Sep 20, 2025
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This is an episode that fundamentally challenges the way I've
thought about tackling climate change. I've always understood the
history of energy as a history of transition. We went from burning
a lot of wood to then burning a lot of coal, then moving from coal
to mostly oil, then oil plus gas. But our guest today,
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, says that thinking is totally wrong. Instead
of undergoing a series of energy transitions, where one form of
energy largely replaces the other, history shows much more addition
to substraction. The result: we keep burning and consuming more and
more and more of everything. He argues the very idea of transition
is a lie.
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science and technology. In
his new book,
More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of
Energy, he argues not that an energy transition is impossible,
but that we simply have never seen anything like it before. He
notes that the relationship between different forms of energy is
based on symbiosis, not competition, and as. a result greater
consumption of all energy has just led to more of everything being
used. So how did the idea of the energy transition take hold? Why
is it still a salient concept in public energy discourse today?
Jean-Baptiste explains. We also discuss how the fossil fuel
industry has taken hold of this concept and used it to slow down
action on climate change.
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science and technology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is the author of The Happy Apocalypse and The Shock of the Anthropocene. Read More and More and More.
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