The authors look in detail at how different forms of energy use have shaped society in the earliest civilizations - Egypt, Mesopotamia and India - as well as in Ancient Greece and Rome, Imperial China, Medieval Europe, and during the industrial revolution. They go on to cover the rise of the internal combustion engine, electrification, oil, nuclear power, and contemporary ecological problems. They show how all societies are dependent on fragile and unstable energy systems that combine particular technical knowledge, conceptions of nature, and relations of power. When this system reaches its limits, a major crisis is inevitable.
Our own world is entering such a crisis as we exhaust our non-renewable resources and confront the consequences of global warming. And the Third World and Eastern Europe face even worse dilemmas. As for nuclear energy, the authors show it to be an economically unviable attempt to shore up an outworn system. They ask whether there is any technical way of overcoming these limits other than an overall change in the way our society functions. In the Servitude of Poweris an authoritative and comprehensive guide to what promises to be the end of an era.
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