{"649073":{"#nid":"649073","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Vergara\u0027s New Book \u0027Fueling Mexico\u0027\u202fAims to\u202fAnswer a Childhood Question\u202f\u00a0","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGrowing up in the mountains outside of Mexico City,\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/hsoc.gatech.edu\/people\/person\/german-vergara\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EGerm\u0026aacute;n Vergara\u003C\/a\u003E\u202fwoke up every morning in fresh,\u202fclear\u202fair. But the city below him was always blanketed in smog, and he dreaded driving down into it for school.\u0026nbsp;One year the\u0026nbsp;pollution was so bad, he remembered, his school opened\u0026nbsp;late for weeks in a city-wide attempt to let the wind clear the air before students and families ventured into it.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026quot;It was just a fact of life,\u0026quot; said Vergara, now an\u0026nbsp;assistant professor in the\u202f\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/hsoc.gatech.edu\/\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003ESchool of History and Sociology.\u003C\/a\u003E\u202f\u0026quot;And for me, it was always astonishing that people kind of got used to the\u202fair\u202fpollution and saw it almost as normal and inevitable.\u0026quot;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EStill, he wondered why it had become so severe.\u202fSo, when Vergara began his Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley, he started reading about energy history. He studied the historians who traced how societies came to rely on fossil fuels and the sprawling implications of that dependency.\u202f\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026quot;I realized that nobody had done it for any country in Latin America,\u0026quot; he said, \u0026quot;and I thought, okay, this is a worthy story.\u0026quot;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ESix years later, his new book,\u202f\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/books\/fueling-mexico\/4C87E1F29BCA97B92CECB83FF6E52B18\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EFueling Mexico,\u003C\/a\u003E\u202ftells the story of energy history in Latin America for the first time.\u202fPublished on June 24, it\u202fexplores the people, policies, and decisions that catapulted Mexico from wood to coal to the oil dependency they face today.\u202f\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch2\u003EWhy fossil fuels?\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EFueling Mexico\u003C\/em\u003E\u202ffocuses on a critical juncture in Mexican history from 1850 to 1950.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDuring the colonial period, Mexico was one of the biggest\u0026nbsp;global\u0026nbsp;producers of silver, but the country eventually faced an energy bottleneck. Mining and processing silver took vast amounts of heat, which required\u0026nbsp;burning\u0026nbsp;large\u0026nbsp;supplies of\u0026nbsp;wood. The forests of central Mexico, where most of the population lived and worked, were severely depleted by the early 1800s, and the widespread use of\u0026nbsp;wood-burning\u0026nbsp;steam engines after 1850 in mining, industry, and railroads only worsened deforestation. Aware that Europe and the United States were relying on coal, Mexico tried to do the same after 1880. They\u202fweren\u0026#39;t able to\u202ffind much in their\u0026nbsp;country, said Vergara, \u0026quot;but when they discovered vast deposits of oil in the 20th century, that changed the whole story.\u0026quot;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ESurprisingly, for decades Mexican elites saw fossil fuels as a \u0026ldquo;green\u0026rdquo; choice for industrialization,\u0026nbsp;because they believed fossil energy would allow Mexico to fuel industrial growth without deforestation.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026quot;From the perspective of the 21st century, that\u0026#39;s really counterintuitive,\u0026quot; Vergara continued. \u0026quot;But a big part of environmental history is exploring the unintentional results of human choices, and my book is really about the unintended consequences of adopting fossil fuels.\u0026quot;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EConsequences like a persistent smog over Mexico City, and a little boy going to school late because the air was too unsafe to breathe.\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch2\u003EDocumenting Mexico\u0026rsquo;s History\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EFueling Mexico\u003C\/em\u003E\u202fis an original contribution to our understanding of the country and the literature around it.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026quot;For historians and other scholars, it will add to, and perhaps shape, their understanding of Mexican history,\u0026quot; said Vergara. \u0026quot;And that\u0026#39;s my goal.\u0026quot;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ENow, the next time someone wonders what\u0026#39;s causing all the smog in Mexico City, they won\u0026#39;t have to speculate for long. They can pick up Vergara\u0026rsquo;s new book and find out.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003E\u0026ldquo;Fueling Mexico\u0026rdquo; was published by Cambridge on June 24, 2021. Visit\u202f\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/hsoc.gatech.edu\/people\/person\/german-vergara\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EGerm\u0026aacute;n Vergara\u0026rsquo;s profile\u003C\/a\u003E\u202fto learn more about\u202fthe book as well as\u202fhis\u202fsecond project about\u202fbiodiversity crisis\u202fin the region.\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Assistant Professor Germ\u00e1n Vergara\u0027s new book\u00a0tells the story of energy history in Latin America for the first time, exploring\u00a0the people, policies, and decisions that catapulted Mexico from wood to coal to oil dependency."}],"uid":"35766","created_gmt":"2021-07-27 13:41:54","changed_gmt":"2021-07-29 17:17:47","author":"dminardi3","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2021-07-27T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2021-07-27T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"649074":{"id":"649074","type":"image","title":"Germ\u00e1n Vergara with his new book \u0027Fueling Mexico.\u0027","body":null,"created":"1627393499","gmt_created":"2021-07-27 13:44:59","changed":"1627393499","gmt_changed":"2021-07-27 13:44:59","alt":"German Vergara holding his book on left, and graphic of book cover on right","file":{"fid":"246432","name":"16 x 9 Aspect Ratio (25).png","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/16%20x%209%20Aspect%20Ratio%20%2825%29.png","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/16%20x%209%20Aspect%20Ratio%20%2825%29.png","mime":"image\/png","size":819758,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/16%20x%209%20Aspect%20Ratio%20%2825%29.png?itok=Q9F4yiGS"}}},"media_ids":["649074"],"groups":[{"id":"1288","name":"School of History and Sociology"}],"categories":[{"id":"144","name":"Energy"},{"id":"154","name":"Environment"}],"keywords":[{"id":"365","name":"Research"},{"id":"147521","name":"HSOC"},{"id":"175271","name":"German Vergara"},{"id":"186379","name":"book publication"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39531","name":"Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDi Minardi\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003Edi.minardi@gatech.edu\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["dminardi3@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}