Q7: What do you think about the inter-relation between imperialist powers, the ecological crisis and the global power shift?
Imperialism is a traditional term. We today can also refer to ecological imperialism and unequal ecological exchanges. This has been known for a long time but never analyzed in a proper way. And other imperialist problems are still there, such as military dominance, neo-colonialism and economic unequal exchanges.
Obviously, if a country as big as China has rapid growth, it must have global environmental effects. But today the main environmental problem, I think, is still concentrated in the rich countries. It raises the question about the really wealthy countries, whether they go beyond the current level to promote even more economic waste rather than to meet peoples’ real needs and it could wage destruction on all the economies.
The problems are different and the effects are different. For instance, the difference in wages between the developed countries and developing countries is more than the difference in their productivities. The more advanced globalising countries rob the global South’s resources and send the wastes to the global south. A child born in the US uses maybe 80% more per capita in terms of resources than somebody born in India or South Asia.
The US military expenditure is about as much as the rest of the world as a whole. The military needs to show its muscle. They see the military as a way to keep geo-political power and to control fossil fuels with multi-national corporations. The wars and interventions in Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and North Africa are mainly about the geopolitics of oil. As long as the US ensures it keeps control of main oil regions globally, particularly the Persian Gulf and East Africa, it has the power to keep a control on the flow of oil.
The US, as a global imperial power, cannot really separate the power of dollar from its imperialist polices. The fact that oil is priced in dollars is very important financially and strategically for the US imperialist power. Oil is sold in dollar denominations, and while it could also be sold in some other currencies, today countries have to keep US dollars as a reserve currency for the oil trade. In addition, both its financialisation strategies and environmental strategies are mainly designed to keep the fossil fuels flowing, and these cannot be separated from considerations of oil.
The US often thinks that it can intervene alone, but there are some shifts in the US strategy. The US is trying to co-operate with Europe and Japan to operate as a unit to control the globe. Q8: What are your views on “peak oil” theories and the new wave of unconventional oil? Could the “peak oil” help reduce carbon emissions?
I have written several pieces on this issue, and the most recent article is ‘The Fossil-Fuels War’ published in Monthly Review.
People believed that we were approaching the peak of conventional oil, sometimes it is also called “cheap oil”. It is true that conventional crude oil is running out. But there are all sorts of unconventional, more expensive fossil fuels to replace it.
James Hansen, a leading US climate scientist, argues that if we could avoid burning coal and unconventional fossil fuel, such as tar sands oil, ultra deep sea oil, cracking oil and gas, it means that we could stabilize the level of carbon emissions below the trillion ton cap and therefore 2 degrees of global temperature increase.
If we bring in unconventional fossil fuels, many of which are dirtier than conventional fossil fuels and more expensive than burning coal, nobody knows what is going to happen. Between now and 2040 the world will hit the turning point, the exploitation of unconventional fossil fuels will make climate changes irreversible and out of human control.
Thus, how to prevent unconventional oil is becoming a major battle in the US, e.g. the recent Keystone XL pipeline struggles. | 
