ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with an explanation and discussion of cultural theory. It then orients the cultural theory to energy and environmental theories. The book looks at the field of scientific analysis of climate change. It suggests that the UK's natural traditional hierarchical tendencies may be conducive to nuclear power, only to see its late twentieth-century turn towards economic liberalism and individualism constrain possibilities for nuclear power. The book shows that the overweening feature of the state is hierarchical in China. It also looks at developmental state, South Africa, where a pattern of egalitarian and individualist pressures for renewable energy is confronted by hierarchy in the form of the dominant electricity monopoly. The book argues that egalitarian, green, cultural pressures have dominated in producing energy supply outcomes in low carbon sources of energy.
