In Extinction, Dawson noted, "Some thousands of years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals" [including] "mammoths, saber-toothed tigers" and "armadillos the size of automobiles" Wouldn't it be ironic, he seems to say, if we went the way of armadillos because of our automobile's mammoth reliance on fossil fuels. In the introduction to People's Power, Dawson writes, "the cities and nations of the world must cease burning fossil fuels if we are to avert looming planetary ecocide."
Of all the forces in nature we can be said to be most intimate with, even if we aren't aware of it, or still lack full understanding when we are, it is electricity. Who hasn't looked up at a sheet lightning storm and not exclaimed, "Look, mommy, it's like the brain's activity." And she responds, "Pass the bong and roll down the window before the locusts get in" And, of course, we are all familiar (in the West) with the story of Mary Wollstonecraft's Frankenstein monster, an amalgam of body parts, finally re-animated with the good doctor's best juice. "F*ck me," said the monster, "I was having such a tender sleep, after that ordeal on the electric chair. Damned if I'm dead, damned if I'm not. And, I'm told, no ice floes to run to." Hmph. That's the way we'll all be one day, when we join the hivemind.
But seriously, we only began to understand and harness electricity about 250 years ago beginning with Ben Franklin's key-kite experiment, then on to Luigi Galvani's discoveries about bioelectromagnetics, and then, not long after, English scientist Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821. According to Dawson, these activities with electricity had led to three massive economic and social upheavals:
The world has undergone two major transformations in energy regimes since the onset of the Industrial Revolution: the rise of coal in the nineteenth century, replacing a capitalist system fueled by wind and water power, followed by the rise and global diffusion of oil in the twentieth century.
The third transformation, hopes Dawson, is underway with the Green energy revolution. But will it be in time?
Fossil-Capitalism: It's the worst marriage of all time, as far as Dawson's concerned; it's even worse when democracy's the mistress to Capital. Lots of hanky-panky and shifty bottom lines between the sheets with this menage à trois. In the Fossil Capitalist Death Spiral chapter, Dawson says we reached the end of that spiral in 2008 when the TARP bailout money, following the collapse on Wall Street that almost brought down the global economy, was used for more evil, instead, "[T]he Great Recession of 2008 that ended up driving a fracking bonanza. This shift...constitutes the financialization of fossil capitalism."
Dawson blames Obama and his swaggering tongue, in no small measure. He remembers a rousing speech Obama gave during his campaign to the Detroit Economic Club in 2007, during which the future president invoked the spirit of FDR, and the retooling of the auto industry during the war to fight fascism overseas. Obama called the shift a "miracle" and, writes Dawson, added that it was the kind of miracle required in America ASAP:
Obama declared, "the country that faced down the tyranny of fascism and communism is now called to challenge the tyranny of oil. For the very resource that has fueled our way of life over the last hundred years now threatens to destroy it if our generation does not act now and act boldly."
It sure sounded hope and change.
But Dawson sees Obama's public words as part of "a pattern" that featured lip-service but no real action. He proposed
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