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 all 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 with a kind of material abundance that requires the burning of fossil fuels. No logic of capital necessarily ties the search for profit to the extraction of fossil resources.
Examining the critical junctures in human history when 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 the decisions to use them. Wagner argues that the key choices that led to the climate emergency were made relatively recently, during the second half of the 20th century: they are close enough in time for us to undo the prevailing social logic of fossil fuels. By redefining the key problems that humankind is facing and reshaping the existing mechanisms of power, we can take the decisive action needed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and avert the worst consequences of climate change.
By:
Peter Wagner (European University Institute)
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 224mm,
Width: 150mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 476g
ISBN: 9781509557097
ISBN 10: 1509557091
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 09 September 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Part I - Setting the agenda: biophysical resources and societal self-understandings Chapter 1: Climate change, modernity, and capitalism Part II - An alternative historical sociology of modernity and capitalism Chapter 2: Logics of history Chapter 3: The advanced organic economy of """"early modernity"""" Chapter 4: Vertical frontiers and the Great Divergence Chapter 5: Fordism and the path towards the Great Acceleration Part III - The social logic of fossil fuels: climate change and the politics of the Great Acceleration Chapter 6: Capitalism, socialism, and democracy: the politics of material well-being Chapter 7: Why fossil fuels? Alternatives of """"development"""" Chapter 8: Enabling and constraining knowledge: frontiers, limits, boundaries Chapter 9: Problem displacement: the social logic of fossil fuels Part IV - The future social logic of fossil fuels Chapter 10: Other endings: reviewing the logics of expansion Chapter 11: What is to be done?"
Peter Wagner is Research Professor of Social Sciences at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and at the University of Barcelona as well as Research Advisor at the University of Central Asia.
Reviews for Carbon Societies: The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels
"""Peter Wagner, whose talent and skills in addressing the complex balance between long-term processes and the choices that actors make have already contributed so much to our understanding of modernity, now sets his lenses to focus on the planetary climate crisis. In Carbon Societies, he 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 Wagner tackles head-on the often-posed question of why we have done nothing serious about the climate crisis during the past 50 years. He offers a comprehensive and persuasive set of explanations, grounded in a wide-ranging and brilliant historical analysis. This should be one of the definitive books of the decade."" William Outhwaite, Newcastle University"
