Carbon Societies: The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels

The climate crisis is humanmade. Its main cause is the burning of fossil fuels. To combat climate change, we have to understand how we arrived at where we are. This book explores the reasons why human societies have embarked on the trajectory of ever-increasing use of fossil fuels. Population growth, desire for freedom from want and profit-seeking played major roles in shaping human history. But there has been no inevitable drive towards heating up the atmosphere in the pursuit of social objectives. To sustain a growing population, more natural resources are required but their use does not need to generate climate change. No logic of modernity links freedom tightly with a kind of material abundance that requires the burning of fossil fuels. No logic of capital ties the search for profit closely to the extraction of fossil resources. Looking at the critical junctures in human history in which resource regimes changed, this book identifies the social problems that were meant to be solved by burning fossil fuels and the power hierarchies that shaped those decisions. Importantly, the key choices that led to the crisis emergency were made during the last half century. They are close enough in time for us to undo the prevailing social logic of fossil fuels: by redefining what the key problems are that humankind is facing and by reshaping the existing mechanisms of power.Early reviews:Carbon Societies offers a fresh analytical perspective, an original look at how modern societies have conceived of the use of natural resources, and in doing so opens new windows to look at the future.’Elisa P. Reis, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Over the years, Peter Wagner has established a reputation as a leading historical sociologist and theorist of modernity. Here he offers a comprehensive and persuasive set of explanations of the climate crisis, grounded in a wide-ranging and brilliant historical analysis.William Outhwaite, Newcastle University