Ending the fossil fuel era / edited by Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela L. Martin.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The problem / Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela L. Martin -- The biophysical : the decline in energy returned on energy invested, net energy, and marginal benefits / Jack P. Manno and Stephen B. Balogh -- The cultural : the magic, the vision, the power ; The ethical : a fossil fuel ethic / Thomas Princen -- Leaving oil under the Amazon : the Yasuní-ITT initiative as a postpetroleum model? / Pamela L. Martin -- Appalachia coal : the campaign to end mountaintop removal mining / Laura A. Bozzi -- El Salvador gold : toward a mining ban / Robin Broad and John Cavanagh -- Slowing uranium in Australia : lessons for urgent transition beyond coal, gas, and oil / James Goodman and Stuart Rosewarne -- The future would have to give way to the past : Germany and the coal dilemma / Tom Morton -- Heating up and cooling down the petrostate : the Norwegian experience / Helge Ryggvik and Berit Kristoffersen -- The good life (sumak kawsay) and the good mind (ganigonhi:oh) : indigenous values and keeping fossil fuels in the ground / Jack P. Manno and Pamela L. Martin -- Exit strategies / Thomas Princen and Adele Santana -- On the way down : fossil fuel politics in the twenty-first century / Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela L. Martin.

Not so long ago, people North and South had little reason to believe that wealth from oil, gas, and coal brought anything but great prosperity. But the presumption of net benefits from fossil fuels is eroding as widening circles of people rich and poor experience the downside. A positive transition to a post-fossil fuel era cannot wait for global agreement, a swap-in of renewables, a miracle technology, a carbon market, or lifestyle change. This book shows that it is now possible to take the first step toward the post-fossil fuel era, by resisting the slow violence of extreme extraction and combustion, exiting the industry, and imagining a good life after fossil fuels. It shows how an environmental politics of transition might occur, arguing for going to the source rather than managing byproducts, for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, for engaging a politics of deliberately choosing a post-fossil fuel world. Six case studies reveal how individuals, groups, communities, and an entire country have taken first steps out of the fossil fuel era, with experiments that range from leaving oil under the Amazon to ending mountaintop removal in Appalachia.