Carbon debt: An unjust load on Global South

On the recommendation of Ed Conway, the author of the deservingly highly acclaimed book, The Material World, I purchased More and More and More: An all-consuming history of energy by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz.

- V ANANTHA NAGESWARAN

On the recommendation of Ed Conway, the author of the deservingly highly acclaimed book, The Material World, I purchased More and More and More: An all-consuming history of energy by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. At some level, it can be thought of as a book that provides the conceptual framework for The Material World, or as a sequel to, or an extension of, it.

Does the book provide an answer to the problem of de-carbonisation? No. Does that make the book useless? No. The negative responses to both questions attest to the book's honesty. The book aims to show that the concept of energy transition is fundamentally flawed because there is no sequential replacement of one energy source with another. Energy sources are symbiotic, and there are also rebound effects. It is not as though coal replaced wood to be replaced by oil and gas, and then in the future by renewable energy. It has never worked that way, and it is unlikely to work that way. According to the author, "the United States burns twice as much wood as it did in the Sixties and Europe three times as much as it did at the beginning of the twentieth century."

As the author writes, the belief that future innovations would bail us out is simply an exercise in procrastination. It prevents us from "basing climate policy on existing, available and cheap technologies, on the relevance of their use and the fair and efficient distribution of CO2 emissions." We take up the fairness and innovation arguments for further examination.