Fossil Capital

The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming

By: Andreas Malm

Narrated by: Liam Gerrard

How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy - but rather superior control of subordinate labor. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today.

Sweeping from 19th-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.

©2016 Andreas Malm (P)2020 Tantor

Excellent examination of ideological ties to fossil fuel consumption

Most of this book delivers a detailed history of the emergence and eminence of fossil fuel over alternative “prime movers”

After one is familiar with this accounting, it is far easier to comprehend where we are at in our relations to fossil fuel consumption and its connection to capitalism.

Not that this connection wasnt already clear, but an in depth understanding of this historical process should be common knowledge to anyone living in this age, facing global extinction.

best of best

A book that covers climate and human stupidity. how one kills the other. How human became geological force by cotton mills.

Detailed and well narrated

The audio version was relatively easy to listen to - though the formulas for capital were a bit hard to follow for a minute or to in the middle there

The CO2 problem through Marxist fetishizing

I don't mind an author being influenced by Marxism; any serious person needs some understanding of how social relationships work under capitalism. However, Andreas Malm invokes his Marxism like a religion, returning to it every few paragraphs as a unified explanation for everything. He obsesses over unimportant details about the procession of his prophet Marx's inner thoughts, to the detriment of making his case about the adoption of steam power.

That capitialist social relations inside the factory started with water-powered mills is self-evidently obvious, then and now. Malm seems to think the struggle that Marx and his big brain went through to figure this out is very important, and goes on and on about it. I personally think that it is worth about a footnote, but I am interested more in the big social picture, not just what one quirky analyst thought, and when he came to his realizations.

Maybe in a biography of Marx this fetishizing of his thoughts about events being described would be relevent, but in a study of how and why industry adopted coal and steam power, Marx is fairly insignificant. The author's quasi-religious attachment to Marx keeps him interrupting the narrative to say, "And this is what The Prophet thought of that development", "and, "This is when The Prophet cleverly realized that connection." And all this bother about something that Marx observed after the fact, and wasn't involved in.

So if heavy-handed Marxist framing of science and politics is your bag, this might be your book. However, I found it dull and not very trenchant. Prior to this book, my study of CO2 and steam power started with The Story of CO2 if the Story of Everything, by Peter Brannen. That analysis was not mired in dry and ossified repetative Marxist framing, and thus it out to be more informative and more enjoyable than this poderous snooze.