Political Science Economic Conditions
The Energy of Slaves
Oil and the New Servitude
- Publisher
- Greystone Books Ltd
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2012
- Category
- Economic Conditions, Civilization, Slavery
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781553659785
- Publish Date
- Sep 2012
- List Price
- $29.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781553659792
- Publish Date
- Aug 2012
- List Price
- $22.95
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771640107
- Publish Date
- Apr 2014
- List Price
- $19.95
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Description
"A startling critique that should rouse us from our pipe dream of endless plenty." -- Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress
A radical analysis of our master-and-slave relationship to energy and a call for change.
Ancient civilizations routinely relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities. In the early nineteenth century, the slave trade became one of the most profitable enterprises on the planet, and slaveholders viewed religious critics as hostilely as oil companies now regard environmentalists. Yet when the abolition movement finally triumphed in the 1850s, it had an invisible ally: coal and oil. As the world's most portable and versatile workers, fossil fuels dramatically replenished slavery's ranks with combustion engines and other labour-saving tools. Since then, oil has transformed politics, economics, science, agriculture, gender, and even our concept of happiness. But as Andrew Nikiforuk argues in this provocative new book, we still behave like slaveholders in the way we use energy, and that urgently needs to change.
Many North Americans and Europeans today enjoy lifestyles as extravagant as those of Caribbean plantation owners. Like slaveholders, we feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. But endless growth is an illusion, and now that half of the world's oil has been burned, our energy slaves are becoming more expensive by the day. What we need, Nikiforuk argues, is a radical new emancipation movement.
"Our overwhelming societal dependence on oil is usually discussed in economic terms. This book looks at our Promethean petro-prowess through an ethical lens, and the result is both shocking and deeply enlightening. This is required reading for everyone who uses oil. (Do you know anyone who doesn't?)" -- Richard Heinberg, author of The End of Growth
"In this cogently argued book, Andrew Nikiforuk deploys a powerful metaphor. Oil dependency, he writes, is a modern form of slavery-and it's time for a global abolition movement." -- Taras Grescoe, author of Straphanger and Bottomfeeder
Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation
About the author
Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning Canadian journalist who has written about education, economics, and the environment for the last two decades. His books include Pandemonium, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Oil, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and The Fourth Horseman: A Short History of Plagues, Scourges and Emerging Viruses. His book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, published to wide acclaim, won the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award and became a national bestseller. He lives in Calgary, Alberta.
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Slick Water
Fracking and One Insider's Stand against the World's Most Powerful Industry
Saboteurs
Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil
Saboteurs
Weibo Ludwig's War against Big Oil
Empire of the Beetle
How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests
Tar Sands
Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Revised and Updated Edition
Tar Sands
Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
Pandemonium
Bird Flu Mad Cow And Other Biological Plagues Of The 21st Centryu
Pumped
Everyone's Guide to the Oilpatch
Fourth Horseman
A Short History Of Epidemics Plagues Famine And Other Scourges