Storage with Fossil Fuels

This chapter explores the origin of fossil fuels and their roles in powering modern industrial economies. The purpose of this chapter is not to examine the multitude of geopolitical misadventures and the environmental destruction due to fossil fuel extraction, nor to promote a discourse on ‘strategic realism’. Indeed, the very reason for these outcomes is the critical importance of oil to civilization. Rather, the purpose is to seek to understand why the biophysical properties of fossil fuels have been so critical to enabling contemporary society.