Energy and the Anthropocene: security challenges and solutions
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Author(s)
Froestad, Jan
Shearing, Clifford
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2017
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This paper explores the role that energy regimes, and the search for energy security, has had in shaping humans and their societies, and the effects thereof. Energy enrolments through the domestication of plants and animals and the extraction and burning of increasingly energy- rich fuels enabled humans to build ever more productive and formidable societies, but also more complex and divided ones. Social stratification, combined with the new risks caused by the more intense interactions and entanglements that emerged between humans and nature, has culminated in the global environmental crises that humans are now facing. We ...
View more >This paper explores the role that energy regimes, and the search for energy security, has had in shaping humans and their societies, and the effects thereof. Energy enrolments through the domestication of plants and animals and the extraction and burning of increasingly energy- rich fuels enabled humans to build ever more productive and formidable societies, but also more complex and divided ones. Social stratification, combined with the new risks caused by the more intense interactions and entanglements that emerged between humans and nature, has culminated in the global environmental crises that humans are now facing. We conclude by arguing that an escape route from the destructive consequences that fossil fuel energy regimes have had for humans and their ecological security is provided by the emergence of electrical civilizations and the potential this provides for integrating energy and ecological securities.
View less >
View more >This paper explores the role that energy regimes, and the search for energy security, has had in shaping humans and their societies, and the effects thereof. Energy enrolments through the domestication of plants and animals and the extraction and burning of increasingly energy- rich fuels enabled humans to build ever more productive and formidable societies, but also more complex and divided ones. Social stratification, combined with the new risks caused by the more intense interactions and entanglements that emerged between humans and nature, has culminated in the global environmental crises that humans are now facing. We conclude by arguing that an escape route from the destructive consequences that fossil fuel energy regimes have had for humans and their ecological security is provided by the emergence of electrical civilizations and the potential this provides for integrating energy and ecological securities.
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Journal Title
Crime, Law and Social Change
Volume
68
Issue
5
Funder(s)
ARC
Grant identifier(s)
DP170100281
Copyright Statement
© 2017 Springer Netherlands. This is an electronic version of an article published in Crime, Law and Social Change, 68, pages 515–528 (2017). Crime, Law and Social Change is available online at: http://link.springer.com/ with the open URL of your article.
Subject
Environmental management
Criminology
Political science
Social Sciences
Criminology & Penology
Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
Social Sciences - Other Topics
Energy