O Acontecimento Antropoceno by Christophe Bonneuil

O Acontecimento Antropoceno Reviews

• 
  Anna

  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 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 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
  Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming and
  Growth Fetish, 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.
• 
  Jonathan

  A well-argued and thorough critique of the use of the term "Anthropocene," which--arising from the geology community--has become quite popular in environmental circles in recent years. As Bonneuil and Fressoz argue, the term "Anthropocene" can risk obscuring more than it reveals by speaking of a universal, generalized "humanity" and by ignoring the long history of human impact on (and degradation of) ecosystems. We cannot understand the present (or how we got there) nor determine how to act in the future on the basis of science alone; the humanities are essential for offering greater texture to our analysis. And that is what Bonneuil and Fressoz do: exploring the various ways in which the "environment" has been conceptualized, tracing the history of human impact on the environment, and fleshing out the various forces (capitalism, war & imperialism, the system of consumerism, etc.--all which are related) that have shaped this impact and the inequities built in it. It is not "man" or "humanity" that has effected this deterioration--but specific actors or groups or classes with specific motives often in ignorance of well-documented evidence or vocal opposition.
  
  There is always a risk in acting as though we are only *now* becoming awake to a problem and ignoring the vast history of contestation because from that history, we can see the arguments that had been made, the forms of resistance employed, the successes and failures, etc. And we can eliminate a belief in determinism--the possibility of acting otherwise existed.
  
  As they say in one of their final sentences, "These histories invite us to take a political grip on the institutions and oligarchies, the powerful symbolic and material systems, that led us into the Anthropocene: military appratuses, the system of consumerist desire and its infrastructure, the gaps of income and wealth, the energy majors and the financial interests of globalization, the technoscientific apparatuses when these work in commodity logics or silence criticisms and alternatives."
  
  At times, the authors risk appearing as though they are arguing with straw men, and I would have liked somewhat more attention to the role of neoliberalism in the 1970s-present era in shaping this new stage, but the book was nonetheless cogent, timely, and thought-provoking.
• 
  Helen

  This book is about the history of the environmental movement or awareness of the ill-effects of despoiling the environment, as well as the authors' thoughts about ways to conceptualize the environmental crisis today. It presents a wealth of information about how the crisis started - the authors state that it is linked to both capitalism, colonialism and imperialism - and even recommendations as to how to proceed going forward. They see ideologies and economic systems (fascism, capitalism, communism) as all basically linked to the progress-driven schema - wherein progress, industrialization, mining, etc. are the "objects" of each system, and thus none of them addressed the problem of balancing mankind's usage of natural resources with sustainability. The book attacks materialism and the consumerism it led to, as well as advertising enveloping consumers in a haze of lies and fantasies about products. The authors would like to see a return to a simpler, more just, way of life. But it's not easy to imagine what could rein in rampant production, progress and materialism - i.e. growth.
  
  I found the book rather boring at times and fell asleep reading it more than once. However, it does contain a lot of interesting information - sociological insights that are backed up by references to various studies, polls, etc. It is carefully researched, and so is not simply "opinion." The writing style is not great all the time but in terms of the message the authors convey, it's worth the slog.
  
  Here are the quotes.
  
  From the Preface:
  
  "Saint-Simon, the herald of what was already called 'industrialism,' maintained in the 1820s that: The object of industry is the exploitation of the globe, that is to say, the appropriation of its products for the needs of man; and by accomplishing this task, it modifies the globe and transforms it, gradually changing the conditions of its existence. Man hence participates unwittingly as it were, in the successive manifestations of the divinity, and thus continues the work of creation. From this point of view, Industry becomes religion."
  
  From Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Anthropocene
  
  "[In 2000] Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on the ozone layer [and Eugene Stoermer] ... proposed a starting date for ...[the Anthropocene] of 1784, the year that James Watt patented the steam engine..."
  
  "It has ...recently [been] shown that global warming, by modifying the volumes of glaciers, has an effect on volcanic and tectonic activity."
  
  "...stabilization of the climate by human action [deforestation, rice cultivation, and stock-raising] in the Neolithic age...permitted the development of civilizations [by delaying the onset of a new ice age, according to University of Virginia paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman's hypothesis]."
  
  "The demographic collapse of the Amerindian population (...between ...1492 [and] .... 1650 ...) ...had the effect of an urban and agricultural retreat and ... reforestation ....which.... reduced the carbon concentration in the atmosphere...."
  
  From Chapter 2 - Thinking with Gaia: Towards Environmental Humanities
  
  "...the new states that we are launching the Earth into will bring with them a disorder, penury and violence that will render it less readily habitable by humans."
  
  "Publications from the early 1970s on the impossibility of indefinite growth on a finite planet (....degrowth...) were carefully swept under the carpet by the new watchword of 'sustainable development.'"
  
  "...human societies will have to face up ....to changes...to which [mankind] ....has never experienced, and to which ...it is neither biologically adapted nor culturally prepared."
  
  "...the historian Jules Michelet [wrote in the early 1830s]...: ...the migrations of the human race from east to west, along the route of the sun and the magnetic currents of the globe...at each point the fatal power of nature diminish, and the influence of ... climate become less tyrannical."
  
  "...the demographic collapse of the Amerindian population by some 50 million after 1942 led to an extension of forests and a fall in atmospheric CO2, hence a reduction in the greenhouse effect."
  
