012; Mitchell, 2013). Indeed,
the embedded connections between the fossil fuel industry and political power represented a
dominant order so central that challenges to its role have for decades been considered fanciful.
In this respect, the industry can be seen at the heart of a hegemonic coalition of political
and economic power that is perhaps unassailable even in the face of the existential threat that
it poses to the future of human civilization. As Levy and Egan (2003) have argued, the
continued dominance of the fossil fuel industry has been based upon its capacity to defend its
position within the global economy. Harking back to Gramsci’s (1971) theorisation of
‘hegemony’, they argue that the fossil fuel industry was involved in the creation of a ‘historic
bloc’ consisting of industry associations, related industries (e.g. automobile and chemical
manufacturers), politicians and media, which reinforced the perceived ‘reality’ of continued
fossil fuel expansion irrespective of the implications of climate science.
For instance, aware of the threat climate change posed to their business model, the fossil
fuel industry quickly organised in its efforts to limit and/or delay carbon regulation through a
coordinated strategy of corporate political activity. Following growing political attention to the
issue in the late 1980s and the formation of the IPCC, major US corporations from the fossil
fuel, energy and manufacturing sectors combined during the early 1990s to form the Global
Climate Coalition (GCC) to push back against proposals for the regulation of carbon emissions
(Levy and Egan, 1998). Wider corporate resistance during this period included financial
contributions to political parties, funding for major advertising campaigns and appeals to
broader conservative ideological values (Beder, 2011; Levy and Egan, 1998; 2003; Oreskes
and Conway, 2010). Fossil fuel interests also played a key role in swaying conservative
politicians against carbon regulation, stressing ‘uncertainty’ and ‘doubt’ over the findings of
climate scientists, highlighting the economic costs of cutting emissions; promoting the views
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of climate ‘sceptics’ in government representations, media and publications; and sponsoring
ersatz environmental organisations (Dunlap and McCright, 2011; Mooney, 2005a; Oreskes and
Conway, 2010). The impact of these combined efforts was profound. Vehement opposition to
any form of emissions reductions hobbled US government attempts to respond to climate
change throughout the 1990s, and with the US determinedly rebuffing demands for global
controls, international climate negotiations were also negatively affected (McCright and
Dunlap, 2003).
A range of actors contributed to the formation of this politically organized ‘climate-
change denial machine’ (Dunlap and McCright, 2011: 147). These included: major fossil fuel
corporations (e.g. ExxonMobil, Peabody Coal, Koch Industries and the Western Fuels
Association); industry groups (e.g. the American Petroleum Institute, US Chamber of
Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers); conservative industry-funded
foundations (e.g. the Koch and Scaife Foundations); conservative think-tanks (e.g. the
American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute and the Heritage
Foundation); and front groups and so-called ‘astroturf’ organisations (e.g. the Global Climate
Coalition, the Cooler Heads Coalition, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works).
Through interaction with Republican politicians and right-wing media (most notably Fox
News), these groups created an echo chamber of denial, transforming policy debate on climate
change in the US from a bipartisan issue to a source of clear partisan divide (Brulle, 2014;
Dunlap and McCright, 2011).
One company that highlighted the critical role of the fossil fuel industry in opposing
engagement over climate change was ExxonMobil. At that time the world’s largest and most
profitable oil company, ExxonMobil was particularly active in its opposition to any proposals
for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. A highly conservative company, it was noticeably
partisan in its political activity, disproportionately funding conservative Republican politicians
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over rival Democrats for much of its history: during the 2010 election cycle around 90 per cent
of its political funding went to Republicans. Exxon was a founding member of the GCC and
played a leading role in funding organized climate denial, questioning climate science and
stressing the economic costs of any attempt to reduce fossil fuel use (Brulle, 2014; Mooney,
2005b). For instance, US President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto
Protocol in 2001, resulted in part from pressure from ExxonMobil. In briefing papers the US
administration thanked ExxonMobil executives for the company’s ‘active involvement’ in
helping to shape the government’s climate change policy (Vidal, 2005).
