{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":319,"pdf_page":319,"physical_index":319,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6ea57fdc2c6982a673e14fe0b528e38363ea5870aee10689b6f036859a1b7ebf"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Effectively, whichever set of figures one accepts, the blind expansion of capital is close to exhausting the supply of its most important raw material, one on which almost all its production and consumption depend. Peak oil does not signify its immediate disappearance: it will continue to be available for many decades, but the cost of getting it will rise and the conflicts over who has it and who does not will get more intense.\n\nRegardless of when the peak will be reached, states are worried in the here and now about future \"energy security\". So there have been repeated reports in the US expressing such concerns, going right back to the infamous National Energy Policy report in May 2001 drawn by a task force headed by vice-president Cheney. Without mentioning peak oil, it stressed concern about guaranteeing US oil supplies and urged, \"Make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy\" .27 A February 2007 US Government Accountability Office report \"argued that almost all studies had shown that a world oil peak would occur sometime before 2040 and that US federal agencies had not yet begun to address the issue of the national preparedness necessary to face this impending emergency\". <sup>28</sup>\n\nThe term \"energy security\", like that of \"defence\", has a double meaning when used by governments. It can mean protecting the energy input of domestic and industrial use. But it can also mean operating policies that allow added pressure to be applied to other states. So, for instance, control over oil outflows from the Middle East, one of the goals of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is more about control over oil supplies which potential regional challengers to US hegemony depend on than about the US's own supplies. Only about one eighth of these come from the region (as against three eighths from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela). Significantly, the US ensures it has bases or reliable allies at key points on international oil pipelines and oil routes-hence, for instance, the bitterness of its response to the Russian assertion of influence in the Georgia-South Ossetia war of August 2008. A world approaching \"peak oil\" is necessarily a world of heightened clashes between states and within states, just as the world of climate change is.\n\nThere is an inevitable interplay between the two. To some it might seem that peak oil, and the rising oil prices it will bring about, will act as a counter to climate change. There may be a limited downward pressure on oil consumption-as, for instance, happened in the case of petrol consumption when oil prices shot up in middle of 2008.29 But there is no automatic cancelling of one effect by the other. Peak oil is compatible with a level of consumption of oil as great as at present for many years, with a corresponding build up of carbon gases. Meanwhile energy security fears are leading to an intensified search for more oil, the expansion of the other carbon gas source, coal, and the use of maize or vegetable oils to produce ethanol and biodiesel for transport fuel processes which can even increase global carbon gas emissions. 30\n\nThe New Limits of Capital\n\n319","previous_page":318,"next_page":320}