ABSTRACT
The fossil economy is based on generalized combustion of fossil fuels in capitalist commodity production the burning of coal, oil or gas in the perpetually expanding circuits of capital but for it to work; some capitalists must produce the fuels. Fossil capital would die in a transition; geoengineering may give it a new lease on life. Realizing the full implications of this logic in the late 1990s, radical climate activists in Sweden raised the slogan 'socialism or barbecue'. A zero hour transition to the flow would have to be imposed by forces antagonistic to the interests of fossil capital. In the absence of a mass movement, it seems unlikely that governments will undertake emergency mitigation, even when life-threatening climate disasters occur. For this fundamental reason, war communism not war capitalism seems the more appropriate analogue. A more popular analogy than war communism is that of World War II.
