I'm reading Fossil Capital by Andreas Malm right now. It's an aggressive text based on his doctoral thesis on the development of a fossil fuel-based economy. He's pretty coy with his ultimate thesis but as it stands right now he seems to be laying extensive groundwork to allege that the mass adoption of fossil fuels wasn't some natural market force based on efficiencies, but that they were ultimately adopted by the capitalist class because they had unique features of delivering power to factories that permitted the capitalists to have greater power over markets and workers.

I do like how when I read Malm he's always one step ahead of me, like I'll be reading his argument and I'll be like 'hmm, yeah OK but this argument seems to completely ignore X' and then the chapter will end with something like 'but of course the question remains about X' and the next chapter is entirely about X.