Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
Author of The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us
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It took me some while to get into ‘The Shock of the Anthropocene’ because, not to put too fine a point on it, this book is a total fucking downer. Even if, like me, you have read the same summary of climate science many times and research its policy implications as your day job, this is a particularly heavy duty depressing version. Bonneuil and Fressoz thoroughly illuminate the concept of the ‘anthropocene’ - the idea that human activity has altered the climate sufficiently to end show more the Holocene era of Earth's climate. As well as exploring the defining characteristics and theories of the anthropocene, the book advances the thesis that concern for environmental damage has existed throughout the past 250 years. This countermands the widely accepted idea, which I was taught as an undergraduate, that only in recent decades has there been understanding of and concern for environmental impacts. ‘The Shock of the Anthropocene’ smashes this ridiculous notion and thus punctures the self-satisfied and deeply misleading narrative that as humans gain better scientific understanding of the damage they’re causing, they do something about it. Climate change was an information deficit problem in the 19th century, although there was concern about the possible effects of CO2 emissions; it hasn’t been for coming up to fifty years now. As the book puts it:
The first two sections are heavier on theory and therefore denser, whereas the latter two thirds which read more like historical analysis are much clearer and astutely articulated. ‘The Shock of the Anthropocene’ synthesises and builds on a number of other things I’ve read, in particular [b:Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|25614450|Fossil Capital The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|Andreas Malm|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1449996772s/25614450.jpg|44301257] and [b:Growth Fetish|1230190|Growth Fetish|Clive Hamilton|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1316132164s/1230190.jpg|1218764], and well as expanding some points that were newer to me. On the former front, there is a well-expressed critique of the chasm separating neoclassical economics from physical reality:
It was also nice to be reminded that GDP was heavily critiqued from its very invention as a metric:
As for more novel insights, the ‘Thanatocene’ chapter on the links between military conflict and environmental degradation was thought-provoking in a very downbeat sort of way. The overriding message is that as weapons get deadlier, they also get more environmentally damaging and wasteful of resources. Also, this appears to be self-reinforcing. Lovely. I hadn’t realised the extent to which WWII set the stage for the expansion of air travel. A 1944 rule of the International Civil Aviation Organisation is still preventing the taxation of aviation fuel on environmental grounds. While I was also aware that the USSR industrialised by ruining its environment, whereas Europe industrialised by wrecking the environments of its colonies, this book recounted that sad tale more effectively than anything else I’ve read on the topic.
What I’m getting at here is that ‘Shock of the Anthropocene’ didn’t give me any entirely new ideas about climate change or the anthropocene, however it systematised and reordered some thoughts and bits of information I already had. This was a useful process and my understanding has improved as a result. Bonneuil and Fressoz present a very coherent and convincing analysis of why the anthropocene is an important concept and how it came to occur. Inevitably, there is a lot less on how humanity might survive it. In fact, I finished the book with the conviction that the anthropocene will last until human civilisation collapses as a result of environmental disaster, and that this end won’t be very long coming. So I recommend this book with the caveat that it may encourage fatalism, despite that not being the authorial intent. show less
The contemporary moment is not one of new awareness, nor one of a moral leap leading us towards a better humanity and a nice planet governed by sustainable geo-management, nor one of reconciliation with Gaia. We have not suddenly passed from unawareness to awareness, we have not recently emerged from a modernist frenzy to enter an age of precaution. One of the determining aspects in the history of the Anthropocene is that of disinhibitions that normalise the intolerable...
The first two sections are heavier on theory and therefore denser, whereas the latter two thirds which read more like historical analysis are much clearer and astutely articulated. ‘The Shock of the Anthropocene’ synthesises and builds on a number of other things I’ve read, in particular [b:Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|25614450|Fossil Capital The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|Andreas Malm|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1449996772s/25614450.jpg|44301257] and [b:Growth Fetish|1230190|Growth Fetish|Clive Hamilton|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1316132164s/1230190.jpg|1218764], and well as expanding some points that were newer to me. On the former front, there is a well-expressed critique of the chasm separating neoclassical economics from physical reality:
Marginalist economists turned away from the study of factors of production (labour, capital, and land) and focused on the subjective states of consumers and producers seeking to maximise their individual utility. The economy no longer shared an object with the natural sciences (the production of material wealth), but only mathematical tools: the marginalists transposed equations taken from physics so as to create the illusion of a second world as coherent as nature, analogous but external.
It was also nice to be reminded that GDP was heavily critiqued from its very invention as a metric:
According to its own progenitors, GDP was narrowly correlated with military expenditure, it could not be used during peacetime conditions. Nor could it be used by less developed countries, as the non-market sphere played too important a role there, falsifying international comparison. Secondly, GDP had to be reduced by the ‘costs of civilisation’, which included among other things pollution, traffic jams, police, judges, freeways, advertising ‘that stimulated artificial needs’, [...]. Thirdly, and above all, mining activity had to be counted negatively, since the exhaustion of resources impoverished the nation.
As for more novel insights, the ‘Thanatocene’ chapter on the links between military conflict and environmental degradation was thought-provoking in a very downbeat sort of way. The overriding message is that as weapons get deadlier, they also get more environmentally damaging and wasteful of resources. Also, this appears to be self-reinforcing. Lovely. I hadn’t realised the extent to which WWII set the stage for the expansion of air travel. A 1944 rule of the International Civil Aviation Organisation is still preventing the taxation of aviation fuel on environmental grounds. While I was also aware that the USSR industrialised by ruining its environment, whereas Europe industrialised by wrecking the environments of its colonies, this book recounted that sad tale more effectively than anything else I’ve read on the topic.
What I’m getting at here is that ‘Shock of the Anthropocene’ didn’t give me any entirely new ideas about climate change or the anthropocene, however it systematised and reordered some thoughts and bits of information I already had. This was a useful process and my understanding has improved as a result. Bonneuil and Fressoz present a very coherent and convincing analysis of why the anthropocene is an important concept and how it came to occur. Inevitably, there is a lot less on how humanity might survive it. In fact, I finished the book with the conviction that the anthropocene will last until human civilisation collapses as a result of environmental disaster, and that this end won’t be very long coming. So I recommend this book with the caveat that it may encourage fatalism, despite that not being the authorial intent. show less
Important corrective to all the bullshit about how the climate crisis has caught us unawares. We have known since the 1800s that industrialisation and modernity being driven by the West is causing environmental destruction. Everyone should read, well OK it's stodgy academic text but still, everyone should understand.
The fossil fuel industry would like us to believe that anthropogenic climate change is a new fangled idea hatched by drunken scientists. This book charts the long history of our intense engagement with this idea, going back to Columbus.
I'm not sure I understand the reasoning in this book.
I hadn't heard the word before!
I will reread and try again.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Verso Books (U S ) via in return for an honest unbiased review.
I hadn't heard the word before!
I will reread and try again.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Verso Books (U S ) via in return for an honest unbiased review.
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