ABSTRACT
Since the Industrial Revolution, capitalism’s tremendous growth has depended on fossil fuels but burning carbon has led to global warming and climate change. Capitalism is now the captive of its own success, creating previously unimagined productivity, technological progress and economic wealth, but on the basis of looming climate disaster and the potential destruction of its own conditions of existence. However, the obvious solution of energy ‘de-carbonisation’ is not easily implemented. It requires increasing state intervention, confronting the still prevailing neo-liberal orthodoxy, and abandoning a key asset base of the world economy – the still-to-be-exploited reserves of fossil carbon owned by some of the most powerful global players. To highlight the systemic barriers, but also the possibilities, this chapter develops a model that defines climate crisis as integral to capitalist economic crisis. The model is used to investigate how climate crisis is now deeply embedded within the crisis tendencies of capitalism and how it is expressed concretely in the dogged pursuit of economic growth and competitiveness within a highly unequal global system. The chapter analyses key aspects of the crisis and outlines some implications for contesting the looming disaster.
