Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil by Timothy Mitchell

It’s not exactly a festive read, but this analysis of the politics behind climate change deserves to be widely shared

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How much do you know about energy? How much do you care? I learned about electricity at school, and the Victorians and their coal mines. But A level history and half a history degree went by without, so far as I remember, a single minute’s discussion of the rise of oil.

I have a thrilling memory of candles in the kitchen during one of the power cuts of the 1970s, and of course I remember the miners’ strike. I revelled in the spectacle of the oil barons’ ball in Dallas. But energy was utterly peripheral to my sense of what history, politics and life were really about. When it was said that oil was behind the 1990-91 Gulf war, was in fact crucial to most of what went on in the Middle East, I didn’t know what to think.

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