Each year, fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) are consumed in ever-greater quantities, despite the danger of global warming, which makes such large-scale consump-tion unsustainable. The facts of consumption growth are at odds with ever more insistent claims that we are moving to a post-fossil-fuel era. Clearly, the causes of consumption growth are very strong. The purpose of this book is to put them into historical perspective.The book covers the period since 1950, because it was in the second half of the twentieth century that fossil fuel consumption expanded to levels associated with dangerous global warming. The fossil fuel industries had taken a central place in rich countries’ economies long before that, and taken their toll on humans and on the natural environment they live in. Tens of thousands of coal miners were burned, buried alive, gassed, blown up or otherwise killed in the production process.