The Globalisation of the Fossil Energy Regime

Part II has demonstrated that Fordism’s industrial paradigm made use of methods of material throughput that would undermine economy and society for the future generations. The energy regime was dependent on the consumption of vast amounts of fossil-fuel resources; this was accompanied by the emission of enormous and growing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, triggering the greenhouse effect. The question is whether the transition towards a finance-driven accumulation regime and the transnational relocation of production sites moderated or even overcame the fossil energy regime. The different policy strategies for a ‘Green Deal’ raise great hopes that a new growth period, where gross domestic product (GDP) growth is ‘decoupled’ from the emission of CO2 and other environmentally harmful substances, could come about. In ‘post-industrial’ societies economic output becomes progressively less dependent on material throughput; thus the economy can continue to grow without facing any ecological limits. In short, Western production and consumption patterns as such would not need to change — only their energy base would. In order to test empirically the feasibility of a ‘decoupling’ of output and throughput, it is important to distinguish between absolute and relative decoupling. Jackson (2009, p. 48) defines relative decoupling as a ‘decline in the ecological intensity per unit of economic output’.