ABSTRACT
The history of human civilization has been strongly influenced by climatic events. For years now, a growing body of scientific work has been analysing in detail nature’s role in global history (McNeill 2012). From the ice ages to the ‘medieval climate optimum’ around the first millennium, changes in temperature have had an undeniable effect on how people interacted within as well as between specific regions (Glaser 2008). There is also no doubt that the way humans have used energy is a significant determinant of history, and although fossil fuels were used elsewhere as well, its massive exploitation was one element fuelling the Industrial Revolution and Europe’s, and later on the United States’ (US) and the Soviet Union’s, global ascendency (Stokes and Raphael 2010). It is thus no surprise that academic as well as popular works speak of ‘Climate Wars’ (Welzer 2008) or ‘Blood Oil’ (Wenar 2016) to highlight the political aspects of climate and energy.
