"Something happened to energy in the nineteenth century, when physics and fossil fuels combined to birth the energy of ExxonMobil’s business-as-usual. It was more than the advent of fossil fuel systems and an uptick in energy consumption; it was also the emergence of energy as an object of modern politics. In that birth, the expansive, multidimensional figuration of preindustrial, poetic energy was captured and yoked to a mania to put the world to work. Since the nineteenth century, the human relationship to fuel has been governed by this singular ruling logic of energy, which justifies the indexing of human well-being according to the idealization of work and an unquestioned drive to put the Earth’s materials to use for a profit." Pg 4
"When energy and work are understood as historically intertwined in this way, it becomes clear that the reign of fossil fuels is not only about our addiction to fossil fuels and their exponential power. It is also about addiction to the ideology of work, as well as to a particular way of distributing, compensating, and valuing work. Wage labor and fossil-fueled capitalism are certainly part of the formula. Historically, fossil fuel addiction helped to attach humans to the project of wage labor and the advance of global capitalism. However, the attachment to work also operated on a broader and more philosophical plane than is captured by the capitalist systematization of wage labor. The embrace of energy—as science, as worldview, as labor governance—went hand in hand with a privileging of dynamism over stasis, of activity over stillness, of change over stability, to the point that the bare achievement of dynamic change was more important than the outcome of that change." Pg 100-101
“I write this conclusion in the spirit of a new planet politics, ventur- ing proposals that could help to incite a more far-reaching global move- ment, a “resonance machine” that could effectively counter what William Connolly has called the “evangelical-neoliberal resonance machine” that advances late modern capitalism and planetary destruction.15 A key argu- ment of this book has been that our commitment to growth and produc- tivity has been reinforced by a geo-theology of energy that combines the prestige of physics with the appeal of Protestantism in order to support the interests of an industrial, imperial West. While the first geo-theology of energy was particular to a northern British crew and their efforts to im- prove steam engines, this logic of energy continues to haunt human rela- tionships to fuel. The politics of energy has been captured by the ethos of work and waste, especially in the West. Historicizing energy as a modern logic of domination helps to denaturalize the energy–work connection. This does not mean that engineering equations are wrong: in many sites, energy can be successfully calculated to measure work (as matter moved). But the computing function of those units—energy and entropy—should not be allowed to stand unexamined as the basis for ethical prescriptions surrounding fuel and activity. After all, the physicists themselves remind us that energy and entropy are more epistemological than ontological. Let us affirm that the energy–work rationality is just one epistemology of energy—and not the epistemology of energy. Let us, following Wal- ter Mignolo, upset the “Western code,” which has recruited support from thermodynamics, and that code’s “belief that in terms of epistemology there is only one game in town.”16 Let us be free to multiply energy epis- temologies, metaphors, and visions concerning how we participate in and value work, production, and dynamism.” Pg 190
"The job argument has proven to be compelling, and is an incredibly difficult argument to counter, given the unquestioned importance of work to the American notion of hegemonic masculinity and citizenship. Imagine, though, if the United States had instituted the feminist, utopian demands of a basic income and shorter hours, such that full-time, tradi- tional waged work was no longer an economic necessity. It is impossible to foresee the exact outcome of such demands-making, but let us assume that, in making such demands and gaining some autonomy from the late industrial system of organizing work and activity, people were engaged in undermining the supremacy of waged work as a sign of self-worth and morality. In such a situation, the argument of “jobs, jobs, jobs” would be toothless. The threat of lost jobs only works if, in losing one’s job, one loses access to the necessities of life, to the respect of society, and to the rights of citizenship. Instead, a post-work politics pries open new pos- sibilities in countering “jobs, jobs, jobs,” possibilities in which alternative arrangements of energy and work appear more intelligible and palatable. Without the threat of lost jobs, the fossil fuel argument, at least as out- lined by the House committee, would have almost nothing else to say in support of fossil fuels." Pg 205
