Fossil Capital

Produktbeschreibung

"How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power The more we debate about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we continue to burn. How did we get caught up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Malm claims that it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. So why did manufacturers turn from traditional fuels, notably water, to steam? Overturning established theories of the transition and offering a radically new view of our warming world, this study shows how steam was adopted as a superior source of power. Two centuries later, the inheritors of that power continue to profit from "business as usual," as the world heads toward irreversible catastrophe. Malm examines the history of resistance to fossil fuels and surveys the obstacles to the transition to renewable energy so urgently needed today. Then as now, energy choices are determined in struggles over power"-- 

Kritik

Malm forcefully unmasks the assumption that economic growth has inevitably brought us to the brink of a hothouse Earth. Rather, as he shows in a subtle and surprising reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution, it has been the logic of capital (especially the need to valorize immense sunk investments in fossil fuels), not technology or even industrialism per se, that has driven global warming. Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and Ecology of Fear 

Autoreninfo

Andreas Malm teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. His work has appeared in journals such as Environmental History , Historical Materialism , Antipode and Organization & Environment . He is the author, with Shora Esmailian, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War , and of half a dozen books in Swedish on political economy, the Middle East and climate change.
Andreas Malm teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of, among other books, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming and How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire.