The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels

The main cause of the climate crisis is the burning of fossil fuels. Attempts at understanding why human societies have embarked on the trajectory of ever-increasing use of fossil fuels tend to emphasize the work of compelling, often monocausal logics such as population growth, desire for freedom from want, or profit-seeking, but there has been no inevitable drive towards heating up the atmosphere in the pursuit of social objectives. Rather than assuming the existence of inalterable long-term tendencies, this talk will turn the question around and aim at identifying the social problems that were meant to be solved by burning fossil fuels, looking in particular at critical junctures in human history. This will unveil a complex social logic of fossil fuels, in which power hierarchies in processes of problem interpretation are central. In detail, it will argue that the key choices that led to the current crisis emergency were made relatively recently, during the second half of the 20th century, now often referred to as the Great Acceleration, and this with a view to consolidating democracy by addressing the social question. By implication, these choices are close enough in time for us to, in principle, undo the prevailing social logic of fossil fuels.

Preparatory reading

Peter Wagner. 2023. “The Triple Displacement: Climate Change and the Politics of the Great Acceleration.” European Journal of Social Theory 26 (1), 24–47. doi.org/10.1177/13684310221136083.

Peter Wagner is Research Professor of Social Sciences at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and at the University of Barcelona and is Research Lead in the Program “Modernity in Central Asia: Identity, Society, Environment” at the University of Central Asia. His research, based in comparative historical and political sociology, social and political theory, and sociology of the social sciences, focuses on the historical trajectories and transformations of modern societies. Analyzing the persisting tensions between struggles for autonomy and forms of domination, it explores the current possibilities of progress in the light of historical experiences in different world regions, not least in the face of human action reaching and exceeding planetary boundaries. Recent book publications include Fortschritt: Zur Erneuerung einer Idee (Frankfurt, 2018) and Collective Action and Political Transformations: The Entangled Experiences in Brazil, South Africa and Europe (with Aurea Mota; Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Carbon Societies: The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels (Wiley, 2024) provides the background to the talk.