Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution

As the world's energy system faces a period of unprecedented change, a global struggle over who controls the sector--and for what purposes--is intensifying. The question of "green capitalism" is now unavoidable, for capitalist planners and anti-capitalist struggles alike. From all sides we hear that it's time to save the planet in order to save the economy, but in reality what lies before us is the next round of global class struggle with energy at the center, as the key means of production and subsistence.

There are no easy answers in this battle for control of the world's energy system. Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution is not a book of sound bites. It unpacks the seemingly innocent terms "energy sector" and "energy system" by situating the current energy crisis, peak oil, and the transition to a post-petrol future within a historical understanding of the global, social, economic, political, financial, military, and ecological relations of which energy and technology are parts. The authors probe the systemic relationships between energy production and consumption and the worldwide division of labor on which capitalism itself is based--its conflicts and hierarchies, its crisis and class struggles.

With over fifty chapters written by contributors from approximately twenty countries, Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution forms a collective map of the most dynamic struggles within the energy sector.

Kolya Abramsky is a former visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science, Technology and Society, in Graz, Austria, where he received the Manfred-Heindler Award for Energy and Climate Change Research, and in 2006 was coordinator of the Danish-based World Wind Energy Institute, an international effort in non-commercial renewable energy education, involving different renewable energy centers from around the world. ursuing a PhD in sociology at State University of New York, Binghamton.

A vital anthology for anyone who wants to understand both the roots of the energy crisis, and the flourishing radical resistance that offers a sustainable future beyond capitalism. --Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved

Gas flaring in Nigeria, wind farms in Schleswig-Holstein, mountain top removal in Appalachia, tar sands in Alberta, geothermal energy in Iceland, the toxic cycle of uranium, the slaughter in the coal-mines of China, the transgenic soya monocultures, the 'caliph' of oil in Iraq, jatropha production in Tanzania, exploration in the Tehuantepec winds: every power under the sun is here except horse-power, and everywhere on earth - China, Europe, North America, the Mideast, Africa, India, and Latin America. Kolya Abramsky has composed, a symphonic compendium of five sections, fourteen parts, sixty chapters by forty-six individual authors and eighteen organizational authors in nearly seven hundred pages all arranged with intelligence and point. There are no technofixes. Neither 'clean' energy nor 'green' capitalism will preserve our lands, rivers, oceans, health, and lives. Neither governments nor corporations nor 'the market' can bring us out of the nether world they themselves have created. Mother Earth calls to the grass-roots for entirely new social relations, human and less hellish. This sober and serious book heeds that call. --Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All

Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution; is a major contribution to the movement working for a transition from carbon capitalism to an ecologically sound energy system. Its sixty chapters document the present energy crisis, describe alternative technologies, and introduces us to the people who worldwide are fighting for a healthy planet and the recreation of the earth's commons. Rich in detail and written by activists and scholars who have taken part in the struggles, Sparking is an indispensable volume for the just energy transition movement. It will be referred to for years to come. --Sylvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch

Gas flaring in Nigeria, wind farms in Schleswig-Holstein, mountain top removal in Appalachia, tar sands in Alberta, geothermal energy in Iceland, the toxic cycle of uranium, the slaughter in the coal-mines of China, the transgenic soya monocultures, the 'caliph' of oil in Iraq, jatropha production in Tanzania, exploration in the Tehuantepec winds: every power under the sun is here except horse-power, and everywhere on earth - China, Europe, North America, the Mideast, Africa, India, and Latin America. Kolya Abramsky has composed, a symphonic compendium of five sections, fourteen parts, sixty chapters by forty-six individual authors and eighteen organizational authors in nearly seven hundred pages all arranged with intelligence and point. There are no technofixes. Neither 'clean' energy nor 'green' capitalism will preserve our lands, rivers, oceans, health, and lives. Neither governments nor corporations nor 'the market' can bring us out of the nether world they themselves have created. Mother Earth calls to the grass-roots for entirely new social relations, human and less hellish. This sober and serious book heeds that call. --Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All

Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution; is a major contribution to the movement working for a transition from carbon capitalism to an ecologically sound energy system. Its sixty chapters document the present energy crisis, describe alternative technologies, and introduces us to the people who worldwide are fighting for a healthy planet and the recreation of the earth's commons. Rich in detail and written by activists and scholars who have taken part in the struggles, Sparking is an indispensable volume for the just energy transition movement. It will be referred to for years to come. --Sylvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch