Birmingham University (UK) has seen fit to publicise an article by Jean-Francois Mouhot from the Modern History Department entitled, ‘Free the Planet,’ which is published in the journal History Today. The University Media Release follows:
Slaves to Fossil Fuels – a Dangerous Warning from History
A historian has drawn uncomfortable parallels between our current attitudes to fossil fuels and climate change and the behaviour of mid 19th century slave owners, with worrying predictions for the future.
Jean-Francois Mouhot, from the University of Birmingham, calls for a recognition of “the evil of continuing to live as we currently do.” Comparing the attitude of slave owners with our modern day attitudes to oil says Mouhot, is valid and useful, because so many people acknowledge that owning slaves is wrong.
Mouhot says: “It is almost impossible in our contemporary world to live without relying on some sort of energy of the fossil variety. We are perhaps as much victims as culprits of a consumer society. However, our moral duty once we become aware of the evil of the system is to resist it.”
In an article for History Today, Mouhot claims that there a more similarities between current attitudes to oil, gas and coal and those of slave owners that might immediately be perceived. His comparison rests on the premise that it is a feature of human nature to take advantage of having someone or something else to work for them for free or at a small cost, even if it came at a high moral cost.
Looking at the impact on human suffering, beyond the obvious pain caused by slavery, large-scale burning of fossil fuels is inflicting global suffering, in terms of the environmental impacts of droughts, flooding, threats to crop yields and the displacement of large numbers of people.
Mouhot calls for an honest recognition of the damage being done to the planet and humanity, and warns of the dangers of ignoring the powerful lessons of the past.
“We all want to identify with abolitionists, but at the same time we know that the slave owner in each of us will want to resist change. Our abundant energy gives us an extraordinary power but we should never forget that power corrupts.
“If we do not change, our generation, and our children’s generation will pay heavily for the consequences of our reckless activity.”
Jean-Francois Mouhot’s article Free the Planet is published in the August issue of History Today, and is available online at www.historytoday.com.
Ends
History Today: Free the Planet
Jean-François Mouhot traces a link between climate change and slavery, and suggests that reliance on fossil fuels has made slave owners of us all.
Most of us approach slavery with the underlying assumption that our modern civilization is morally far superior to the barbaric slave-owning societies of the past. But are we really so different? If we compare our current attitude to fossil fuels and climate change with the behaviour of the slave owners, there are more similarities than one might immediately perceive.
Historians have long argued that there are numerous links between the commerce of slaves and the Industrial Revolution. Slavery encouraged early industrial production in a circular way, by channelling demand for goods and providing capital for investments. The slave trade stimulated production: slaves were exchanged against goods produced by manufacturers in Europe, such as textiles or firearms; the demand for padlocks and fetters to chain slaves represented a significant market for burgeoning industrial cities like Birmingham. Goods grown by slave labour and exported by planters helped create the first mass consumer markets and made Europe dependent on imported commodities. Plantation agriculture also resembled the ‘factories in the field’ that prefigured the manufacturers of the future. Finally – though the importance of this phenomenon is still debated – some of the capital accumulated by slave traders and planters fuelled investment in new machinery, which helped to kick start the Industrial Revolution. Slave traders therefore played a significant – if perhaps indirect – role in the establishment of the industrialist system at the core ….
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Just another pig ignorant oxygen thief trying to make a name for himself out of the current madness.
Eyrie; there is hope for you here “Jet pack maker wows US”
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24103510-663,00.html
“Jetpack” mastermind Glenn Martin was always hell-bent on danger, one of his school friends says.
Dunedin man Peter Mackenzie attended Kaikorai Valley High School with Mr Martin (48) and remained friendly with him when the pair studied at the University of Otago in the late 1970s.
Mr Mackenzie yesterday described Mr Martin as a super-smart “adrenaline junkie”.
“He loved dangerous things – motorbikes, kayaking, white-water rafting, rally cars. He was always making things . . . building kayaks or putting on the crash helmet and rallying.”
Mr Martin’s love of danger was combined with exceptional intelligence.
“He was always the smartest kid in the class, and was a little bit naughty too, but I guess that was just your typical boy.”
Mr Martin’s efforts at making things were not always without drama.
As a teenager, he nearly burned down his parents’ Taieri Rd, Dunedin, home while building a kayak in the basement workshop,when he left a welding torch on and he went for a cup of tea.
A biography on Mr Martin’s company website says he disassembled and put back together his mother’s broken vacuum cleaner at the age of 3, proudly plugging it in and blowing the “entire electrical grid of his town”.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/15658/jetpack-inventor-039smartest-kid-class039
At 100k $ the race is on for some one to break their neck in a private burst for “freedom” however the www videos are quite sobering.
“Historians have long argued that there are numerous links between the commerce of slaves and the Industrial Revolution..”
That’s a false statement. Only Marxist revisionists link modern industrial capitalism to slavery. It’s the central tenet of their class warfare dogma. Classic Marxism was based on envy and a sense of conspiracy. Workers were cast as slaves. Naturally, they manufactured a historical dialectic to connect the dots.
In fact, the collapse of slavery coincides with rise of the industrialization, and was driven by the rise of a literate bourgeois with the time to contemplate the morality of existence and then demand abolition. Slavery was crushed out by the free enterprise paradigm, not fostered by it.
To imagine that Portuguese slavers led to the rise of the Industrial Era is the equivalent of claiming they were the founding fathers of the European Union. Rubbish.
Paradoxically, the ideological paradigm that Jean-Francois Mouhot is upgrading for use in the climate debate led to the mass murder of over 100 million people and enslaved 100’s of million more in the 20 th century. Lest we forget.
The point that he is trying to make is that oil gives everyone who uses it the equivelent of 20 or 30 slaves. Nobody is making a moral judgement of slavery or comparing modern life to slavery.
The point is that fossil fuels enables our lifestyle in the same way slaves gave the few people that owned them a lifestyle that they would not have had if they did not have slaves.
Fossil fuels are a much better resource than slavery hence the reason that they took over so swiftly and slavery could be relegated to the horror that it was. However the attitude of the slave owners would have been similar to ours today. Morally they knew that slavery was wrong however they did not want to give up the lifestyles that they had become accustomed to that were only possible by enslaving humans.
Similarly people that actually read and understand the science accept that using fossil fuels could have an adverse affect on the planet and fossil fuels, especially oil, are finite resources that will fail meet the demand of everybody having 20 slaves one day.
Jean-Francois Mouhot, from the University of Birmingham, calls for a recognition of “the evil of continuing to live as we currently do.”
However, our moral duty once we become aware of the evil of the system is to resist it.”
“the slave owner in each of us will want to resist change.”
“Looking at the impact on human suffering, beyond the obvious pain caused by slavery, large-scale burning of fossil fuels is inflicting global suffering, in terms of the environmental impacts of droughts, flooding, threats to crop yields and the displacement of large numbers of people.”
“Our abundant energy gives us an extraordinary power but we should never forget that power corrupts.”
I’d say it’s pretty clear he’s making a moral judgement about modern life.
Wat happened to your reading comprehension, Ender?
As if we holocaust deniers would morally know that using fossil fuels was wrong!
Sheesh!
As for you Ender, do you drive an IC powered car? Does your house use electricity from the grid generated from coal of all things? I believe the answer is yes which makes you one big hypocrite! Stop using this technology you so despise right now! Otherwise shut the F! up!
You’re still making no sense, Gavin.
The jetpack is about what I thought it would be when I heard of it a month ago. It badly needs a fly-by-wire/autostabilisation system. Dealing with the black areas in the flight envelope will be interesting and I’m trying to figure a use for the thing which isn’t already occupied by some other flying machine.
Eyrie: “I’m trying to figure a use for the thing which isn’t already occupied by some other flying machine.”
How about strapping ’em on the backs of our resident hysterics (Luke, Ender, Gavin, SJT), wedging the throttle on full and giving them a little shove to set them on their way! Perhaps they can find some warming in the mid-troposphere on their way through. God knows the satellites and weather balloons haven’t!
Eyrie – “I’d say it’s pretty clear he’s making a moral judgement about modern life.”
Only if you have a chip on your shoulder about it.
Mark – “As for you Ender, do you drive an IC powered car? Does your house use electricity from the grid generated from coal of all things? I believe the answer is yes which makes you one big hypocrite! Stop using this technology you so despise right now!”
The answer to all these questions is yes – I am as guilty as anyone and I have never said anything different. Also I do not despise the technology – it is simply becoming the wrong type of technology and we have to change. Right at the moment I am not in a position to do anything different and therein lies the problem. For everybody the only real solution is to incremetally change to renewable energy and electric transportation which I am trying to get done in my own small way.
In a few years I will have an electric car, one is hopefully being sold in Australia soon, will have my house off the grid and onto solar and wind and will continue campaigning for renewable energy and alternative transportation.
“Otherwise shut the F! up!”
And of course this is the brownshirts usual response – shut the fuck up and toe the line or we will deal with you. Well thank you Mark for displaying your real intentions and motivations.
‘History Today’ used to be a great magazine.
