Book review of J.B. Fressoz (2024). More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy, Penguin Random House, 400 pp. For a Dutch translation of this review see here.
Dr. G.J. van Bussel
The focus on energy, and the attached corporate and governmental agendas, has exerted a large influence upon the social sciences. Although political ecology maintains a stance of hostility towards the claims of sustainable development, [1] it has acquiesced to the proposition of an energy transition and the concepts associated with it: ‘green’, ‘clean’, and ‘renewable’ energy. [2] This narrative of transition combines the profit-driven aspirations of green capitalism with a pacification of existing climate anxieties. It is for this reason that reading Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s new book More and More and More. An All-Consuming History of Energy, is a ‘must’.
Fressoz, a historian at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Professor at the École des Ponts ParisTech, examines the historical dynamics between humanity and its environment. His work challenges conventional narratives of industrial progress and ecological awareness. In his monograph, Happy Apocalypse. A History of Technological Risk (2024), Fressoz puts forward the provocative idea that environmental and industrial regulations, introduced from the early nineteenth century onwards, were rarely designed to reduce environmental degradation or protect workers. Instead, he argues that their main purpose was to legalize these dangers, thereby creating a legal framework that allowed industrialists to pursue profit. Fressoz suggests that this process of legal normalization systematically externalized the costs of industrialization onto society and the natural world.
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