BULLETIN FOR THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY
Volume 49, 2024
Giunta, Carmen J., “Review of Carbon Societies: The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels,” by Peter Wagner, Bull. Hist. Chem., 2024, 49, 177-179.
Abstract/Description: Carbon Societies is an ambitious work of historical sociology that attempts to explain the social forces that led to the fossil-fuel driven climate crisis that now confronts humanity. Its author, Peter Wagner, is a research professor at the Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Barcelona. I recommend the book to my fellow chemists interested in the history of the climate crisis. One reason is that it is a social scientific analysis that diverges from the (in my opinion) blind faith that humanity will innovate itself out of the climate crisis (an attitude I associate mainly with economists). Another is the pleasure of learning about historical contingencies in humanity's fossil fuel consumption.