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This book, originally published in 1974, examines the changes that took place in the market position of the coal industry in the twentieth century. It examines in detail the position of the industry during the two World Wars, the problems of the inter-war years, the effects of nationalisation and the coal shortage after the Second World War, the decline of the markets in the 1960s and the consequences of the energy crisis of the early 1970s. The book analyses what problems the changes caused, and what measures were taken to try to overcome them. Looking in detail at the industrial disputes of 1971/2 and 1973/4 the book shows how the miners' actions fitted in closely with their past experiences and behaviour patterns.
Coal fuels about 50 percent of US electricity production and provides a quarter of the country's total energy. China and India's ferocious economic growth is based almost entirely on coal-generated electricity. Coal currently looks like a solution to many of our fast-growing energy problems. However, while coal advocates are urging full steam ahead, increasing reliance on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels has crucial implications for the global climate, energy policy, the world economy, and geopolitics. Drawbacks to a coal-based energy strategy include: Scarcity – new studies suggest that the peak of world coal production may actually be less than two decades away. Cost – the quality of produced coal is declining, while the expense of transport is rising, leading to spiraling costs and increasing shortages. Climate impacts - our ability to deal with the historic challenge of climate change will hinge on reducing our coal consumption in future years. Blackout goes to the heart of the tough energy questions that will dominate every sphere of public policy throughout the first half of this century, and is a must-read for planners, educators, and anyone concerned about energy consumption, peak oil and climate change.
We dare not talk about this... Politicians dare not discuss it for fear of causing mass panic... North Sea oil and gas production peaked in 1999. The oil bonanza is over - the oil income spent. Britain is once again an energy importer. Worse still, we are increasingly dependent upon imports from the world's trouble spots and hostile regimes - Libya, Nigeria, several Gulf States and Russia. Even worse, successive governments have failed to invest in new electricity generation; let alone a switch from petroleum-powered vehicles. What they have done is closed most of the coal-fired power stations and destroyed the UK coal industry. Just at the point where we - and our EU partners - need to import growing quantities of oil, we face growing competition from fast developing countries such as China and India. Add to these problems the fact that the oil exporting countries are using a growing proportion of their dwindling oil and gas production to grow their own economies, and you have the end of cheap, fossil fuel-based energy. Nobody can predict with any certainty what the world beyond cheap oil will be like. One of the problems with many of the peak-oilers is that they tend to talk about the consequences in apocalyptic terms, as if the entire world will come crashing down around our ears within months of oil production peaking. This is, perhaps, understandable when we consider that the early peak-oilers were oil industry insiders concerned that the world was sleep-walking to a potential catastrophe. One response to this - one I personally hold to - is that if you want to see what a world without cheap oil looks like, go and look out of your window (or look at a newspaper): * A million families using food banks is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The replacement of high-paid/high-skilled employment with low-paid/low-skilled jobs is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The inability of the developed economies to stimulate economic growth is what a world without cheap oil looks like * Governments' (including those pursuing austerity policies) failure to avoid running up massive government debts is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The dramatic slowdown in the Chinese economy (which was meant to be the engine for global growth) is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The multi-trillion pound misallocation of funds to inflate asset bubbles and property speculation (because the real economy has gone into reverse) is what a world without cheap oil looks like. This is, of course, just the beginning. As supplies of cheap fossil fuels dwindle even as humanity's insatiable demand increases exponentially, our life-support systems will begin to fall apart, causing the biggest disaster to hit the UK since the Black Death!
In Art & Energy, Barry Lord argues that human creativity is deeply linked to the resources available on earth for our survival. By analyzing art, artists, and museums across eras and continents, Lord demonstrates how our cultural values and artistic expression are formed by our efforts to access and control the energy sources that make these cultures possible.