Energy capitals: local impact, global influences

Abstract

Energy capitals: local impact, global influences, edited by Joseph A. Pratt, Martin V. Melosi, and Kathleen A. Brosnan, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014, xx + 266 pp., US$25.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8229-6266-3 When considering the effects of intensive production and consumption of fossil fuels, the first mental map that likely comes to mind is global in scale. It is possibly a Robinson, maybe a Mollweide, or perhaps a Gall-Peters if cartographic beauty remains unconsidered, but it is nevertheless planetary in scope. This is understandable because fossil fuels are key commodities used worldwide and the impacts of their burning, such as climate change, are typically framed as global environmental issues. Yet, the result of such thinking tends to make the world, its countries, and its regions appear monolithic, divided between the producers (Middle East or OPEC) and consumers (Global North countries), which leaves wanting a view into the localized expressions, especially in cities, of production and consumption. Energy Capitals: Local Impact, Global Influence takes this into consideration in its approach and examines how fossil fuels become focused and interwoven within the urbanization trajectories of nine case study cities from across the throughout the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. Specifically, as the editors intend, this book examines the intersection of fossil-fuel production and use and urbanization in specific locations around the world (p. xi). The scope of this volume, the result of a symposium on and urbanization, draws together contributions from and to environmental history, cultural geography, and economics, but is limited topically, in terms of energy, to fossil fuels and their effects on cities. Thus, the volume defines its object of analysis as an energy capital or a city that is or has been heavily involved in the production and consumption of fossil fuels ranging from oil to natural gas to coal and whose society, economy, landscapes, and environment have been changed dramatically in the process. The editors usefully divide the book into three sections that are broadly defined by the outcomes of each place's engagement with energy-based development: those that grew from direct use of local fossil fuels, those that became remote centers of the economy, and those subject to the resource curse of oil. This division helps suggest broader takeaways from the entire reading of the volume and may orient readers to particular sections of the book that may pique their interest. The first section gives an account on how the capitals of Pittsburgh, PA, Houston, TX, Baton Rouge-to-New Orleans, LA, and Los Angeles, CA, each embraced locally available fossil fuels for economic and urban development. The authors of these chapters soberly depict how these American capitals rode measured economic successes through boom-bust cycles of fossil fuel development while managing the often severe environmental costs in their urban growth. …