Ingrid Burrington, in her fascinating newsletter on mineral resources, commenting on a Volkswagen slide deck:

The phrase "more future compliant" is so fucking resonant and weird, isn't it? It kind of perfectly sums up what's at stake in the transition away from carbon energy and the politics of extraction.

"Compliance" is the word corporations use to police their own employees; in my own experience, it appears when legal and accounting departments gain power over other company functions. "Future compliant" is a phrase used by those who are coerced into taking their own externalities seriously.

(Also: public debate has a tendency to take old technologies and institutions, such as mining, as granted and uncontroversial. The idea of writing about natural resources – in a way that never focuses on a single aspect but tries to intertwine political, social, commercial, technical, ecological ramifications – has a Shock of the Old vibe: both subversive and introspective. Rather than the trite "what should we do know" of ethical discourse, this asks "on whose bones are we standing".)