Time, Carbon Emissions and Commodification

Fossil-based global capitalism is constituted by material transmutations and value chain sequences which generate disjunctures of time. Carbon-based oil deposits, for example, are given a commercial value and profitability assessment unconnected to the deep geological time of carbon accretion. Extractions, refinements and combustions of oil, measured chronologically, are oblivious to the temporal repercussions of the carbon emissions involved. Similarly, presentist consumer lifestyles enabled by carbon-based petrochemicals, plastics and motor fuels elide the temporal relationalities of extraction-refining-combustion-emissions-warming. And, once consumed, the futurity of carbon-intensive products and materials become severed from consumer experience. These and other time disjunctures were considered in the preceding critique of carbon extractivism.