Paper short abstract:

The motor vehicle-oil-military complex constitutes the principal engine of production and consumption within the capitalist world-system. This paper presents a political ecological analysis of the role of this complex in contributing to both war and global warming as well as the interaction between these two phenomena.

Paper long abstract:

The motor vehicle-oil-military complex constitutes the principal engine of production and consumption within the capitalist world-system. It has been estimated that nearly half of the global oil consumption is devoted to the products of the global auto industry. The world now has over 800,000 million registered passanger vehicles and this number continues to grow as certain developing imitate developed societies in their adoption of the culture of auto-mobility. Oil is also a major resource utilised in road construction. In addition to motor vehicles, militaries with their heavy reliance on airplanes, battleships, aircraft carriers, tanks, and other military equipment rely heavily on oil. While states and empires have for long engaged in 'resource wars,' the discovery of oil in the late 19th century added a new dimension to warfare, as is evidenced in the characterisation of the War in Iraq as a 'war for oil.' While war is contributing to global warming vis-a-vis greenhouse gas emissions, the latter in turn may already be contributing to conflicts in drought-stricken regions of sub-Saharan Africa amd threatens to pose larger-scale conflict as the 21st century unfolds. Most analyses of global warming tend not to factor the contribution that war makes to this phenomenon which in turn is having a dramatic impact upon the environment and human societies. Bearing this thought in mind, any proposal for mitigating global warming needs to include a massive restructuring of the motor vehicle-oil-complex into a peacetime global economy committed to social parity, democracy, and environmental sustainability.