The climate crisis is humanmade. Its main cause is the burning of fossil fuels. To combat climate change, we have to understand how we arrived at where we are. Carbon Societies explores the reasons why human societies have embarked on the trajectory of ever-increasing use of fossil fuels.

To sustain a growing population, more natural resources are required, but their use does not need to generate climate change. No logic of modernity links freedom with a kind of material abundance that requires the burning of fossil fuels. No logic of capital necessarily ties the search of profit to the extraction of fossil resources.

Examining the critical junctures in human history when resource regimes changed, Peter Wagner identifies the social problems that were meant to be solved by burning fossil fuels and the power hierarchies that shaped the decisions to use them. Wagner argues that the key choices that led the climate emergency were made relatively recently, during the second half of the 20th century: they are close enough in time for us to undo the prevailing social logic of fossil fuels. By redefining the key problems that humankind is facing and reshaping the existing mechanism of power, we can take the decisive action needed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and avert the worst consequences of climate change.