Green Transition's Necropolitics: Inequalities, Climate Extractivism, and Carbon Classes

Abstract

This article theorises the processes of colonisation, wealth accumulation, and inequalities creation that the current paradigm of a resource-hungry green transition enacts on the most vulnerable populations. We suggest that the extractivist logics and related technical fixes are leading to a “climate necropolitics”. In this, the socio-economic system is increasingly defined by classes’ carbon exposure and consumption. Through the “green growth” of late capitalism, we theorise the advent of four carbon-defined classes. Bounded by the access to climate tech capital and consumption of low-carbon products, these include the ultra-carbonised, decarbonised, still-carbonised, and uncarbonised classes—with the first two acting as dominant classes and necropolitical agents sustained by the remaining lower classes. Inspired by Marxist scholars, we suggest that the current status quo is untenable and will result in class warfare during which coalitions between classes could reorient the “make live and let die” of the current green transition paradigm.