Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (Paris): More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy

Wir laden Sie herzlich zur nächsten Sitzung im Forschungskolloquium der Professur für Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte im Sommersemester 2024 ein. 

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (Paris) wird darin sein lange erwartetes, neues Buch More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy vorstellen. Die Veranstaltung findet von 18:15 bis 19:45 Uhr online, via Zoom, statt. Die Zugangsdaten zum Zoom-Meeting erhalten via Mail an sekretariat.wsu@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de. Weitere Informationen zum Inhalt der Buchvorstellung finden Sie im Abstract unten. 

Wir freuen uns über zahlreiche Teilnehmer und Teilnehmerinnen!

More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy

The „energy transition“ is based on a certain past. Its strength of
conviction lies in its ambiguous nature, straddling the line between
history and the future. Just as in the past mankind made a number of
transitions - from wood to coal, then from coal to oil - now, faced with
climate change, we need to make a third, towards nuclear power and/or
renewable energy. Facing up to the climate challenge would therefore mean
continuing the story of science, innovation and capitalism, guiding and
accelerating it, to hasten the advent of a low-carbon economy. Thanks to
the energy transition, climate change only requires a change in
infrastructure. The problem is that this comforting future is based on an
imaginary past, on a false material history, punctuated by a succession of
eras. Yet there is no reason why historians should choose transition as
the main motif of their accounts. Energy sources are in symbiosis as much
as they are in competition, and these symbiotic relationships explain why,
over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, primary energies tended to
add up rather than substitute each other. So why has the notion of energy
transition come to the fore? How did this future without a past become,
from the 1970s onwards, the future of our governments, the future of
consultancy firms and international organisations - in short, the future
of reasonable people?