However, perhaps even more important to the political mobilization of the fossil fuel
sector’s opposition to carbon regulation over the last three decades has been the largest private
company in the US, Koch Industries (Mayer, 2016). Led by brothers Charles and David Koch,
Koch Industries ranked among the top 15 polluters in the US (PERI, 2013), and had a clear
material interest in opposing any form of climate or environmental regulation. Fiercely
politically conservative, Koch Industries founded a range of right-wing thinktanks such as the
libertarian Cato Institute and was the major funder behind private foundations which funnelled
fossil fuel donations to the broader climate denial movement (Brulle, 2014). With the
restrictions on corporate electoral funding struck down by the Supreme Court in the 2010
Citizens United verdict, Koch-affiliated networks lavished more than $400 million on
promoting conservative political candidates during the 2012 presidential election with a clear
focus on opposing any form of climate policy (Dickinson, 2014). Subsequently, Koch
foundations were key funders of the emerging Tea Party movement and the reshaping of the
Republican Party towards explicit rejection of any form of carbon regulation (Dunlap, et al.,
2016).
Beyond reshaping the climate policy agenda via lobbying and campaign donations,
fossil fuel corporations also engaged in public relations and advertising campaigns to shift
15
public sentiment on the issue. As Orsekes and Conway (2010) have revealed, this public
relations strategy relied upon the same approach developed by the tobacco industry decades
earlier, specifically promoting doubt about peer-reviewed science. Public messaging also
sought to promote the benefits of fossil fuel energy to communities and economic development.
For instance, US coal giant Peabody Energy’s ‘Advanced Energy for Life’ campaign
(developed by leading New York public relations firm Burson-Marsteller) proclaimed the
benefits of what the company termed ‘clean coal’ in providing energy for the poorest citizens
on Earth and encouraged the public to become involved with this humanitarian issue (Peabody
Energy, 2013; Sheppard, 2014). Similarly, in Canada, energy companies promoting the
exploitation of the Alberta tar sands, engaged in an extensive public relations campaign around
what they termed ‘ethical oil’ which promoted Canada’s liberal democratic political system as
a more morally worthy context for fossil fuel extraction. As one such advertisement
proclaimed:
Countries that produce Ethical Oil protect the rights of women, workers,
indigenous peoples and other minorities, including gays and lesbians. Conflict Oil
regimes, by contrast, oppress their citizens and operate in secret, with no
accountability to voters, the press or independent judiciaries. Some Conflict Oil
regimes even support terrorism. (Hickman, 2011)
Indeed, not all fossil fuel companies engaged in an explicit rejection of climate change,
and in Europe, oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum (BP) publicly
acknowledged the issue of climate change as a pressing social issue. Drawing on the broader
concept of ‘corporate environmentalism’ in which businesses promote their role in providing
benefits for both their shareholders and the environment (Jermier, et al., 2006), the European
oil majors presented a more climate-friendly face by accepting the importance of climate
16
change but also highlighting how they were working on ‘solutions’ through investments in
renewable energy technologies, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and improvements in energy
efficiency (Boon, 2019; Kolk and Levy, 2001; Levy and Egan, 2003).
One of the best examples of this approach occurred in 2000, when oil multinational, BP
rebranded itself ‘bp – beyond petroleum’ (Beder, 2002). Conscious of growing public concern
about the company’s environmental impact, John Browne, the CEO at the time, sought to
reinvent BP as not just a fossil fuel producer but an environmentally aware energy company
intent on exploring renewable technologies such as solar power. BP famously replaced its logo
with a stylised green, yellow and white sunburst based on Helios, the ancient Greek sun god
(BP, 2014). BP’s reinvention followed a ‘split’ among the global oil majors in the late 1990s,
when BP – and later Shell – publicly acknowledged the problem of man-made climate change
and resigned from the conservative industry group, the GCC (Pulver, 2007). While some
observers argued this represented a fundamental corporate reorientation regarding the risks of
the climate crisis, others highlighted BP and Shell’s greater exposure to European regulation
and a socio-cultural context in which climate change was attracting mounting concern (Kolk
and Levy, 2001; Levy and Kolk, 2002).
