Table of Contents

1 In the Heat of the Past: Towards a History of the Fossil Economy 1

2 Scarcity, Progress, the Nature of the Human Species? Theories of the Rise of Steam 20

3 The Long Life of the Flow: Industrial Energy Before Coal 37

4 "There Are Mighty Energies in those Masses': Mobilising Power in a Time of Crisis 58

5 Puzzles of the Transition: The Lasting Advantages of Water 77

6 Fleeing the Flowing Commons: The Expansion of Waterpower That Never Happened 96

7 A Ticket to the Town: Advantages of Steam in Space 121

8 A Force to Count On: Advantages of Steam in Time 165

9 'No Government but Fuel': The Derivation of Power from Coal in Bourgeois Ideology 194

10 'Go and Stop the Smoke!': The Moment of Resistance against Steam 223

11 A Long Trail of Smoke: The Fossil Economy Consummated 249

12 The Myth of the Human Enterprise: Towards a Different Theory 255

13 Fossil Capital: The Energy Basis of Bourgeois Property Relations 279

14 China as Chimney of the World: Fossil Capital Today 327

15 A Return to the Flow? Obstacles to the Transition 367

16 Time to Pull the Plugs: On CO₂ as an Effluent of Power 389

Acknowledgements 395

List of Abbreviations 397

Notes 399

Index 469