Table of Contents
1 In the Heat of the Past: Towards a History of the Fossil Economy 1
2 Scarcity, Progress, the Nature of the Human Species? Theories of the Rise of Steam 20
3 The Long Life of the Flow: Industrial Energy Before Coal 37
4 "There Are Mighty Energies in those Masses': Mobilising Power in a Time of Crisis 58
5 Puzzles of the Transition: The Lasting Advantages of Water 77
6 Fleeing the Flowing Commons: The Expansion of Waterpower That Never Happened 96
7 A Ticket to the Town: Advantages of Steam in Space 121
8 A Force to Count On: Advantages of Steam in Time 165
9 'No Government but Fuel': The Derivation of Power from Coal in Bourgeois Ideology 194
10 'Go and Stop the Smoke!': The Moment of Resistance against Steam 223
11 A Long Trail of Smoke: The Fossil Economy Consummated 249
12 The Myth of the Human Enterprise: Towards a Different Theory 255
13 Fossil Capital: The Energy Basis of Bourgeois Property Relations 279
14 China as Chimney of the World: Fossil Capital Today 327
15 A Return to the Flow? Obstacles to the Transition 367
16 Time to Pull the Plugs: On CO2 as an Effluent of Power 389
Acknowledgements 395
List of Abbreviations 397
Notes 399
Index 469