Andreas Malm

The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative

The Anthropocene narrative portrays humanity as a species ascending to power over the rest of the Earth System. In the crucial field of climate change, this entails the attribution of fossil fuel combustion to properties acquired during human evolution, notably the ability to manipulate fire. But the fossil economy was not created nor is it upheld by humankind in general. This intervention questions the use of the species category in the Anthropocene narrative and argues that it is analytically flawed, as well as inimical to action. Intra-species inequalities are part and parcel of the current ecological crisis and cannot be ignored in attempts to understand it.

The Origins of Fossil Capital: From Water to Steam in the British Cotton Industry

AbstractThe process commonly referred to as business-as-usual has given rise to dangerous climate change, but its social history remains strangely unexplored. A key moment in its onset was the transition to steam power as a source of rotary motion in commodity production, in Britain and, first of all, in its cotton industry. This article tries to approach the dynamics of the fossil economy by examining the causes of the transition from water to steam in the British cotton industry in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Common perceptions of the shift as driven by scarcity are refuted, and it is shown that the choice of steam was motivated by a rather different concern: power over labour. Turning away from standard interpretations of the role of energy in the industrial revolution, this article opens a dialogue with Marx on matters of carbon and outlines a theory of fossil capital, better suited for understanding the drivers of business-as-usual as it continues to this day.

Sea Wall Politics: Uneven and Combined Protection of the Nile Delta Coastline in the Face of Sea-Level Rise

As global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions seem an ever more distant prospect, attention has turned to adaptation to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. On the key frontier of sea level rise, this amounts to the injunction ‘build sea walls’. But what are the implications of a scramble for coastal protection technologies? This article explores sea wall politics in one of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rise: Egypt. It is shown that protection of the Nile Delta coastline is skewed towards sunk capital and expected investments rather than poor people. This is a consequence of the neoliberal policies of the Mubarak regime and, on a more fundamental level, of uneven and combined development in Egypt. The latter process is thus undergoing an inversion and reappearing as ‘uneven and combined apocalypse’, on the threatened coastlines of Egypt and elsewhere.

China as Chimney of the World: The Fossil Capital Hypothesis

What has caused the early 21st-century emissions explosion in China? Driving a global explosion, it appears to stand in some relation to processes of globalization, but these links have mostly remained unexplored. This article revisits some established frameworks for understanding the connection between globalization and environmental degradation and argues that they are insufficient for explaining the Chinese explosion. A new hypothesis is outlined, called “the fossil capital hypothesis.” It proposes that globally mobile capital will tend to relocate production to countries with cheap and disciplined labor, but only through the accelerated consumption of fossil energy. Via three specified “effects,” the inflow of global capital will therefore set off massive increases in CO2 emissions. The hypothesis is applied in a brief analysis of developments in China between 2001 and 2008, and in other Asian countries after the Chinese strike wave in 2010.

“GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT. OR, IN WHICH WORLD IS MALMÖ THE WORLD'S GREENEST CITY?

Abstract As economic and ecological crises evolve in combination, some policy strategies might aim at killing the two birds with one stone. One recent example can be found in Malmö, Sweden, where crisis management has operated, we propose, as a green fix. The district of Västra hamnen (Western Harbour) is at the centre of the reinvention of the city: once the home of a world‐leading shipyard, it is now a no less prominent neighbourhood of ecological virtues. Through outlining the history of Malmö in general and the Western Harbour in particular, we identify how the municipality and local capital in concert increasingly used “green” strategies in the urban policies that started as crisis management in the 1990s. Today Malmö is reckoned to be among the worlds greenest cities, and we reflect on the importance of this international recognition for the city. Finally, we develop a critique of the green fix as concealing crucial factors of scale, and hence running the risk of myopia.

Yes, it is all about fetishism: A response to Daniel Cunha

Daniel Cunha misreads us as suggesting that climate change has been a conscious and deliberate strategy of a global elite. This was very clearly not our suggestion. He proposes that the Marxian concept of fetishism is applicable to anthropogenic climate change, apparently unaware of our recurrent use of precisely this concept in a number of publications over the past decades. We thus fundamentally agree with his position, but find his critique of our own interpretation of the Anthropocene unfair and misdirected.

