This analytic is intended to provoke thought and inquiry into the historically structured relations of power that enabled the numerous and flagrant environmental injustices perpetuated by and/or for the fossil fuel industry. In particular, the questions foreground the "weight of this history," or the way that these formations continue to haunt contemporary efforts to address and redress these injustices.
Petro-ghosts, however, should not be thought of as products of petro-systems. They are, rather, the structured relations of power that preceded and enabled petro-systems, creating both their conditions of possibility and also of desirability. Thus, while the focus is on fossil fuel-related injustices, the use of the questions in this analytic are not limited to investigations of petro-systems, but rather any articulation of technological, environmental, social, discursive, or mental processes that facilitate, rationalize or otherwise inhibit the redress of environmental injustice.