‘Inequality is part of our fossil fuel regime — urban users gain, rural producers pay the cost’

Christopher Jones is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he discusses hidden chapters in America’s energy transition:
What is the core of your research?I am a historian of energy, environment and economics. I’m broadly interested in the relationships between human societies and the energy systems they use and how such modern energy systems fuelled types of economic growth that were never seen before on Earth. I focus also on how these systems can be made more sustainable for a long-term thriving future.


You write of America’s unprecedented turn to fossil fuels in the early 20th century — what drove this?
I’d emphasise the role of transport systems here. When I studied the USA’s first fossil fuel transition, what stood out was how far most of the places people derived this energy were from where people ended up using it. Secondly, while it wasn’t simple to mine or drill, the real struggle was building ways of moving energy in reliable and scalable steps to where consumers lived — that came down to canals and pipelines which shipped oil and wires which transmitted electricity. Understanding our energy systems looks different when you put those transport networks front and centre.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND: As a planetary crisis driven by fossil fuels intensifies, energy materiality grows central — urban consumers (R) should recognise where gas, oil and coal are mined (L) and see the consequences of doing so. Picture courtesy: iStock


You write of energy’s benefits in the US being very unequal — why was this?
Inequality has been endemic to our fossil fuel regime — it goes back to where power is extracted and where it gets used. The regions which produce energy benefit far less than the places which consume it. The big cities of the US eastern seaboard grew tremendously during the era of fossil fuel expansion — New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore boomed, with many profitable industries benefitting. But people in rural areas bore very real costs of mining, from industrial accidents to health impacts. Bringing coal and oil up from underground leached toxic minerals into their water supplies and damaged their lands. These people had to face much more of the costs of these energy systems than consumers who were far away.

STARS & PIPES: Oil travels over the US. Picture courtesy: iStock



You chronicle America’s first energy transition as being marked by ‘fraud, failure and frustration’ — why so?
I was trying to capture how in the early transition to fossil fuels, it was remarkably hard to get consumers to even want these — I think this is an analogy to today when we are still in the early stages of the renewable energy transition. When coal and oil first emerged, people were quite uncertain about them — they were also very unsure about having constantly running electricity through the walls of their houses. It took a long time to convince people this was safe. Certain coals wouldn’t burn well and some opened fire. Switching from woodfire to coal also meant getting costly stoves and abandoning the pleasant smell and light wood offered. Similarly, oil, used in lanterns, was often poorly refined and exploded. At the start, these energy transitions were not as obvious as they seem in retrospect — people had to work to convince consumers to try them.

I wrote about ‘fraud’ apropos America’s first coal transition which happened with anthracite coal which is very hard to burn. It’s above 90% carbon — to light it, you need a very hot fire and air to go through this in a particular way. Since consumers didn’t know how to do this, some of the first coal merchants were accused of being fraudsters selling useless black stone.

ROOTS: Once, ‘energy’ meant plants. Picture courtesy: iStock


We imagine energy as being abstract — what does its ‘materiality’ mean?

Before fossil fuels, almost all our energy came from plants, like those we grew to feed ourselves, our animals — which were then used for labour — or trees which were burnt for heat and cooking. Energy was mostly local — you grew this near you. So, people’s connection to it was very different.

With the materiality of fossil fuel systems, there are absolutely enormous networks that are behind the scenes when we press a switch or refuel a car. The modern world has been designed around making energy easy to access — but energy only seems ‘invisible’ when you’ve built huge systems of pipes, wires and terminals across landscapes. Energy can also seem abstract when those using it don’t have to see the consequences of producing it — people lighting their homes in New York aren’t seeing the West Virginia mountains being cleared for coal.

What does your term ‘petromyopia’ mean?
Many analysts equate energy only with oil — for much of the 20th century, oil has arguably been the most attractive energy source. It’s dramatic, tied to geopolitics and appears in cultural forms like movies. Yet, I’ve found oil has never been more than 35% of global energy consumption. Human societies use many other energy sources which are just as foundational to how they live, work and play — petromyopia hides the ways coal, natural gas, biomass, animal power and human labour are essential parts of our energy systems.