Fossil Capital Flashcards
What began ‘Climate Change’?
Early 1800’s cotton manufacture in Lancashire invest in a steam engine.T
The extent of its spread:
Arctic sea ice, salinity of Nile Delta soil, altitude maldives, Horn of Africa droughts, biodiversity loss, rainforest dieback…
1800’s Climate Science:
Charles Babbage in 1832, John Tyndall GHG effect 3 decades late, 3 decades after Svante Arrhenies rising temp.
When climate science became political?
AR1 1990, based the UNFCCC signed at Rio 1992 - now implications most disastrous, becoming more certain, predictions becoming worse.
How bad its gotten?
Greenland irreversibly melt at 1.6C, rather than 3.1C, accelerating glacial retreat, rainforest vegetation drying out, rivers dissapearing, crop yield devestated.
Despite the science:
Those descendents of the Lancashire mill invest in new oil wells, new airports, new highways, new gas facilittes - increasing rate of emissions.
Increasing rate of emissions:
1% per year in 90’s, tripled that in 2000’s.
How climate history infers our view of it today?
No part seperate - the totality of emissions responsible for the total view - the first puff of smoke from power plants in Manchester in 1842 still play a part in climate disasters today.
What does Andreas Malm call this culmination of emissions
The ‘Fossil Economy’
Timeline of Fossil Economy:
Railway network construction, Suez Canal, electricity, discovery of oil in Middle East, rise of surburbia, CIA coup against Mohammad Mossadeq, Deng Xiaoping, invasion of Iraq- all adding volumes of fossil fuel to the fire.
What seperates climate change as an issues from other environmental issues?
It it outside the realm of climate - the praxis of human history, summed as ‘labour’.H
How fossil economy has been approached?
We have looked historically and climate impcat on social dimensions, as opposed to the opposite - innapropriate in constructing history of climate.
Example of finding history in climate:
Free trade policy and factory legislation data on rainfall and ice, rather than other way around.
Example of social life having historical roots:
Cares run on fossil energy, choice to travel in them controlled by vast infrastructure of oil terminals, petroleum refiniers, asphalt plants, road network - exlucde other modes of transport
Carbon Lock-in
When investments in high-carbon infrastructure make transistions costly and difficult
How we must view violence?
Not immediate - an action or event in time - toxic waste is violence felt gradually, decoupled from its original causes.
Examples of ‘slow violence’:
Bhopal disaster, Arabian Gulf/Niger delta oil exploitmatio, Indian megadams, South Africa natural parks.
How path dependency deepens:
Carbon lock-in that comes with new pipelines, tankers, deep-water drilling rigs.
What especially seperates Climate Change as ‘slow violence’?
Inbuilt mechanisms that amplify it
What seperate climate from other issues:
Heightening urgency built into it year after year, with the ‘traditions of the dead breathing down the necks of the living’.
Fossil Economy
The self-sustaining growth predicated on growing fossil fuel consumption.
Base logic of perpetual growth:
First law of TD: the production of growth ignites more and more through the material fuel of fossil energy.
What is the herat of industrial revolution?
Energy input and the ‘Organic Economy’ - all forms of material production ar ebased on land, like motive force and raw material - meaning resource is scarce.
How the organic economy changed:
Fossil fuel supply of energy - dependency on land imposed a bottleneck.
How fossil fuel changed the energy company?
Exploited stores of past photosynthesis - self-sustaining growth live to its eternity.
How much energy coal produced:
1750 all England coal produced equalled 4.3 million acres of woodland, in 1800 this was 11.2, 1850 48.1 - without coal, Britain require land area 20 times its surface in 2000.
Malthus Theory
Posits population growth inevitably outstrips resource production.
Malthusian applied to Fossil Fuels:
New technologies not invented by the affluent, but by the poor in times of resource scarcity.
Why did steam emerge over water?
Water is geographically limited - coal is plentiful
After fossil fuels, when did growth become prominent:
When cotton mills added to demand for rotary power, so Watt Steam engine delivered manufacturers from acute shortage.
