Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan
Book cover

More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. Jeremy Walker

    1. Climate Justice Research Centre Social & Political Sciences, School of Communication, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, Australia

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Makes a highly relevant contribution to knowledge on the mutual histories of ecology, economics and energy

  • Illuminates contemporary aporias in the conduct of energy, climate and environmental policy

  • Scrutinises the metaphorical affinities that both disciplines have derived from the ‘hard sciences’ in terms of the social values encoded therein

  • Pays close attention to the historical evolution of disciplines and the constant hybridization between economic and environmental discourses

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
    Download chapter PDF

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 341-374
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book traces the interacting histories of the disciplines of ecology and economics, from their common origin in the ancient Greek concept of oikonomia, through their distinct encounters with energy physics, to the current obstruction of neoliberal economics to responses to the ecological and climate crisis of the so-called Anthropocene. Reconstructing their constitution as separate sciences in the era of fossil-fuelled industrial capitalism, the book offers an explanation of how the ecological sciences have moved from a position of critical collision with mainstream economics in the 1970s, to one of collusion with the project of permanent growth, in and through the thermal crisis of the biosphere.

Reviews

"We live in a world of rapid, irreversible environmental change. The interplay of fire, life, atmosphere and land now constrain and propel humanity’s destiny.  How have we arrived at this situation?  Jeremy Walker presents a fascinating, insightful argument that the answer lies in the historical tensions between ecology and economics in broader political debates about resource use and fossil fuel combustion." (David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, Director of the Fire Centre Research Hub, University of Tasmania, Australia)

"Neoliberal proposals for re-organizing the global economy rose to prominence in parallel with the emergence of a consciousness of the global economy’s material limits. Jeremy Walker has written the first book devoted to the fraught relationship between neoliberal economics and ecology—an essential contribution to today’s most pressing discussions." (Quinn Slobodian, Associate Professor of History, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA)

"Blazing a trail between photosynthesis and pyrotechnology, Walker guides us masterfully through the making of today’s global thermo-industrial catastrophe." (Nigel Clark, Professor, Chair of Social Sustainability, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK)


Authors and Affiliations

  • Climate Justice Research Centre Social & Political Sciences, School of Communication, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, Australia

    Jeremy Walker

About the author

Jeremy Walker is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences and a member of the Climate Justice Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (University of New South Wales), a Bachelor of Communications (Social Inquiry, Hons, UTS) and a PhD (History and Philosophy of Science, UTS). 

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation