Beskrivning
Beskrivning
The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossilfuels are burnt in the world. How did we get caught up in this mess? This thesis returns to acrucial moment in the emergence of the fossil economy: the rise of steam-power. With theadoption of the steam-engine, fossil energy was first coupled to a process of self-sustaininggrowth, the new prime mover using coal to impel machines for commodity production.It happened in Britain; the cotton industry led the way. Before steam, up to the secondquarter of the nineteenth century, British cotton manufacturers used water as their sourceof mechanical energy – so why did they shift from the one to the other? By examining thecauses of the original transition from water to steam, we might come closer to an understandingof the mechanisms igniting – and perhaps still fuelling – the process now knownas ‘business-as-usual’.
