Carbon

Carbon is the political challenge of our time. While critical to supporting life on Earth, too much carbon threatens to destroy life as we know it, with rising sea levels, crippling droughts, and catastrophic floods sounding the alarm on a future now upon us. How did we get here and what must be done? In this incisive book, Kate Ervine unravels carbon's distinct political economy, arguing that, to understand global warming and why it remains so difficult to address, we must go back to the origins of industrial capitalism and its swelling dependence on carbon-intensive fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – to grease the wheels of growth and profitability. Taking the reader from carbon dioxide as chemical compound abundant in nature to carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas, from the role of carbon in the rise of global capitalism to its role in reinforcing and expanding existing patterns of global inequality, and from carbon as object of environmental governance to carbon as tradable commodity, Ervine exposes emerging struggles to decarbonize our societies for what they are: battles over the very meaning of democracy and social and ecological justice.

Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 The Problem of Carbon Carbon as life Carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas A perilous path The inequality of climate change Notes 2 The Global Political Econ To grow or die The age of growth The politics of climate governance Conclusion Notes 3 Trading Carbon to Cool the World? What is carbon trading? Carbon trading: a history Knowing what we don’t know in the making of markets The political economy of carbon market design Conclusion Notes 4 Carbon Transitions The yellow brick road Where the grass may be greener The next chapter Notes 5 The Future of Carbon Politics Who am I? Catastrophic climate change and the role of the individual Lessons for the future Climate justice Notes Selected Readings Index