from steam capital to… biomass capital?

In a recent issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly, Imre Szeman asks, "what if we were to think about the history of capital not exclusively in geopolitical terms, but in terms of the forms of energy available to it at any given historical moment?" (806) Steam capitalism begins around 1765, oil capitalism by 1859 (with oil's discovery in Titusville, PA).

With peak oil looming as a crisis, or, in Szeman's view "disaster," the essay surveys three dominant narratives of what must come next: strategic realism (largely on the Right), techno-utopianism, and eco-apocalypse (largely on the Left). The first consists of nation-states securing access to energy through various methods, and therefore securing their existence in a time when they are overshadowed by corporate transnationals. See the Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI) and the War in Iraq. The second assumes a flurry of technological innovation that somehow works in perfect synchrony with the current global economy. Quoting a Scientific American article, Szeman somewhat sarcastically writes that "deeply ingrained in the patterns of technological evolution is the substitution of cleverness for energy. The natural temporal flow of scientific discovery will resolve the energy and environmental problems we have produced for ourselves" (814). The last of the three narratives, eco-apocalypse, foresees the growing demand from China, India, Brazil, and so on to drive the current capitalist global economy headfirst into "system failure."

This last narrative looks toward "disaster" with an eye that seems a bit too approving: "Indeed, there is a sense in which disaster is all but welcome: the end of oil might well be a case of capitalism digging its own grave, since without oil, current configurations of capital are impossible."

Since the promise of this essay is a call for future projections to use "existing social narratives of expertise, technology, progress, consumption, nature, and politics" (things that actually effect the practice of everyday life) rather than "precise statistics and measurements" that give a cold objective picture, it's difficult for me to see how Szeman (or anyone) can readily embrace the possibility of disaster. Disaster becomes an answer in itself, rather than a call for further projections, scenarios, or action. This response seems emblematic not only of the Left's inability to imagine a new paradigm of political economy, but also a perceived catatonia in SF as a genre (see this great interview with Charlie Stross), gratuitous disaster movies, and basically anything on CNN.

In the face of an inability to imagine the future, disaster is all too quickly accepted as a welcome alternative. But then again, "cleverness as energy" doesn't exactly sound viable.