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Author: Victor Seow
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
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Book Description
A forceful reckoning with the relationship between energy and power through the history of what was once East Asia’s largest coal mine. The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality. In Carbon Technocracy, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage in pursuit of intensive energy extraction. But as much as these mine operators idealized the might of fossil fuel–driven machines, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on the human labor that those devices were expected to displace. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers here and elsewhere would be subjected to invasive techniques of labor control, ever-escalating output targets, and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth. Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that led to its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of how the mutual production of energy and power came to define industrial modernity and the wider world that carbon made.
Author: Victor Seow
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
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Book Description
A forceful reckoning with the relationship between energy and power through the history of what was once East Asia’s largest coal mine. The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality. In Carbon Technocracy, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage in pursuit of intensive energy extraction. But as much as these mine operators idealized the might of fossil fuel–driven machines, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on the human labor that those devices were expected to displace. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers here and elsewhere would be subjected to invasive techniques of labor control, ever-escalating output targets, and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth. Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that led to its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of how the mutual production of energy and power came to define industrial modernity and the wider world that carbon made.
Author: John Urry
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745650376
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
This book explores the significance of human behaviour to understanding the causes and impacts of changing climates and to assessing varied ways of responding to such changes. So far the discipline that has represented and modelled such human behaviour is economics. By contrast Climate Change and Society tries to place the ‘social’ at the heart of both the analysis of climates and of the assessment of alternative futures. It demonstrates the importance of social practices organised into systems. In the fateful twentieth century various interlocking high carbon systems were established. This sedimented high carbon social practices, engendering huge population growth, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the potentially declining availability of oil that made this world go round. Especially important in stabilising this pattern was the ‘carbon military-industrial complex’ around the world. The book goes on to examine how in this new century it is systems that have to change, to move from growing high carbon systems to those that are low carbon. Many suggestions are made as to how to innovate such low carbon systems. It is shown that such a transition has to happen fast so as to create positive feedbacks of each low carbon system upon each other. Various scenarios are elaborated of differing futures for the middle of this century, futures that all contain significant costs for the scale, extent and richness of social life. Climate Change and Society thus attempts to replace economics with sociology as the dominant discipline in climate change analysis. Sociology has spent much time examining the nature of modern societies, of modernity, but mostly failed to analyse the carbon resource base of such societies. This book seeks to remedy that failing. It should appeal to teachers and students in sociology, economics, environmental studies, geography, planning, politics and science studies, as well as to the public concerned with the long term future of carbon and society.
Author: Karen T. Litfin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745681239
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/
Author: David Held
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670474
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Since 2009, a diverse group of developing states that includes China, Brazil, Ethiopia and Costa Rica has been advancing unprecedented pledges to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, offering new, unexpected signs of climate leadership. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that these targets are now even more ambitious than those put forward by their wealthier counterparts. But what really lies behind these new pledges? What actions are being taken to meet them? And what stumbling blocks lie in the way of their realization? In this book, an international group of scholars seeks to address these questions by analyzing the experiences of twelve states from across Asia, the Americas and Africa. The authors map the evolution of climate policies in each country and examine the complex array of actors, interests, institutions and ideas that has shaped their approaches. Offering the most comprehensive analysis thus far of the unique challenges that developing countries face in the domain of climate change, Climate Governance in the Developing World reveals the political, economic and environmental realities that underpin the pledges made by developing states, and which together determine the chances of success and failure.
Author: Rebecca Pearse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315363437
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
In the mid-2000s it seemed that the global carbon market would take off and spark the worldwide transition to a profitable low carbon economy. A decade on, the experiment in carbon trading is failing. Carbon market schemes have been plagued by problems and resistance to carbon pricing has come from the political Left and Right. In the Australian case, a national emissions trading scheme (ETS) was dismantled after a long, bitter public debate. The replacement ‘Direct Action Plan’ is also in disrepute. Pricing Carbon in Australia examines the rise and fall of the ETS in Australia between 2007 and 2015, exploring the underlying contradictions of marketised climate policy in detail. Through this and other international examples, the book offers a critique of the political economy of marketised climate policy, exploring why the hopes for global carbon trading have been dashed. The Australian case is interpreted in light of a broader legitimation crisis as state strategies for (temporarily) displacing the climate crisis continue to fail. Importantly, in the wake of carbon market failure, alternative agendas for state action are emerging as campaigns for the retrenchment of fossil fuel assets and for just renewable energy transition continue transforming climate politics and policy as we know it. This book is a valuable resource for practitioners and academics in the fields of environmental policy and politics and social movement studies.
