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Using a fascinating array of examples, Fressoz describes how we have gorged on all forms of energy - with whole forests needed to prop up coal mines, coal remaining central to the creation of innumerable new products and oil still central to our lives. The world now burns more wood and coal than ever before. This book reveals an uncomfortable truth: 'transition' was originally itself promoted by energy companies, not as a genuine plan, but as a means to put off any meaningful change. 'More and More and More' forces its readers to understand the modern world in all its voracious reality, and the true nature of the challenges heading our way.

Coal, gas and oil have been capitalism's main fuels since the industrial revolution. And yet, of all the fossil fuels ever consumed, more than half were burned in the last 50 years. Most alarming of all, fossil fuel consumption has grown fastest in the last three decades, since scientists confirmed that it is the main cause of potentially devastating global warming. In Burning Up, Simon Pirani recounts the history of fossil fuels' relentless rise since the mid twentieth century. Dispelling explanations foregrounding Western consumerism, and arguments that population growth is the main problem, Pirani shows how fossil fuels are consumed through technological, social and economic systems, and that these systems must change. This is a major contribution to understanding the greatest crisis of our time.

In Market Madness: A Century of Oil Panics, Crises, and Crashes, Blake Clayton uses four historical case studies to document claims about the future of the U.S. oil supply and discuss their impact on the market and policymaking. He explores the conditions in which oil supply fears arise, gain popularity, and eventually wane, and shows how important such stories can be in affecting financial markets. He takes an innovative approach commonly used to assess the role of \"irrational exuberance\" in the technology and housing markets to determine how unfounded pessimism affects markets in oil and other exhaustible resources. Clayton argues that the lessons to be learned from this history are the need for quality data about US and global oil reserves, the importance of clear communication from Washington about energy markets and resources, and the value of greater transparency in financial transactions in commodities markets.

Coal, gas and oil have powered our societies for hundreds of years. But the pace at which we use them changed dramatically in the 20th century: of all the fossil fuels ever consumed, more than half were burnt up in the past 50 years alone, the vast majority of that within a single generation. Most worrying of all, this dramatic acceleration has occurred against the backdrop of an increasingly unanimous scientific consensus: that their environmental impact is devastating and potentially irreversible. In 'Burning Up', Simon Pirani recounts the history of the relentless rise of fossil fuels in the past half century, and lays out the ways in which the expansion of the global capitalist economy has driven it forward.

Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century--fueled by coal and steam engines--redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. Power to the People offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand.

How will humanity continue to meet its energy needs without destroying the conditions necessary to sustain human life on earth? The search for an answer to this question depends as much on the past as on the present; and as much on the physical sciences as on the social sciences. This book offers a truly trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural look at the problem of energy production and consumption in modern times. Discussing issues of history, politics, science, risk, lifestyle and representation, contributors demonstrate that experiences through time can provide insights into the kinds of solutions that have succeeded, as well as reasons why other solutions have failed. They also show what different countries and cultures might learn from each other, emphasizing how discoveries in one discipline have inspired new approaches in another discipline. Among many other important conclusions, the book suggests that energy transitions do not occur simply because of the exhaustion of old energy sources, and any solutions to the incipient energy crisis of the 21st century will depend on people's perceptions of science, environment and risk, informed and shaped in turn by the media. Brendan Dooley is Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, International University Bremen, Germany. Contents: Introduction, Brendan Dooley. Part 1 Energy and History: Energy transitions in historical perspective, Martin Melosi; Hydraulic energy, society and economic growth, Salvatore Ciriacono; Work and environment in Mediterranean Europe, Guiliana Biagioli. Part 2 Energy and Politics: Energy and sustainable development, Jürgen-Friedrich Hake and Regina Eich; On the creation and distribution of energy rents, Bernard Beaudreau; Liberalization of electricity markets in selected European countries, Paul Welfens and Martin Keim. Part 3 Energy and Science: Science and education, Petra Lietz and Dieter Kotte; Tomorrow's scientists: where will we find them?, Linda Miller. Part 4 Energy and Lifestyle: Obstacles to the use of renewable energy sources in Bulgaria, Antoaneta Yotova; Present situation and future challenges of the Estonian energy sector, Olev Liik; Energy efficiency and lifestyle, András Zöld. Part 5 Energy and Risk: Social uncertainty and global risks, Michalis Lianos; Energy technologies and integrated risks, Natasa Markovska, Nada Pop-Jordanova and Jordan Pop-Jordanov. Part 6 Energy and Opinion: Measuring and explaining environmental behaviour: the case of Spain, Juan Díez-Nicolás; Afterword, Brendan Dooley; Index.