Don’t be too hard on this guy, it’s very difficult being an academic – all he’s trying to do is differentiate himself from the rest. There’s so many of them these days, all trying to make a crust.
Ender, did you hear the interview with Allan Jones on Radio National’s Saturday Extra last weekend about power generation in Woking UK? Very good.
Slaves had a pretty good lifestyle – as long as they did their assigned work they were fed and looked after.
Freedom means the choice of starving or of being unable to work, among other matters.
bikerider,
yeah, he sounds a bit desperate for an angle.
Gavin,
This would be more useful.
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
“The point that he is trying to make is that oil gives everyone who uses it the equivelent of 20 or 30 slaves.”
No, Ender, that was the point that I made. Although, it’s probably more like 50 to a 100 slaves or more. The Industrial age liberated the slaves. Now we all live like princes.
“Nobody is making a moral judgement of slavery or comparing modern life to slavery.”
You are either brain dead or mendacious. Which is it?
“Slaves had a pretty good lifestyle – as long as they did their assigned work they were fed and looked after.”
Exactly like in the Soviet Union or China under Mao.
“Freedom is Slavery” — A Newspeak slogan from Jean-Francois Mouhot, er, I mean, George Orwell’s novel 1984, which is unfortunately becoming more and more relevant, which each passing day.
The dumb turd just doesn’t get it. The oil freed millions of slaves, millions more serfs and millions of beasts of burden. In fact, if it were not for oil a good many contributors to this blog would be living in an abject squalor befitting their capacity for work and their application of common sense.
To place oil on the same moral footing as slavery merely emphasises the guys remoteness from the true nature of the condition and his ignorance of how poverty was, and still is, overcome.
But typical for an ‘arts bogan’, he is unable to distinguish between fact, assumption and moral construct, blurring them all in an incoherent ramble worthy of a degree written on toilet paper.
Is this another veiled gimmick lobbying for Obama?
And Moses approacheth the Phareoh of Egypt and demandeth of him “let my oil go”.
Wes,
I don’t think you could call the Russians and Chinese as slaves during those times – that’s even a bit extravagant for you.
Louis,
In the context of Mouhot’s thesis that economic freedom is slavery, then you are correct, economic slavery must be freedom.
Wes,
Oh, right, (brain frazzled at the moment – been one of “those” days).
True RWDB I am, I never read Mouhot’s thesis so I would have missed your point.
Slave to fossil fuels – also much like saying we are slaves to air. Some life forms oxidise carbon for energy, others reduce it – symbiotic relationships.
(Gawd I am sounding like Obiwan)
“Now we all live like princes”
Exactly, Wes. Except that some people aren’t satisfied with that. They want to live like princes while the rest life like serfs. The late Dr Petr Beckmann gave this as the only reason he could think of why the better off in society were so opposed to nuclear power in his book “The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear”.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
Titan is covered in oil. Huge lakes of the goo over 20km deep.
We can’t build a pipeline, but we can stamp confirmed on the theory of abiotic oil.
How does this change our persuit of the fuel, formerly knows as fossil, here on Earth?
I know there are limits to drilling, but what if there is a way to recharge those tapped out wells by cracking a seam that allows deeper mantle hydrocarbons to squeeze into the empty space left by the pumped out stuff?
There’s two seperate issues here that Mouhat has deliberately mixed together:
If mankind uses a resource that will harm our planet then it’s sensible to take avoiding action. In the case of Global Warming its looks like we can explain the recent rise in temperature due to naturally recurring climate variation (look at the historical record). And there’s no evidence that CO2 either casued warming or exacerbates it.
As to how the World shares and sustains its resources: well that a political and economic challenge – I suspect many AGW supporters believe that sustaining the unproved AGW can meet that aforementioned challenge.
It will be interesting to see what explanations there are for the origin of the hydrocarbons on Titan and why this wouldn’t apply to Earth.
There might even be significant quantities of hydrocarbons and water in the cold traps at the poles on Luna.
Mouhat draws a long bow. He’s assuming we’re responsible for the CO2 increase, that this will cause significant warming, that the warming will be harmful and that the warming will be mitigated by stopping the burning of fossil fuels.
Not one of these assumptions is certain.
James – “Titan is covered in oil. Huge lakes of the goo over 20km deep.
We can’t build a pipeline, but we can stamp confirmed on the theory of abiotic oil. ”
I do realise that you people jump to the most amazing conclusions from the slightest thread of speculation however this is one of the best.
First of all the ‘goo’ on Titan is tholins which are simple hydrocarbons and cannot be considered in any way shape or form to be oil.
Secondly for such free and independant thinker that you think that you are you seem to have a fantastic blind spot here. If there was oil on Titan who is to say that it was not created from life forms that exist there?
