'The Coal in Violence': How One Swedish Working-Class Writer Predicted Global Warming in 1928

The event is free to attend. Please sign up in advance here: https://cape.ku.dk/eng/calendar/2026/the-coal-in-violence/
Talk by Andreas Malm, Lund University.
The birth of modern climate science is commonly dated to the writings of Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish professor of physics who first calculated the effects of carbon dioxide concentrations on temperature. He was famously positive to the prospect of global warming. The first to take this incipient climate science and turn it into a dire warning about the disastrous consequences of fossil fuel combustion was Ivar Lo-Johansson, a leading figure in the movement of Swedish working-class literature, in the book ‘Kolet i våld’, or ‘The Coal in Violence’, 1928. This talk will tell the story of Lo-Johansson’s discovery and read it in the context of environmental class consciousness, ideas about wilderness and discussions about machines in the Swedish working-class literature of the early twentieth century.
After the event, there will be a small reception.
Bio:
Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of several acclaimed books, such as, with the Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. His book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an international bestseller and has been turned into a feature film. Andreas Malm is currently an international fellow at CApE.