A radical new history of energy and humanitys insatiable need for resources that will change the way we talk about climate change Winner of a Nouvel Observateur Award, a Fondation pour lcologie politique Award, the Prix du jury Turgot and the Prix du Snat du livre dhistoire 2025Selected as an Economist and Financial Times Book of the YearIt has become habitual to think of our relationship with energy as one of transition with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear and then at some future point all replaced by green sources. JeanBaptiste Fressozs devastating but unnervingly entertaining book shows what an extraordinary delusion this is. Far from the industrial era passing through a series of transformations, each new phase has in practice remained almost wholly entangled with the previous one. Indeed the very idea of transition turns out to be untrue.The author shares the same acute anxiety about the need for a green transition as the rest of us, but shows how, disastrously, our industrial history has in fact been based on symbiosis, with each major energy source feeding off the others. 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...

Binding: Paperback;400 pages; Publisher: TBS-Penguin Random House Wholesale; Classification: HBTK; Weight: 356 g; Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 19

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