We’ve known for at least forty years that we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Why, then, have we made so little progress? Why does oil’s grip on the world seem more unbreakable than ever?

In his new book, Crude Capitalism, Adam Hanieh offers some original answers to these questions. He describes our own everyday dependence on a range of oil byproducts like plastic. He tells the story of the “new axis of world oil now emerging around giant-non-Western firms in the Middle East and East Asia.” He details the networks of corporate control that embed oil more deeply than ever into the global system. He shows how capitalism would not have become what it is without oil to fuel it, which may mean that we will need to do without capitalism if we want to do without oil. Synthesising unique empirical detail with a grand historical narrative, Hanieh changes our sense of oil’s centrality while opening new prospects for going beyond it.

Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the University of Exeter. He is joined by two panelists: Adrienne Buller, Associate Fellow at Common Wealth and author of The Value of a Whale (2022); and Angus McNelly, Lecturer in International Development at King’s College London and author of Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia (2023).