Rethinking democracy in the era of fossil fuels

Antony Meckamthuruthil Devassy

antonymd006@gmail.com

The analysis on the emergence of democratic politics, reinforced by the energy sources of the modern
world that is “the fossil fuels” is crucial in understanding both the limits and the possibilities of modern
democracy. The capitalist Modern world that has been relied upon the consumption of carbon energy
for organising all the levels of their socio-cultural life, will end up with unpredictable outcomes with
the depletion of these energy resources. This will exert a profound impact on both the organization of
the socio- political institutions as well as on the climatic and ecological conditions. In this regard, a
historical scrutiny on the emergence of the democratic politics of the modern world and its co-relation
with carbon energy production will provide a space for redefining our understanding of contemporary
issues and ecological crisis. This essay will attempt to critically analyse the socio-political as well as the
economic vicissitudes that betided in the Modern world with the advent of fossil fuels. This will include
a study on the role of both coal and oil in facilitating the emergence of mass democratic politics in the
19th along with its limitations as well as the imperial and capitalistic appropriation of Middle-East by
the Western forces in establishing the authority over the oil resources. In this regard “Carbon
democracy” a concept which was introduced by Timothy Mitchell will be highlighted, as it provides
eye- opening insights on this issue.

Existing Literature and interventions

Varied academic studies and research exists that analyse the interrelation between carbon energy
production and democracy. Most of these studies which mainly emphasise the oil- money (the income
procured by the government from oil exports) depict oil as an anti- democratic agency that provides
excess revenue for the governments to subdue social tension by repressing popular demands for
democratic rights. This case has been substantiated based on the economy of Middle-East countries,
which is according to popular perception, a region that lacks democracy. However, ignorance towards
the apparatus of oil production and its relative properties in these studies reflect their underlying
notion of democracy as an ideal model/set of principles that can be applied everywhere regardless of
the space. Timothy Mitchell, a British political theorist, in his work eliminates these conventional
notions by emphasising the apparatus of oil production and argues that democracy to an extent is an
engineered result of certain socio-technical arrangements. Mitchell also contends the notion of
considering carbon and democracy as individual factors, as he argues that “both were interwoven from
the beginning itself” and uses the term “carbon democracy” to denote this integrity.

Coal Democracy

The age of fossil fuels that had been instigated from the beginning of the 19th century itself, laid the
foundational basis for the emergence of mass democratic politics that was rampant and buttressed
across different parts of the world. From the 1800s onwards, the concentrated stores of buried solar
energy replaced the hitherto renewable energy that has been obtained from diverse sources. However,
coal’s carbon content was so high that it was more cost- effective to transport energy over land than it
was with timber or other existing fuel sources. The transportation of coal mainly through the railways,
which was facilitated by the advent of the steam engine, required a large number of labours at certain
points for performing varied tasks mainly, loading and unloading of the coal. This provided workers,
the ability to control the coal supply chains as it was possible for them to sabotage the flows of coal,
by conducting general strikes. The emergence of mass democratic claims during the first half of the
19th century can be related to this fact, as the European left demanded several rights and needs by
threatening the flows of coal. Thus the socio-technical apparatus and the power relations that derived
from the coal provided the labours with certain democratic rights and benefits including public
pensions, the right to vote, the right to form labour unions and several other sanctions.

Oil and its Outcomes

The emergence of oil as a secondary source of carbon energy provided workers with new kinds of
powers which were apparent from the organised labour strikes betided in Baku (1905), Venezuela
(1936) and Iran (1945). However, the physical properties of oil as well as its apparatus of production
and distribution limited the further potential of democratic imperatives. The oil being a fluid didn’t
require a large workforce for its extraction and its distribution was mainly conducted through the
pipelines and pump stations where it had been further exported over sea routes. This made the energy
supply chains less vulnerable to the political claims of labours as they were no longer able to control
and sabotage the flow of oil which was a much more flexible and grid-like network. However, Oil
manifested a new form of political vulnerability to those who controlled its production and
distribution, that is the Oil companies. As it was easier to transport cheaper oil from different places
across the world, international Oil firms attempted to control and limit oil supplies by regulating prices
and by halting the discoveries of oil industries in the Middle East. The process of limiting oil supply
further intensified with the two world wars that also witnessed the emergence of transnational oil
corporations. After the second world war, several measures were adopted by the experts of the United
States to transform the post-war carbon abundance into a system of limited supplies. This includes the
political arrangements that were made in the Middle East by the United States, mainly the financial
credit provided to Saudi Arabia for not producing oil and the construction of a middle-class American
life based on massive energy consumption.

