Carbon Societies

The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels

By: Peter Wagner

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Paperback | 9 September 2024

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320 Pages

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23.0 x 15.5 x 2.5

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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.

Industry Reviews

"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

"Wagner's new publication should definitely be read by everyone who deals with the climate crisis."
Soziopolis

"an important and original contribution to the growing debate on the entanglement of societies and climate change."
Jan Gilles, European Journal of Sociology

"Carbon Societies is an ambitious work of historical sociology that attempts to explain the social forces that led to the fossil-fuel driven climate crisis that now confronts humanity."
Carmen J. Giunta , Bulletin for the History of Chemistry

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