CARBON SOCIETIES

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