Fossil Fuels and Post-War democracy

The anti-colonial uprisings and struggles for the democratic rights in the Middle-East during the 20th
century holds a direct connection with the oil supply, that transported energy to the western world.
These intense political struggles were facilitated by the workers by possessing a potential threat to the
oil supply chains and were primarily centred around the oilfields, pipelines, pump stations and
refineries of Middle-East. The popular uprising of 1948 and similar events which were followed by the
overthrow of the British-backed regime in 1958 in Iraq and a number of strikes that took place in
different parts of Palestine, Iran, Syria and Lebanon were all marked the democratic upsurges
organised on the basis on socio-technical apparatus of oil production. Another major impact that fossil
fuel made on the democratic politics of the 20th century was a repercussion of the replacement of the
global financial order based on gold reserves to the one based on the flow of oil. As the European allies
sold out most of their gold to America for providing wartime supplies, gold reserves failed to form the
basis of international financial exchanges during the post-war period and the replacement of oil in this
place provided an uphold for the value of the US dollar. In 1945, the United States produced two-thirds
of the World’s oil. As production in the Middle East was developed, and the routes of Pipelines plotted,
most of this overseas oil was also under the control of American companies. The economy of the
United States thus witnessed substantial growth that went in hand with the development of an
effective democratic system.

Carbon economy and the origin of Environmental movements

The formulation of objects of calculations like the economy and environment and the power relations
that transform it had a close relationship with the carbon energy sources. As after the second world
war, the global financial system was organised upon the flows of oil, the discipline of economics shifted
its focus toward the “inexhaustible” nature of energy production from fossil fuels. During the 1940s,
the abundance of oil and its limitless extraction enthused this transmutation in economic theories,
that highlighted the limitless aspect of the economy. This further led to the perception of the economy
as what Timothy Mitchell calls “dematerialised and denatured”, the one which is free of politics and
nature, as it poses no limits. However, the oil crisis of 1973, which was instigated by an oil embargo
imposed by the Arab world on those countries which were in support of Israel, led to a Neo-liberal
change in economics. Theoilcrisiswhichwaslaterinterpretedasasingle-energycrisiswasinfactmade by oil
industries along with the support of corporative forces like the Nixon administration and Government
authorities, to prevent the introduction of alternative energy sources. However, this perception led to
a shift towards the limits of growth which in turn culminated in Environmental movements, that were
concerned on protecting the environment from the economy.

Conclusion

The concept of Carbon democracy essentially brings out the underlying connections and power
relations that make modern democracy and fossil fuels inextricable. This understanding of
interconnections, engineered among oil, violence, finance, expertise and democracy will provide new
insight into the contemporary ecological crisis. Even though the socio-technical apparatus of Oil
production tends to limit the possibilities of mass democracy, it can provide conducive conditions for
violent conflicts for democratic claims. This essentially denotes that the future of energy politics will
not be determined by the forms of energy used, it will depend on how these connections are organised
upon it.

Bibliography

1. Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London: Verso, 2013.
2. Raza, Syed. “Review: Fossil Fuels: Manna From Heaven or Magma From Hell?”. Journal of
International Affairs Vol. 69, No. 1, 2015, pp. 217-219.
3. Morrison, Kevin M. “Review: Whither the Resource Curse?”. American Political Science Association
Vol. 11, No. 4, 2013, pp. 1117-1125.
4. Priest, Tylor. “Review: CRUDE HISTORY”. The Johns Hopkins University Press Vol. 43, No. 2, 2015, pp.
333-339.