Research seminar (HIST245, “Petrosylvania: Reckoning with Fossil Fuel”) led by Prof. Jared Farmer looks at Pennsylvania’s—and Penn’s—role in the fossil fuel economy and, by extension, climate change.
Fossil fuel powered the making of the modern world. As America’s original fossil-fuel state, Pennsylvania ushered the United States into the current energy-intensive economy.
“In the opening stages of the fossil fuel world we live in now, it was all about Pennsylvania,” says historian Jared Farmer. “The original oil boom in the world was here; the high-quality anthracite that was the best fuel source of the 19th century was almost exclusively in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has a kind of planetary importance.”
The state’s role in laying the groundwork for our current climate crisis inspired Farmer to make his first class at Penn a seminar called Petrosylvania, which he describes as a historical accounting and an ethical reckoning of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Read the full article from Penn Today: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/petrosylvania-americas-first-fossil-fuel-state