Until the Last Ton: Fossil Fuels in India from Empire to the Climate Crisis

A panoramic historical account of India’s ascent in the global fossil economyIndia is today one of the world’s largest producers and consumers of fossil fuels, driving new investments in the global fossil economy and achieving record-breaking levels of coal extraction at home.As the planet burns from climate change, this entrenchment of fossil fuel dependence has left many searching for how we arrived at this point.Until the Last Ton provides a sweeping new appraisal of this planetary dilemma, uncovering how India became part of an emerging fossil capitalism that continues to shape the present. Matthew Shutzer recasts the origins of the fossil economy by showing how European industrialization unleashed a global search for fossil energy in the colonial world.Placing India at the center of this history, Shutzer traces how the highland forests of eastern India became early frontiers for global coal investment, transforming this landscape into the largest site of imperial overseas coal pro