With the rise of coal power the producers who oversaw its development acquired the ability to
shut down energy systems a threat they used to build the first mass democracies. Oil offered
the West an alternative and with it came a new form of politics. Oil created a denatured
political life the central object of which—the economy—appeared capable of infinite growth.
What followed was a Western democracy dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. We now live
with the consequences: an impoverished political practice incapable of addressing the crises
that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy — namely the disappearance of cheap energy
and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. For the updated edition of this
classic title Timothy Mitchell has written a new preface reassessing its arguments in the
light of recent political events.