Author: Andrew Curley
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816548676
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
For almost fifty years, coal dominated the Navajo economy. But in 2019 one of the Navajo Nation’s largest coal plants closed. This comprehensive new work offers a deep dive into the complex inner workings of energy shift in the Navajo Nation. Geographer Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation, examines the history of coal development within the Navajo Nation, including why some Diné supported coal and the consequences of doing so. He explains the Navajo Nation’s strategic choices to use the coal industry to support its sovereignty as a path forward in the face of ongoing colonialism. Carbon Sovereignty demonstrates the mechanism of capitalism through colonialism and the construction of resource sovereignty, in both the Navajo Nation’s embrace and its rejection of a coal economy. For the people of the Navajo Nation, energy sovereignty is dire and personal. Thanks to on-the-ground interviews with Diné coal workers, environmental activists, and politicians, Curley documents the real consequences of change as they happened. While some Navajo actors have doubled down for coal, others have moved toward transition. Curley argues that political struggles ultimately shape how we should understand coal, capitalism, and climate change. The rise and fall of coal magnify the nuance and complexity of change. Historical and contemporary issues intermingle in everyday life with lasting consequences.
Author: Leo Panitch
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844677427
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
No Marketing Blurb
Author: Timothy Mitchell
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781681163
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
“A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th-century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian “A sweeping overview of the relationship between fossil fuels and political institutions from the industrial revolution to the Arab Spring.” —Financial Times Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.
Author: Patrick M. Wood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780986373909
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
The dark horse of the New World Order is not Communism, Socialism or Fascism. It is Technocracy. With meticulous detail and an abundance of original research, Patrick M. Wood uses "Technocracy Rising" to connect the dots of modern globalization in a way that has never been seen before so that the reader can clearly understand the globalization plan, its perpetrators and its intended endgame. In the heat of the Great Depression during the 1930s, prominent scientists and engineers proposed a utopian energy-based economic system called Technocracy that would be run by those same scientists and engineers instead of elected politicians. Although this radical movement lost momentum by 1940, it regained status when it was conceptually adopted by the elitist Trilateral Commission (co-founded by Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller) in 1973 to be become its so-called ""New International Economic Order."" In the ensuing 41 years, the modern expression of Technocracy and the New International Economic Order is clearly seen in global programs such as Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, Green Economy, Councils of Governments, Smart Growth, Smart Grid, Total Awareness surveillance initiatives and more. Wood contends that the only logical outcome of Technocracy is Scientific Dictatorship, as already seen in dystopian literature such as "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (1932) and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell (1948), both of whom looked straight into the face of Technocracy when it was still in its infancy. With over 250 footnotes, an extensive bibliography and clarity of writing style, Wood challenges the reader to new levels of insight and understanding into the clear and present danger of Technocracy, and how Americans might be able to reject it once again.
Author: David Halpern
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745656277
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Richer nations are happier, yet economic growth doesn't increase happiness. This paradox is explained by the Hidden Wealth of Nations - the extent to which citizens get along with other independently drives both economic growth and well-being. Much of this hidden wealth is expressed in everyday ways, such as our common values, the way we look after our children and elderly, or whether we trust and help strangers. It is a hidden dimension of inequality, and helps to explain why governments have found it so hard to reduce gaps in society. There are also deep cracks in this hidden wealth, in the form of our rising fears of crime, immigration and terror. Using a rich variety of international comparisons and new analysis, the book explores what is happening in contemporary societies from value change to the changing role of governments, and offers suggestions about what policymakers and citizens can do about it.
