The End of Carbon Capitalism (as We Knew It)

In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx theorized the listed public company as the apogee of the capitalist mode of production, its “highest developed” form. A century later, in establishing shareholder-centric frameworks of corporate governance, Western policy makers effectively institutionalized this conceptualization, inasmuch as it was assumed that listed-public entities was indeed what most significant corporations either were or would become. During the long period when it was dominated by a handful of publicly listed Western “supermajors,” global fossil-fuel (coal, oil and gas) production, or what I term “carbon capitalism,” broadly conformed to type. Yet, beginning with the rise of the OPEC producing powers from the 1960s, the dominance of the listed public company model inexorably started to wane. That waning has accelerated, and taken new forms, in the new millennium, heralding the end of carbon capitalism as we knew it. This article examines the nature and implications of this ongoing transformation.