Energy and the Anthropocene: Security Challenges and Solutions

Abstract

This paper explores the role that energy regimes, and the search for energy security, has had in shaping humans and their societies, and the effects thereof. Energy enrollments through the domestication of plants and animals and the extraction and burning of increasingly energy-rich fuels enabled humans to build ever more productive and formidable societies, but also more complex and divided ones. Social stratification, combined with the new risks caused by the more intense interactions and entanglements that emerged between humans and nature, has culminated in the global environmental crises that humans are now facing. We conclude by arguing that an escape route from the destructive consequences that fossil fuel energy regimes have had for humans and their ecological security is provided by the emergence of electrical civilizations and the potential this provides for integrating energy and ecological securities.

Keywords: energy, security, anthropocene

JEL Classification: Q20, Q01