In Petrochemical Planet Alice Mah examines the changing nature of the petrochemical industry as it faces the existential threats of climate change and environmental activism. Drawing on research from high-level industry meetings, petrochemical plant tours, and polluted communities, Mah juxtaposes the petrochemical industry’s destructive corporate worldviews with environmental justice struggles in the United States, China, and Europe. She argues that amid intensifying public pressures, a profound planetary industrial transformation is underway that is challenging the reigning age of plastics and fossil fuels. This challenge comes from what Mah calls multiscalar activism—a form of collective resistance that spans local, regional, national, and planetary sites and scales and addresses the interconnected issues of environmental justice, climate, pollution, health, extraction, land rights, workers’ rights, systemic racism, and toxic colonialism. Reflecting on the obstacles and openings for critical interventions in the petrochemical industry, Mah offers important insights into the possibilities for resistance and for developing alternatives to the reliance on fossil fuels.

Alice Mah is Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow and author of Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations Are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do about It.

Abbreviations  vii
Preface  ix
Acknowledgments  xvii
Introduction  1
1. The Petrochemical Game of War  25
2. Enduring Toxic Injustice and Fenceline Mobilizations  53
3. Multiscalar Activism and Petrochemical Proliferation  71
4. The Competing Stakes of the Planetary Petrochemical Crisis  95
5. Petrochemical Degrowth, Decarbonization, and Just Transformations  119
6. Toward an Alternative Planetary Petrochemical Politics  141
Notes  153
Bibliography  185
Index  207