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Simon Pirani

Researcher, lecturer and writer + + + Honorary Professor, University of Durham

Saturday, 30 March 2019

Seeking a future free of fossil fuels: why the past matters

"Fossil fuels are not consumed by an undifferentiated humanity. They are consumed by people living in specific social and economic relations with each other: predominantly, in the late 20th century capitalist economy. That economy’s expansion is the framework within which fuel consumption has grown. The technological systems that are the largest fuel consumers – electricity systems, urban transport systems and built environments, military systems, and so on – are controlled by small groups of people, in the context of broader relations of wealth and power." - my blog post for the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College, London
Posted by Simon Pirani at 08:41 No comments:

Tracing patterns of unsustainable fossil fuel use

"Most fossil fuels are consumed not by individuals, but by and through large technological systems, such as electricity networks, urban transport systems, built environments, and industrial and agricultural systems. While the media offers plenty of advice on how individuals can cut consumption, how to transform or supersede these technological systems is much less obvious. These unsustainable systems are deeply embedded in day-to-day life." My article in The Conversation.
Posted by Simon Pirani at 08:37 No comments:

Friday, 8 March 2019

We Need to Live Differently

My article in Roar magazine … "The international climate talks process has produced and reproduced its own discourse, cut off from the world where 16 of the 17 hottest years ever recorded were in the last twenty years — and where school pupils, from Australia to Sweden to Belgium, go on strike about it. It is welcome that school pupils are not only urging governments to declare a 'climate emergency' — which seems like the very least they could do — but are also seeking ways to take matters into their own hands, by demanding to learn climate science."
Posted by Simon Pirani at 08:25 No comments:
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Welcome

I am a researcher, writer and lecturer, and author of Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto Press, 2018). My main area of research is the transition away from fossil fuels, with a focus on how technological, social and economic systems change. I write a blog at peoplenature.org. Bluesky: @simonpirani.bsky.social.

My earlier work as a historian and energy researcher was focused on Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries. My book The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new communist elite (Routledge, 2008) was a study of working-class political history. I published some relevant documents in Communist Dissidents in Early Soviet Russia (Troubadour, 2023). Another book, Change in Putin’s Russia: Power, Money and People (Pluto Press, 2010) was based on my work as a journalist.

I am Honorary Professor in the School of Modern Languages & Cultures at the University of Durham. From 2007 to 2021 I was Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, working on the Natural Gas Research Programme.


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      • Seeking a future free of fossil fuels: why the pas...
      • Tracing patterns of unsustainable fossil fuel use
      • We Need to Live Differently
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