\"In Market Madness, Dr. Blake Clayton, a Wall Street stock analyst and former Oxford researcher, draws on a century's worth of statistical data to offer a revolutionary new look the history of oil and future of energy. The culmination of a multi-year study, he shows how generational fears about an imminent, irreversible shortage of oil punctuate the history of oil since its earliest days. He explores the conditions in which oil supply fears arise, gain popularity, and eventually wane, and shows how important such stories can be in affecting financial markets. He links these episodes to the behavioral concept of irrational exuberance and new era economic thinking, first popularized by Nobel Laureate Yale economist Robert Shiller, to show how unfounded pessimism affects the market for oil and other exhaustible resources. Acknowledging the significant geological and structural changes the oil market has undergone over the last century, the book does not dismiss today's shortage fears out of hand, but asks what they reveal about how commodity markets function and what that means for investors and public officials. Clayton argues that the lessons to be learned from this history are the need for quality data about US and global oil reserves, the importance of clear communication from public officials about energy markets and resources, and the value of transparency in commodities markets. While these measures will not eliminate volatility and unpredictability in energy markets, he writes, they would mitigate unnecessary price spikes and improve investor and government decision-making. The book addresses popular debates in economics and finance on how mass beliefs affect financial markets while also offering a colorful narrative history for general readers about the dramatic booms and busts of the American oil industry\"-- Provided by publisher.

\"Fossil fuels don't simply impact our ability to commute to and from work. They condition our sensory lives, our erotic experiences, and our aesthetics; they structure what we assume to be normal and healthy; and they prop up a distinctly modern bargain with nature that allows populations and economies to grow wildly beyond the older and more clearly understood limits of the organic economy. Carbon Nation ranges across film and literary studies, ecology, politics, journalism, and art history to chart the course by which prehistoric carbon calories entered into the American economy and body. It reveals how fossil fuels remade our ways of being, knowing, and sensing in the world while examining how different classes, races, sexes, and conditions learned to embrace and navigate the material manifestations and cultural potential of these new prehistoric carbons. The ecological roots of modern America are introduced in the first half of the book where the author shows how fossil fuels revolutionized the nation's material wealth and carrying capacity. The book then demonstrates how this eager embrace of fossil fuels went hand in hand with both a deliberate and an unconscious suppression of that dependency across social, spatial, symbolic, and psychic domains. In the works of Eugene O'Neill, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, and Stephen Crane, the author reveals how Americans' material dependencies on prehistoric carbon were systematically buried within modernist narratives of progress, consumption, and unbridled growth; while in films like Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and George Stevens's Giant he uncovers cinematic expressions of our own deep-seated anxieties about living in a dizzying new world wrought by fossil fuels. Any discussion of fossil fuels must go beyond energy policy and technology. In Carbon Nation, Bob Johnson reminds us that what we take to be natural in the modern world is, in fact, historical, and that our history and culture arise from this relatively recent embrace of the coal mine, the stoke hole, and the oil derrick.\"--Book jacket. \"A close look at our nation's conflicted love affair with fossil fuels (including coal, oil, and natural gas) and their pervasive impact on American life and culture. While carbon has literally fueled a relentless technological progress and provided the highest standard of living the world has ever seen, it's also been the engine for environmental and human degradation, a blithe consumerism unaware of its carbon dependency, and dangerously large concentrations of wealth and power. Focusing on this longstanding contradiction, Johnson argues that our embrace and celebration of carbon has been enabled by distancing ourselves from its costs.\"--Publisher information.