How about you put away the rubber stamp and engage the brain for a change.
M Mouhat might be able to rest easy in the near future, as carbon hogs wean themselves and become hydrogen hogs instead.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/anorak-fabric-a-boost-for-fuel-cells/2008/08/01/1217097479505.html
Bloody Aussies and Yanks now they appear to have democratised the freedom to enslave oneself in the race to 80 hour week with no fear of being caught short 10 years hence. Loving it! Next step, will it be taxed in carbon equivalents?
Ender
Titan’s surface temperature is -197 degrees Celsius – so your suggestion that the hydrocarbons on Titan might be due to life forms indicates an unfamiliarity with science.
In case you have not worked it out, marble, iron oxide and water under high pressure and temperature spontaneously forms hydrocarbons – and that is presumably how the hydrocarbons on Titan were formed.
The biotic explanation remains an anachronistic belief.
Louis – “Titan’s surface temperature is -197 degrees Celsius – so your suggestion that the hydrocarbons on Titan might be due to life forms indicates an unfamiliarity with science.”
I see Mr Free Thinker cannot get his head around the possibility of life at -197 deg. This is from a man who doesn’t believe in black holes, plate techtonics or AGW science.
“In case you have not worked it out, marble, iron oxide and water under high pressure and temperature spontaneously forms hydrocarbons”
Really? No-one has disputed this. What you can dispute is CRUDE OIL, not simple hydrocarbons, is from abiotic sources. Tholins are formed from UV irradiation of simple hydrocarbons. None of this is controversial.
Ender
It has to be a carbon based life form to produce hydrocarbons and observation of this life form on earth points a limited range of existence in terms of pressure and temperature.
As a scientists I can only deal with what we have data for.
As a non scientist you can imagine anything you want, and you seem to so without considering the implications of your ideas. Life on Titan? As we know it?
Crude oil is hydrocarbons – and the Russian experimental data produced complex hydrocarbons.
And Tholin is derived from pre-existing simple hydrocarbons which were formed from what? Bees in the Titanic atmosphere?
Of course Ender you are obliged to show evidence of life at -197 degrees Celsius, I not to disprove it.
I suspect too much gunga is your problem.
Louis – “I suspect too much gunga is your problem.”
Any more talk like this shithead and I will report you. This is more offensive than you could know.
Ah So
Direct hit.
Like I posted before,
I AM the exocet KID
Ender
Like most, you underestimate me at your peril.
Now you know.
Near as I can tell, Tholin is derived from Carl Sagan’s need to talk about fossil fuels in outer space.
Carl Sagan also proposed the CO2 Greenhouse effect to explain Venus’ obsereved temperature. Before that Venus was considered to be a balmy, equitable sister planet. Ender would have felt quite at home though I suspect his batteries might have had a few thermal issues, (that is the right term, I hope).
Fossil fuel in outer space – you really have to be spaced out to think that of that idea – just imagine – instead of a dog in a sputnik, we could have witnessed a dinosaur soaring into outerspace in an appropriate, sustainable, ecologically sensitive saurian saucer.
The energy equivalent of 150L of oil is required to manufacture JUST the nitrogen fertilizer alone necessary to grow ONE HECTARE (or 3 tonne) of wheat.
That fact should scare you. It scares the bejeebers out of me and I am a farmer …
Interesting advertisement on this page – who is to blame for the $4 gas price.
Actually the monetary policies of the US Fed – credit expansion, coupled with Wall Street speculation. Not the Arabs, not Predident Bush, and BP? the government owned oil company?
It also occurs to me that those who proselytise Peak Oil theory are better described as shills for big oil. Who benefits? Amazing – Exxon-Mobil is pilloried for making a profit but no one complains about the government oil companies raking in the same profit.
So if gubmint makes a roaring profit out of oil – this is OK, but if an individual does, this is wrong.
Wierd logic.
Aaron
Are you saying that without oil we can’t grow the wheat and all the implications that has?
Louis: “Are you saying that without oil we can’t grow the wheat and all the implications that has?”
Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he is and he’s right.
Jan,
In addition the amount of oil products I use just to do mineral exploration – no diesel, no go period!
It’s ok Louis, Jan and Aaron, Ender’s mob are going to use solar powered tractors (with interchangeable battery packs that only take a few seconds to swap} and 10x per plant spacing and have promised me, honest, they won’t suck off our food supplies. Oh, and they say they don’t mind paying 10x current food prices. Honest.
They will fund this with the leftovers of their super, no problemo!
Solar powered tractors – hmmm, ox towing plough? Standard farming method in India and other 3rd world countries.