Fossil fuel giants and entrenched elites block climate action, perpetuating extraction, inequality, and ecological collapse.
As the latest COP summit reveals, hopes for meaningful climate action remain overshadowed by familiar obstacles: the entrenched power of corporate elites. Negotiations intended to curb emissions are diluted, delayed, or dismissed, as fossil fuel and other vested interests wield immense influence to preserve the status quo. The forces responsible for the climate crisis continue to steer the global agenda, sidelining discussions about transformative change. This is no accident—it stems from deeply rooted power structures within economic and political systems. Understanding these dynamics requires an exploration of how power complexes—coalitions of industries and elites—have evolved and now dominate the political economy.
A Brief History of Power Complexes
Capitalism’s drive for endless accumulation has fuelled an ever-expanding cycle of resource extraction, commodification, and reinvestment into further rounds of extraction and accumulation. As this process accelerates, it reshapes both society and nature. Power complexes are not merely products of these historical processes but actively shape them.
During the colonial-liberal era of 19th-century imperialism, a financial power complex held sway. A tightly knit group of banks and financiers controlled global capital, with the City of London at its centre, supported by the British Navy. Even major peripheral states were subject to stringent oversight from international investors, through mechanisms like the Turkish Ottoman Public Debt Administration and the Roosevelt Corollary. These enforced debt repayment from the Ottoman Empire and Latin American nations, ensuring creditor demands were prioritised. British “free-trade imperialism” came to an end with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.
The mid-20th century ushered in the Fordist era, defined by mass production, strong labour unions, and domestic markets in the Global North. This weakened the global financial power complex. Simultaneously, fossil fuel and livestock-agribusiness complexes rose to prominence. Fossil fuels were used to extract more fossil fuels, with fossil capital intensifying its material flow. Governments reinforced the dominance of fossil capital through public investments such as highways—Ford in Detroit, Fiat in Mussolini’s Italy, Volkswagen in Hitler’s Germany. Meanwhile, the livestock-agribusiness complex expanded through the capitalisation of nature, industrialising agriculture. Reliant on petrochemical inputs like synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, farming became petro-farming, and pest control shifted to chemical extermination. Productivity soared, but so did biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and the displacement of smallholder farmers.
By the 1970s, cracks in the Fordist system paved the way for neoliberalism, which revitalised the financial power complex through an era of financialisation while also fostering a new digital power complex. The recent rise of techno-fascists in the United States is the culmination of this influence. Once central to liberal narratives of “progressive neoliberalism,” digital corporations and figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have exacerbated anti-democratic alliances, threatening democracy through misinformation, surveillance, and social control—now glaringly evident in their complicity in enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Under neoliberalism, for the first time, all four power complexes—financial, fossil fuel, livestock-agribusiness, and digital—interacted, unleashing unprecedented extractive forces of rents, materials, and data to accelerate capital accumulation. The interdependence of these complexes magnifies their power, creating a system that is not only highly extractive but also deeply resistant to change.
The Fossil Power Complex: Preserving the Status Quo
The fossil power complex exemplifies how entrenched interests shape policies and block progress. In the United States, for instance, 27 of BP’s 39 lobbyists in 2023 previously held government positions. Fossil fuel companies spend millions lobbying governments and funding trade associations such as the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers or FuelsEurope, which oppose Paris-aligned climate policies. These associations often act as “bad cops,” taking extreme stances so individual corporations can maintain a cleaner image.
Beyond overt lobbying, fossil fuel companies influence decision-making through privileged access to policymakers. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union’s Energy Platform Industry Advisory Group included major fossil fuel companies but excluded public interest organisations. This group, operating under a professional-secrecy clause, shaped the RePowerEU plan and new gas-sourcing initiatives, framing fossil fuels as vital to national security. This strategy exploits legitimate fears to justify investments in carbon-intensive infrastructure such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
The concept of “lock-in” illustrates the danger. Once investments are made in fossil infrastructure or technology, long-term dependencies form. For example, lobbying efforts in Germany enabled the approval of up to 12 LNG projects, with 7 new projects subsequently proposed or under construction—far exceeding the two recommended by the European Commission—potentially tying the country to gas for decades. While lobbying for expanded LNG infrastructure in countries like Germany, fossil companies have simultaneously opposed energy transition policies and promoted increased gas exploration in countries like Mauritania and Senegal. These actions effectively lock in fossil fuels across the entire value chain—from upstream production to downstream consumption.
Far from reactive measures, these efforts proactively shape infrastructure and policies to prolong the fossil fuel era, binding entire regions to a carbon-intensive future. Labelling LNG as “green” is yet another indication of how the fossil power complex manipulates political discourse. In the United States, emerging evidence shows that the total emissions intensity of the LNG export lifecycle—from production and transportation to end-use consumption—has a greenhouse gas footprint 33 percent higher than that of coal.
Overall, the structural bias towards techno-economic interests—often reinforced by co-opted climate science and policymaking—enables fossil fuel companies to position themselves as key advisers on the energy transition while branding themselves as innovators of negative-emission technologies to profitably absorb the carbon dioxide they profitably emit.
Breaking Entrenched Power
Effective responses to the current social-ecological crises cannot rely on technological fixes or profit-driven markets. The notion of “green capitalism” is a contradiction. Real change demands dismantling entrenched power structures and embracing economic democratisation and democratic planning. Promising approaches are increasingly addressing these critical challenges. These include pioneering research on influential networks of climate obstruction; impactful supply-side interventions that extend beyond efficiency improvements, potentially socialising investment and cutting profits; research into feasible strategies for de-growth and post-growth; and the tireless efforts of a few IPCC authors to challenge entrenched power dynamics. Until climate science, media, and political leaders confront these systemic issues—and abandon their techno-utopian fantasies—they remain complicit in perpetuating the very structures driving social-ecological collapse.
Richard Bärnthaler (r.barnthaler@leeds.ac.uk) is an assistant professor in ecological economics at the University of Leeds Sustainability Research Institute. He is a member of the board of the European Society for Ecological Economics.
Andreas Novy is head of the Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations (ISSET) at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). He is president of the International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS).