Resources: Energy, Article

The new, “green” state/corporate system that was heralded by capitalist visionaries in the early 2020s (including Larry Fink of BlackRock, Mark Carney of the United Nations, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Elon Musk of Tesla) envisioned both an intensification and an extensification of ecological plunder and degradation. The types of centralization involved, argues this discussion paper, amounted to a great deal more than just “greenwashing,” extending to worldwide re-regulation of labour and land.

What is business getting itself into in its embrace of so-called artificial intelligence? What is it getting the world into? In approaching these questions, it may be useful to set aside the term "artificial intelligence" in favour of "interpretation machines." To do so, argues this version of an essay published in Socialist Register 2021, is to point to ecological and political continuities between 19th-century and 21st-century automation -- continuities that may help clarify strategies for popular struggle.

"System change, not climate change" has long been a rallying cry of climate justice movements in the global North, as elsewhere. But, argues this contribution to the Indian online magazine GroundXero, the slogan can have several different meanings, with markedly different consequences for practical action, depending on who gets to define what "climate change" is.

Today, a capitalist organization of fire dominates the world. Biotic fires in the open -- which ordinary people have long used to nurture agriculture and forests -- tend to be denigrated, even criminalized. More intense fossil-fuelled fires in combustion chambers, boilers and turbines, meanwhile, are tacitly encouraged as a sign of progress and civilization.

What with climate change and worldwide struggles to defend livelihoods against fossil fuels, vernacular struggles against this perverse organization of fire are sure to intensify.

This public lecture raises questions about the direction of mainstream discussions on energy, technology, finance, accumulation, and organising.

The fifth issue of  Mausam, a magazine published by the India Climate Justice Collective that connects climate debates to local struggles over land, livelihood and food rights, has a multi-pronged critique of India's INDC – Intended Nationally Determined Contribution – submitted to the UNFCCC in anticipation of the December 2015 climate meeting in Paris.

This third issue of Mausam, a magazine published by the India Climate Justice collective, aims to facilitate constructive and creative debate on climate issues, connecting them to local struggles over natural resources, fossil fuel extraction, and land, livelihood and food rights.

Too often, discussions about energy alternatives resemble a visit to a 1950s world's fair exhibition displaying exhibits of the wonderful technology of the future. Against one wall stand shiny replicas of new green machines – wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells, hypercars, supergrids – alongside diagrams showing how environmentally benign they are. Against another are arrayed labeled bottles of new “substitutes” for oil, coal and gas – corn-based ethanol, rapeseed-based biodiesel, hydrogen cracked out of water, hydrocarbons extruded by algae.

This presentation raises some concerns about the term "energy security". presentation at PLATFORM's "Unravelling the Carbon Web".

This article summarises the main issues arising from the BTC oil pipeline runing from Baku in Azerbaijan, through Tbilisi in Georgia to a new marine terminal at Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast that has been developed by a consortium of companies led by the British oil multinational BP. These include the project agreements between the consortium and the three countries; safety concerns; and concerns over due diligence and monitoring.

Many corporations now rely on bilateral and regional treaties to get what they want in other countries. Some companies are using Host Government Agreements to set up a specific legal framework giving them effective control over national legislation and regulations affecting their activities. Oil and gas companies are using Production Sharing Agreements to gain almost complete control over natural resources in the countries of the former Soviet Union and West Africa and in Iraq.