Oil depletion, greens, the left (and the left behind).

• Author: Eytchison, Patrick
• Position: Economics Reconsidered

The relatively rapid depletion of world oil reserves, and thus the energy base of global capitalism, will be recorded by future historians as the defining event of the present century; yet, on the whole, the "progressive" movement has to date managed to keep this fact out of its collective consciousness. This is unfortunate because peoples' movements--on a historically significant scale--are formed only around such fundamental changes in the social forces of production

The modern progressive movement itself was formed around one social-historical event: the rise of industrialism and the conversion of rural labor into urban factory labor. However, this entire process was possible only through an underlying conversion in production, from biomass energy to fossil fuels.

This means that the form of the modern capitalist workforce, and that of modern progressivism, must be viewed historically as an aspect of the growth of fossil fuel production.

Likewise, as fossil fuel production begins its inevitable decline, the nature of work, and of worker activism, will also inevitably undergo a fundamental change. Will the traditional left and the green movement recognize this and change with it, or will historical reality continue to be ignored by these groups, leading to their replacement by new and as yet not envisioned forms of social resistance?

The significance of oil

While oil is a commodity, it is, like grain in the feudal market, also more than a commodity. Oil is the material base of modern global production.

From the rise of the industrial factory system until World War I, capitalist production rested on an energy base of coal. During World War I, the greater mobility in battle made possible by oil initiated a rapid transition to petroleum as capitalism's new energy force. After the war, the rise of the private automobile reinforced and expanded this transition. Between 1914 and 1930, world oil production increased from 400,000 barrels annually to 2 billion barrels, and to 27 billion by 2000.

Today, oil accounts for 40% of all world energy (coal for 24%; natural gas, 23%; hydro, 7%; nuclear, 7%; and renewable less than 1%). Oil, with natural gas, is vital to modern transportation, lubrication, power production, agriculture, fertilizers, chemical production, medicine, and plastics. Without petroleum the world's economy would grind to a halt.

During the 200 years of the Industrial Age, world human population rose from less than 1 billion to 6.5...