To Have and Have Not

Brian C. Black is Distinguished Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Penn State Altoona. He is the author of several books, including Crude Reality: Petroleum in World History.

• PrologueIntroduction: The Urgency of Our Relationship with Energy PART I: Energy Exchange in the Biological Old Regime (before 1400)1. Energy in the Human PastTransitioning by the Numbers: Biological Old RegimePART II: Industrialization and the Great Reversal (1400–1920)2. Colonialism, Mercantilism, and EmpireTransitioning by the Numbers: Industrialization3. Fossil Fuels and the Transformation of Human Work4. Energizing Everyday Human LifePART III: Energy Broadens the Gap (1900–2000)5. Energy and National Security6. Energy Technology and Empire in the Cold War EraTransitioning by the Numbers: High-Energy Existence7. The Energy Gap Takes ShapePART IV: Integrating Sustainability (2000–2022)Transitioning by the Numbers: Considering Sustainable Energy8. Energy Transitions and the Culture of SustainabilityEpilogue: Divining Our Energy Future: Game Over or Game On?Index

Humans cannot survive without extracting energy from the environment. Black accompanies readers on a four-part journey that identifies and describes the physical and social processes connected with exploiting various resource types in the succession of energy exchange economies of societies past and present…. Black's accessible narrative clearly explains the engineering and societal entailments of each scenario. As Black tells it, the greatest social and physical transformations occurred with the uptake of coal and oil. Black poses an inconvenient question with regard to the future: "Game over or game on?" is this author's way of "divining our energy future" in an epilogue that begins "Our earthly disaster unfolds in real time, attacking our planet's infrastructure often out of human sight or perception" (p. 273). Comparing today's atmospheric CO2 levels with Pleistocene levels (revealed by ice core sampling data), Black envisions a new stage of industrialization to enable a sustainable energy exchange regime capable of supporting continued human existence on planet Earth. Highly recommended. All readers.