For a Fallible and Lovable Marx: Some Thoughts on the Latest Book by Foster and Burkett

W hen I first read the key works of John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett—Marx’s Ecology,Marx and Nature,Marxism and Ecological Economics, and assorted articles—during the unusually hot Swedish summer of 2006, they struck me with the force of a thunderbolt. I had read Marx for more than a decade by then. I had just realized how catastrophic a threat global warming is and how, as the saying now goes, it changes everything. But I was fumbling for links between socialism and ecology, and I had never noticed any particularly environmental messages in the writings of Marx (due partly to flaws in Swedish translations; partly to the general preconception of Marx as a thinker concerned with other matters; and partly also, to be sure, to my own previous indifference). And then here were two scholars who demonstrated how it all fits together. Never missing a good quotation, Burkett and Foster relayed one striking flash of insight after another from Marx—and, not to be forgotten, Engels; integrated them into an overarching framework of ecological Marxism; and explained, with the greatest lucidity and precision, how a tendency to environmental degradation inheres in the accumulation of capital. It was an exhilarating, even liberating experience, because it allowed someone like me to throw myself into the nascent climate movement, organize, study ecology, and sharpen—not blunt—the critique of capitalism. Many other readers of Foster and Burkett have felt the same. Little wonder, then, that two scholars and the school they represent have also come in for a fair amount of criticism. With Marx and the Earth: An Anti-critique, we now have their comprehensive rebuttal and defense of (their own interpretation of) the ecological thought of Marx and Engels. It should be noted already here, however, that the Anti-critique makes no mention of what is undoubtedly the most influential attack on the school: that of Jason W. Moore. In Capitalism and the Web of Life and article piled upon article, he accuses Foster in particular of peddling “Cartesian dualism”

Who Lit this Fire? Approaching the History of the Fossil Economy

Global warming projects new meaning onto the past two centuries: since the early nineteenth century CO2 emissions have soared, driving humanity into an unprecedented crisis. This article outlines a historical research agenda for the study of the fossil economy as the main driver of this process. It argues for studying history in climate, as distinct from the preoccupation with how climate fluctuations have affected societies in the past. While narratives of “the Anthropocene” point to the human species as the agent of fossil fuel consumption, this article scents a narrower set of suspects. Study of colonial India and other parts of the British Empire demonstrate that imperial agents introduced large-scale extraction and combustion of coal in those areas but found the “natives” ill-disposed to the project. Turning to present-day India, I argue that inequality and capital accumulation should be in focus when studying the historical dynamics of our warming world.

Tahrir Submerged? Five Theses on Revolution in the Era of Climate Change

While Tahrir Square has become the iconic space—open, exuberant, jam-packed with power, bristling with possibilities—for the wave of rebellions sweeping the globe since 2011, another space has opened up in tandem over the past years, far away from hot Cairo, on the northern summit of the planet: the blue Arctic Sea. Almost with the same regularity as a ruler is toppled from Tahrir, a record-small ice cover is now reported from the Arctic. Is there any relation between the two spirals? Are there connections—visible, invisible—linking global unrest and global warming in a long, disorderly slide of generalized upheaval? Is climate change already present in the groundswell of grievances driving revolutions in the Arab Middle East and revolts in other parts of the world—and if so, what does it mean for their prospects of success? Can there be traffic in the other direction, from Tahrir to the Arctic? That is to say, can the mass mobilizations of the kind we have witnessed since 2011 intervene in the planetary fate and shut down business-as-usual?

Marx on Steam: From the Optimism of Progress to the Pessimism of Power

In the light of climate change, the steam engine appears as one of the most momentous productive forces in history. This essay traces Karl Marxs shifting thoughts on that particular technology, arguing that his oeuvre exhibits a break: the young Marx espoused productive-force determinism and considered the steam engine a force of progress while the mature Marx tended to regard the relations of production as determinant. Steam power then arose as a result of contradictions in the relations between capital and labor—not as the origin of those relations. Ecological Marxism needs to reckon with these tensions and ruptures in Marxs works. By elaborating on his constructivism, we may approach a theory of fossil-fuel technologies as material manifestations of capitalist power—the general obstacle, so far, to any meaningful politics for mitigating climate change.