This article develops emerging critical approaches to global environmental politicsby starting with the question, posed by Julian Saurin: ‘If degrading practices occur as amatter of routine, how do we account for this?’. Through an analysis of the global politicaleconomy of the car, it shows that widespread social practices which systemically produceglobal environmental change are simultaneously deeply embedded in the reproduction ofglobal power structures. It focuses on three interconnected aspects of this global politicaleconomy—the role of the car industry in processes of globalization, its role in reproducingcapital accumulation in the twentieth century, and the promotion of the car over itsalternatives by states.