No energy transition in the past
Still true, far more coal is used now than in the 19th cent, there has never been an energy “transition” as such, only energy additions. From:
biomass → biomass + coal → biomass + coal + oil → biomass + coal + oil + natural gas …
Oil and comfort
No u won’t find oil in any random place, no technology cannot create oil (in ground anyways, u can do coal to oil at a cost), most important keeping u comfortable in future isn’t AI but oil, gas, & coal
Mineral extraction
The extraction needed keeps going up as all the high ore grades were exhausted long back. Lower ore grades = more diesel needed. cu-chile
Coal to oil - not political
Let us focus on Timothy Mitchell’s argument, which was very successful. In his book Carbon Democracy , he argues that social systems are linked to energy systems, and in particular to the physical properties of the energies themselves.
For example, coal would make possible a balance of power favorable to the working classes to the extent that there were numerous coal workers,
who could completely block the supply (the mine is dangerous, difficult to access and therefore easy to block, etc.).
On the contrary, oil would be more of a flow than a stock, more or less liquid and distributed via pipes, tending to require more educated personnel (engineers) and little challenge to working conditions and economic domination. Mitchell maintains that the transition from one energy to another helps explain the rise of a State less and less concerned with the redistribution of wealth…
Mitchell is simply wrong because oil does not replace coal, or not before the 1960s.(5) Mitchell’s thesis is based on a biased comparison, that of modern oil in the 1960s with a vision of coal frozen in the 1900s.
Oil encroached on coal markets only in the late 1950s and at that time coal was very capital intensive. The coal is extracted using electric shearers. In the United States, in 1958, coal mines employed significantly fewer people than oil fields and refineries. Not to mention gas station attendants, truckers, etc. The American truckers’ union is a considerable social power, the most feared of the unions since the interwar period.
In addition, coal is very fluid. It has been used for a long time to produce gas, electricity, and in power plants it is used in powder form, etc. There are even carbon pipelines, a sort of coal pipeline…
Mitchell’s thesis illustrates an appetite for materialist explanations of politics but a paradoxical disinterest in the history of production, which leads to false narratives. Its success is easily explained: intellectuals have never given up on technical determinism.
…