Weathering the Crisis Oil, Financialization, and Socio-Ecological Turbulence since the 1970s

Abstract

This article unpacks the relational nexus between financialization and energy—in this case oil—that shaped the 1970s world-economic crisis and that is again central in the convergence between climate change and accumulation crises. Focusing on these critical moments when profitable opportunities for capital narrow and the world-system enters a period of turbulence, I explain the ways in which energy and finance have been central in crisis formation and, in turn, in capitalists’ search for ways out of crises. Starting with a discussion of the 1970s global conjuncture, I explain the role of the “energy crisis” in the first general recession of post-World War II era. I show how the oil price hike of the early 1970s—which compounded the core’s accumulation crisis while also representing a challenge to unequal trade by dramatically revaluing a key global South export—was channeled into fuel for global North financial accumulation via petrodollar recycling and global South debt. Building on this history, I provide a brief examination of this nexus between finance and energy in the ongoing climate crisis. Today the global capitalist class profits from continuing fossil-fueled accumulation and, increasingly, from the grafting of financial instruments onto socio-ecological disruptions.