More and More and More

Fressoz's central move is to dismantle the idea of an "energy transition" as a historical pattern at all. Rather than coal replacing wood, and oil replacing coal, he documents how each new energy source has piled onto the last — global wood consumption, for instance, is higher today than in 1800, even after coal and oil arrived. Reviewers have highlighted his use of granular, sometimes startling data (whaling, tallow, colonial timber extraction) to unsettle the comforting narrative that humanity has smoothly upgraded its power sources over time. The book's implicit challenge to current decarbonization rhetoric is what gives it teeth: if past "transitions" were really additions, the assumption that renewables will simply displace fossil fuels rather than stack on top of them deserves far more scrutiny than it usually gets.