However, despite a marketing push estimated to have cost around $600 million, as well
as investment in solar power of a further several hundred million, BP soon reverted to a
‘business as usual’ ethos. Following Browne’s departure as CEO in 2007, the company
disbanded its renewable energy divisions and refocused on oil exploration and production
(Macalister, 2009). Allegations of ‘greenwashing’ were boosted when, in 2010, BP’s
Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 employees and causing
the largest known oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry – an unfolding tragedy that
was played out for months on prime-time television (Hoffman and Devereaux Jennings, 2011).
More recently, both BP and Shell have returned to portraying a ‘greener’ public image in their
17
public relations and marketing emphasising reduced operational emissions and commitments
to climate science (Ferns and Amaeshi, 2019; Ferns, et al., 2017). Critics point out however,
that neither company will commit to reducing the Scope 3 carbon emissions that result from
their products and at annual general meetings both companies (in line with other fossil fuel
majors like ExxonMobil) foresee continued growth in demand for fossil fuels for decades
(Chapman, 2017).
During the last twenty years, corporate environmentalism became a mainstream
business discourse, evident in the creation of specialist sustainability functions, eco-efficiency
programs, public sustainability reporting and rankings (e.g. the Carbon Disclosure Project, the
Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Global Reporting Initiative) (Knox-Hayes and Levy,
2011; Wright and Nyberg, 2015). Politically, corporate environmentalism emphasised the
benefits of business self-regulation and market-based approaches (such as carbon pricing and
emissions trading) as the most efficient response to climate change, with governments and
international bodies relegated to providing supportive legal and administrative structures for
new markets (Böhm, et al., 2012; Wright and Nyberg, 2015). As critics noted, while promoting
an active response to the climate crisis, in reality the strategy provided ‘euphemism for
pursuing business as usual’ (Boon, 2019: 114).
Indeed, while many large companies (including many of the fossil fuel majors) made
commitments to climate action and reducing their impact upon the environment, research
suggests these commitments often degenerated over time under the pressure to maintain short-
term shareholder returns and limit costs (Wright and Nyberg, 2017). For instance, giant US
conglomerate General Electric (GE) became subject to significant criticism when its much
vaunted ‘ecomagination’ initiative (originally framed as a solution to climate change) moved
from the development of ‘green’ technologies to improving the efficiency of tar sands
processing and gas fracking. While justified by GE as part of its desire to make ‘dirty forms of
18
energy cleaner’, ‘green business’ writer Andrew Winston (2014) noted such schemes only
reinforced fossil fuel reliance, ‘move the world in the wrong direction on carbon and suck up
intellectual and fiscal capital that we could allocate differently’. GE’s descent into compromise
paralleled the broader dilemma of corporate environmentalism: the conceit that the developed
world could have ceaseless economic growth and profitability while also reining in escalating
carbon emissions.
Challenging the fossil fuel fetish?
However, despite the fossil fuel industry’s dominance in global energy production, in the last
decade, growing social awareness of the magnitude of the climate crisis has spurred a
worldwide movement of climate mobilization which has gained increasing political traction.
As environmentalist Bill McKibben (2012) has argued, the mathematics of the climate crisis
are simple. Humanity has a set ‘carbon budget’ if global warming is not to exceed 2o Celsius;
we have already burned two thirds of this budget, and the remainder is exceeded more than
fivefold by remaining reserves of fossil fuel; therefore around 80 per cent of known fossil fuel
resources must ‘stay in the ground’ – a proposition that raises fundamental moral and economic
arguments. Climate mobilisation has included a diverse range of non-government organisations
(NGOs), grassroots activists, local communities, religious institutions, charities and indigenous
communities which have promoted the need for radical reductions in carbon emissions by
challenging the fossil fuel industry’s social and economic legitimacy (Dietz and Garrelts,
2014).
One key form of action has been the promotion of direct resistance and civil
disobedience to halt the expansion of new fossil fuel developments. Prominent examples have
included NGOs such as Greenpeace, spearheading protest campaigns against oil extraction in
the Arctic (Vidal, 2014) and UK group Plane Stupid occupying London’s Heathrow Airport to
19
condemn the climate impact of an ever-growing airline industry (Topham, 2016). More
generally, local and indigenous communities have led protests and occupations fighting oil
extraction in the Amazon, opposing proposals for new ‘mega’ coal mines in Australia, resisting
the expansion of gas fracking in Europe, and rejecting the construction of oil pipelines in the
US and Canada. As Klein (2014: 335) notes:
More and more these communities are simply saying ‘No’. No to the pipeline. No
to Arctic drilling. No to the coal and oil trains. No to the heavy hauls. No to the
export terminal. No to fracking. And not just ‘not in my backyard’ but, as the French
anti-fracking activists say, ni ici, ni ailleurs – neither here nor elsewhere. In other
words: no new carbon frontiers.
