Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming

Published Jan. 5, 2016 by Verso Books.

ISBN:
978-1-78478-129-3
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

Description from Verso Books:

How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess?

In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labour. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the …

3 editions

CO2 as an effluent of (class) power

4 stars

"Fossil Capital" is a pretty well researched book and advances an interesting theses. Namely the that we cannot understand global warming without accounting for the economic and political processes that led us to the current predicament. The author locates the start of this process in 19th century England, where the industrial revolution took place. This would be a pretty standard observation, if it was not supplanted by an economic analysis that doesn't limit itself to simplistic approaches of an economistic nature, but considers an irreducible dimension of class struggle behind the decisions that led to the adoption of coal as a source of energy in the first place. The claim is that despite the great and unused potential of water power, the British capitalists chose coal as an energy source for their factories because it gave them a competitive advantage in terms of class power over an ever more organized …

Lists