“a testament to the cunning of capitalism that these doomsday scenarios resulted not in the reduction of resource use but instead in new vistas of accumulation”
“There had been multiple energy transitions in the past, so the story goes. Humans once burned wood, then combusted coal, then ignited oil. If the grand sweep of time could be periodized into so many epochs distinguished by the prevailing form of primary energy, then a future energy transition was practically inevitable; the only question was how fast it would come”
“the compelling argument of More and More and More, by the French historian of science and technology Jean-Baptiste Fressoz”
“the advent of coal power increased demand for wood; the growth of the oil sector meant more need for both wood and coal; today’s global expansion of renewables likewise occurs amid record fossil fuel extraction while relying on hardware manufactured in factories powered by coal”
“Through the mid-twentieth century, underground coal mines were supported with wood props; the first oil derricks were likewise made of wood and later steel, which requires metallurgical coal as fuel and reactant; oil-powered global trade meant unprecedented demand for boxes and pallets made from wood pulp and wood, respectively—meanwhile, oil-powered machinery made faster work of cutting down trees. More and more and more”
“Fressoz’s more precise phrase is “material symbiosis.””
“Why, exactly, does more beget more and yet more?”
“the rebound effect: the phenomena whereby improvements in the efficiency of resource use are counteracted by increasing resource use, also known as Jevons paradox”
“William Stanley Jevons, a nineteenth-century English economist, observed that more efficient use of coal led to more, not less, demand for coal”
“Zoom out to the longue durée, and it seems that once introduced into the mix, no material ever disappears; it is only redeployed in new forms. “The history of energy symbioses is made up of loops; it is a story without direction.””
“For Fressoz, this symbiotic, directionless looping, a snake that eats its own tail and becomes bigger at the same time, is capitalism”
“Whereas the MAGA right rejects solar and wind altogether, reactionary liberals embrace energy triangulation—“all of the above” rather than a full-throated embrace of clean energy—dressed up as so-called climate realism”
““Phasing out fossil fuels” sounds anodyne—but anything approximating it would pose an existential threat to some of the world’s largest companies and investment institutions”
“It isn’t a stretch to claim, as Malm and Carton do, that an actual energy transition—of the sort that Fressoz shows has never occurred—would challenge the basic power structures of global capitalism and geopolitics”