Most recently, citizen-based climate mobilization has been highlighted by the
emergence of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, which have initiated mass protests of civil
disobedience in major cities around the world (Blackall, 2019), and a global wave of school
climate strikes initiated by the popular Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg
(Watts, 2019). Growing social awareness of the relationship between fossil fuel use and a
rapidly worsening climate crisis has also generated citizen movements opposed to high-carbon
activities such as aviation, symbolised in terms such as ‘flygskam’ and the social media hashtag
#flyingless which have been identified by airline executives as a major source of concern for
their industry (Henley, 2019).
Beyond civil disobedience and protests, the climate movement has also increasingly
targeted the fossil fuel industry via economic and legal means. For instance, the recognition
that existing fossil fuel reserves are unrecoverable if a habitable climate is to be maintained
raises the likelihood of a ‘carbon bubble’ and ‘stranded assets’ and has provided the impetus
for a campaign of fossil fuel divestment (Ayling and Gunningham, 2017; Carbon Tracker
Initiative, 2012). Popularised by NGO 350.org through a programme directed at US colleges
20
and local government, fossil fuel divestment has swiftly gained international traction and
earned the backing of many high-profile organisations. To date around 200 organisations, have
committed to divest from fossil fuel stocks. These include, Stanford University, the cities of
Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, the World Council of Churches, Glasgow University, the
British Medical Association and, perhaps most symbolically, the Rockefeller Foundation (a
philanthropic organisation founded by the original Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller!).
While far from a major threat to shareholder value, the divestment strategy is aimed more at
challenging the social and political legitimacy of fossil fuels by promoting the idea that they
represent a ‘sin industry’. As McKibben (2013) argues, ‘The logic of divestment couldn’t be
simpler: if it’s wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage…The hope
is that divestment is one way to weaken those companies – financially, but even more
politically’. Indeed, ratcheting up the pressure, in the last several years a range of legal actions
have been launched by citizens in various jurisdictions citing fossil fuel companies and
governments for damaging their rights to a habitable climate (Banda and Fulton, 2017). A key
argument here, is that fossil fuel majors such as ExxonMobil, knew full well the threat that
their activities posed to the climate (something their internal researchers had identified in the
late 1970s), but the company chose instead to fund the growth of an organising climate change
denial movement (Supran and Oreskes, 2017).
Pressure has also been building from within the financial and investment community,
increasingly aware of the economic and fiduciary risks that climate change now poses. This
recognition has been prominent in public policy circles since the mid-2000s when UK
economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, observed that climate change represented ‘the greatest market
failure the world has ever seen’ (Stern, et al., 2006: viii). While the fossil fuel industry has
proven remarkably successful in avoiding the threats of carbon regulation, (evident in the
failure of governments across the globe to mandate a meaningful cost for carbon pollution),
21
recent statements and actions by central banks and major investors suggest a more substantial
challenge. In a speech to insurance giant Lloyds, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark
Carney (2015), highlighted the threat climate change posed to the insurance industry from
worsening extreme weather and the threat of stranded carbon assets. More recently, the G20
Financial Stability Board has published recommendations for the disclosure of climate risk in
corporate financial reporting (TFCD, 2017) and major institutional investors such as
Blackrock, HSBC and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund have announced divestment
from major fossil fuel stocks and a focus on ‘green’ investment opportunities (Holter and
Sleire, 2019).
Finally, technological change and shifts in energy markets are adding to the pressures
facing the fossil fuel industry. Key developments here include the dramatic reduction in the
cost of solar and wind energy technologies, rapid increases in investment in renewable energy
in countries like China, and the disruptions of companies such as Tesla which have moved into
the mass production of electric vehicles and lithium-ion battery storage devices (Mathews,
2017). These changes have led some technology analysts to estimate that as much as half of
the world’s electricity production will come from renewable energy sources by 2050
potentially crowding out coal, oil and gas as primary energy sources (BloombergNEF, 2019).
