There were fortunes to be made in coal and then oil, and now gas too. More than just fortunes are involved; modern economies depend on these fuels, and states only function if fuels are available to keep modern life going. Access to fuel has been essential to the security of modern states and their inhabitants. The rivalries of states and corporations, the struggles for dominance and control, the political arguments about who has access to what where matters. In other words, geopolitics are indivisible from fossil fuels in the modern world. Other resources have been involved in all sorts of conflict and imperial plunder through history (LeBillon 2012), but oil has pride of place in recent decades.

A sustainable future now requires dismantling these systems and replacing both the technologies and their social and economic arrangements with ones fit for a small vulnerable biosphere. No longer can assumptions of a big world as a stage for geopolitics operate if the long-term future of humanity is to be secured. Numerous peoples have long paid a high price for the struggles for power and space set in motion by European colonization and the expansion of capitalism through the Earth system (Grove 2019). Now even those who have benefited most from these colonial arrangements and their subsequent evolution into the global economy are beginning to feel the impacts of sea-level rise and climate disruption.

The large oil companies are truly global companies with holdings and infrastructure in many countries. Crucially in many places they held the rights to exploit petroleum and their wealth was tied to the valuations of these reserves. This is often still the case and stock values are linked directly to gaining access to what lies deep underground. States have struggled to exploit these resources and enrich themselves in the process too. The case of the Gulf States, sheikdoms sitting on oil fields, emphasizes the point that there are vast fortunes to be made. But fuel resources are unevenly spread around the globe, and while some states and corporations have gained enormous wealth others have had economic disruptions because of their dependence on fuel from abroad.