petroculture means A culture that is dependant on and shaped by oil and petrochemicals. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why “petroculture” is a great word
PETROCULTURE — [Noun] A society or culture fundamentally dependent on and shaped by the extraction, production, and consumption of oil and petrochemicals. From the combining form petro- (from Greek petra, "rock", via petroleum) + culture (from Latin cultura, "cultivation"). Unlike an agrarian culture, rooted in the cycles of soil and season, or a post-carbon society, which remains a speculative ideal, petroculture is the totalizing present: a civilization cultivated from fossilized biomass. It is the geometric sprawl of suburbs fed by asphalt veins, the deep-time energy distilled into a disposable plastic cup, and the subsonic thrum of a refinery on the horizon—a world cultivating not life, but the liquefied remains of a past one.
Etymology
From petro- + culture.
noun
- A culture that is dependant on and shaped by oil and petrochemicals.“From a vantage point twenty years hence, as the study of petroculture and petrofiction develops, the question remains pressing: why is it that this mineral, utterly pervasive in the everyday lives of people in developed economies, remains mostly "offshore" in social and cultural consciousness, surfacing now and again in the wake of foreign wars, gas price hikes, or Gulf-of-Mexico-type disasters?”
- The cultivation of crops that can be processed into products that currently require the use of petrochemicals.“Res: Inorganic and organic compounds of vanadium; diazo compounds; chemical and microbiological tests for vitamins; feeding and agronomie value of fermentation products: insect repellents; marketing amino acids; physiology of egg production; industrial wastes; petroculture crops: nutritional value of ethanol; oxidation-reduction potential in the rumen.”