Indeed, there are signs that major resource and energy companies are beginning to factor these
risks into their strategic planning, with mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton already
signalling their exit from the thermal coal market and a renewed focus on other minerals as
inputs into a future lower-carbon economy (Parkinson and Mazengarb, 2019).
The question then arises, to what extent will these developments impede the continued
growth and expansion of the global fossil fuel industry in an increasingly climate-challenged
world?
22
Conclusion: Fossil fuels forever?
For over two centuries the world has depended upon fossil fuels to drive the compound
growth that defines capitalism. Despite clear scientific evidence of the urgent need for radical
and dramatic decarbonization, the global economy remains fixed within a ‘fossil fuels forever’
imaginary (Levy and Spicer, 2013). Indeed, as Wright and Nyberg (2015: 25) have highlighted
the rush to exploit non-conventional fossil fuel reserves such as tar sands, gas fracking and
deep-water oil drilling highlight a form of ‘creative self-destruction’ in which ‘businesses are
encouraged to further devour the very life-support systems of a habitable environment’.
Despite growing political and social awareness of a worsening climate crisis and an
increasing market focus on renewable energy, tangible action in terms of constraining carbon
emissions, let alone reining in fossil fuel production and use, has been limited. Proposals for
carbon emissions reductions have continued to rely upon market-based measures such as
carbon pricing and have failed to significantly dent the steady increase in global emissions. The
global fossil fuel burn continues to increase, hitting an all-time high in 2019 of 11.7 Gtoe
(billion tonnes of oil equivalent), up from 7.1 Gtoe in 1990. Indeed, despite the attention
accorded to emissions reduction through the various international climate agreements and the
dramatic increases in renewable energy investment (particularly wind and solar), over half of
all cumulative global fossil fuel consumption has occurred since 1990 (Saxifrage, 2019).
In carbon intensive economies, such as the US, China, Canada, Australia and Saudi
Arabia, the fossil fuel industry continues to expand assisted by government subsidies and
financial incentives (Lenferna, 2019). In the US, the so-called ‘fracking revolution’ has led to
energy independence as the country has become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas
(Downie, 2019). China is now the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal (constituting
over half of the world’s total consumption), with significant foreign investments in new fossil
fuel developments in a range of developing economies (Umbach and Yu, 2016). In Canada and
23
Australia, expansion of fossil fuel extraction has led to dramatic growth in energy exports, with
Canada’s Alberta tar sands delivering oil to the US and China (Bloomberg, 2019), and
Australia now the world’s largest exporter of coal and gas (Kilvert, 2019). Politically, the
election of Donald Trump in 2016 as President of the US also signals the renaissance of the
fossil fuel industry, evident in the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the
removal of environmental regulations dating to the 1970s, the opening up of government land
to coal, oil and gas exploration, and the promotion of prominent fossil fuel executives and
climate deniers to key government positions (De Pryck and Gemenne, 2017). In an era of
growing social and political conflict over the worsening climate crisis, global capitalism’s
addiction to fossil fuels appears as strong as ever.
This continued dominance is not only related to the path dependence resulting from
decades of infrastructure development, government subsidies and technological innovation.
The ‘fossil-fuel lock-in’ is also a product of consciously planned political action on the part of
the fossil fuel majors to ensure their position is maintained. This has involved a careful
management of government relations, revolving doors between corporate suites and
government offices, campaign funding, active lobbying, public relations and marketing which
stress the centrality of fossil fuel energy to the maintenance of economic and social progress.
Such is the hegemony of the fossil fuel industry, that even the scientific realization that its
activities now imperil the very future of human civilization, is insufficient to challenge the
continued expansion of the industry.
As we have argued at the beginning of this chapter, fossil fuels have defined the path
of global economic development for the past two centuries. Any transformation away from
hydrocarbon energy will require a complete reinvention of the myriad ways in which human
society is organized and operates. At its heart this will require an absolute decoupling of
economic growth from its material impacts. It remains to be seen whether this is possible and
24
if humanity can alter course sufficiently in coming decades to avert the catastrophe that the
continued dominance of fossil fuel energy will inevitably deliver.
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