Fueling Mexico
Energy and Environment, 1850–1950

Germán Vergara explains how, when, and why fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) became the basis of Mexican society.

Germán Vergara (Author)

9781108831277, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 June 2021

336 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.6 cm, 0.65 kg

'Vergara's book is one of the most accomplished examples of contemporary energy historiography and sets a very high standard for future works. It is required reading to understand the inter-connection of energy and the environment, the development of industrialisation, and the dangers brought on by rampant resource exploitation and ecological destruction.' Gerardo Sánchez Nateras, Journal of Energy History

Around the 1830s, parts of Mexico began industrializing using water and wood. By the 1880s, this model faced a growing energy and ecological bottleneck. By the 1950s, fossil fuels powered most of Mexico's economy and society. Looking to the north and across the Atlantic, late nineteenth-century officials and elites concluded that fossil fuels would solve Mexico's energy problem and Mexican industry began introducing coal. But limited domestic deposits and high costs meant that coal never became king in Mexico. Oil instead became the favored fuel for manufacture, transport, and electricity generation. This shift, however, created a paradox of perennial scarcity amidst energy abundance: every new influx of fossil energy led to increased demand. Germán Vergara shows how the decision to power the country's economy with fossil fuels locked Mexico in a cycle of endless, fossil-fueled growth - with serious environmental and social consequences.

1. Introduction: Energy, environment, and history
2. 1850s: Solar society
3. The nature of growth
4. Searching for rocks
5. The other revolution
6. 1950s: Fossil-fueled society
Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Environmental economics [KCN], Society & social sciences [J], History of the Americas [HBJK]