  From Chapter 3 - Clio, the Earth and the Anthropocenologists
  
  "...[perhaps] ...the knowledge and discourse of the Anthropocene may ...form part...of a hegemonic system for representing the world as a totality to be governed."
  
  "...the anthropocenologists propose three 'stages.' The first, from the beginnings of the industrial revolution to the Second World War....the turn into the Anthropocene, with the thermo-industrial revolution raising the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 277 to 280 parts per million (ppm) in the eighteenth century to 311 by the mid twentieth century (as against between 260 and 285 ppm for the 11,500 years of the Holocene)."
  
  "...a rise in energy consumption for a factor of forty between 1800 and 2000 made possible economic growth by a factor of fifty, demographic growth by a factor of six, and [man-made modification] ... of land....by a factor of between 2.5 and 3...."
  
  "...graphs attest to an exponential upsurge in human impacts since 1950."
  
  "In the first decade of the new century, China overtook the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide..."
  
  "...the contemporary ideology of an ecological modernization and a 'green economy' that internalizes in markets and policies the value of the 'services' supplied by nature."
  
  "...blue algae of 'cyanobacteria' that appeared more than 3 billion years ago...changed the course of the Earth. As the first living creatures to practice photosynthesis, they fixed carbon from the atmosphere into sediment in the ocean depths and released oxygen into the air, making it possible for the animals that appeared later to breathe, and forming the ozone layer that protects the planet from highly mutagenic ultraviolet radiation."
  
  "The elites of the two post-war blocs conceived the planet as a 'closed world,' a unified theater where the battle between the two superpowers was played out; a vast reserve ... of strategic resources to...[enable] ... faster growth than the other bloc and ensure social peace; a 'gigantic laboratory' with ...thousands of nuclear explosions, whose ecological and health effects were studied."
  
  "According the US Army in 1961, the 'environment in which the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps will operate covers the entire globe and extends from the depths of the ocean up to the far reaches of interplanetary space.'"
  
  From Chapter 4 - Who is the Anthropos?
  
  "The human species' geological action is the product of cultural, social and historical processes."
  
  "..[According to major authors] our ecological troubles are rooted in modernity itself. ... Greek science first...conceived nature as an externality subject to laws independent of human intentions; ...Christianity...invented the singularity of man within a creation that was his to dominate; ...the scientific revolution....substituted for an organicist view of nature that of an inert mechanics which could be rationally modified."
  
  "...ninety corporations are responsible for 63 per cent of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide and methane between 1850 and today..."
  
  "...the Anthropocene is the product of a generalized increase in population, agriculture, industry, deforestation, mineral extraction and GDP."
  
  "An average American...consumes thirty-two times more resources and energy than an average Kenyan."
  
  "...the 1 percent richest individuals on the planet monopolize 48 per cent of the world's wealth, while the poorer half of humanity have to make do with 1 per cent. The eighty richest individuals in the world have a combined income higher than that of the 416 million poorest..."
  
  "'Environmental problems received little attention during much of the Great Acceleration [after 1945],' and '...emerging global environmental problems were largely ignored.'"
  
  "...social theories that oppose a non-reflexive moment of modernity (from the eighteenth to the twentieth century) to the emergence in the late twentieth century of a reflexivity on the side-effects of modernization such as heath risks, major accidents and environmental crisis."
  
  "The period between 1770 and 1830 was marked ...by a very acute awareness of the interactions between nature and society... Deforestation... was conceived as the rupture of an organic link between woodland, human society and the global environment, and the use of coal was promoted as a way to restore forests."
  
  "...entry into the Anthropocene [occurred at the same time as] .... decades of reflection and concern as to the human degradation of our Earth."
  
  "... Svante Arrhenius ...explained the greenhouse effect in the late nineteenth century, ...American scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess wrote in 1957: Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment...Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in the sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years. This experiment, if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate."
  
  "Rather than suppressing the environmental reflexivity of the past, we must understand how we entered the Anthropocene despite very consistent warnings, knowledge and opposition, and forge a new and more credible narrative of what ...happened to us."
  
  "[Bruno Latour:] 'The sin is not to wish to have dominion over nature,' goes the [Frankenstein] story, 'but to believe that that dominion means emancipation and not attachment.'"
  
  "...the geographer Erle Ellis, one of the first anthropocenologists...member of ... an eco-modernist think-tank that celebrates the death of nature and preaches a 'good anthropocene,' one in which advanced technology will save the planet."
  
  "Fusion and omnipotence, these sentiments characteristic of early infancy, lie at the basis of ...'post-nature' discourse, participating in the dream of a total absorption of nature into the commercial techno-sphere of contemporary capitalism..."
  
  "...narratives about the change... the (naturalist) official narrative that prevails today in the scientific and international arenas... the post-nature and 'eco-modernist' narrative of a high-tech 'good Anthropocene... an eco-catastrophist narrative that envisions a collapse of industrial civilization and seeks local resilience, an eco-Marxist narrative in which the Anthropocene is better described as a 'Capitalocene'...and an eco-feminist one that relates male domination to the degrading of the Earth."
  
  "...it was only ...after the Second World War with atomic weapons, new international institutions and ... a Cold War that conceived of the whole globe as the theater of an imminent conflict, that a new [concept] ...of the entire globe was born, from the submarine depths to the Moon."
  
  "...the environment as a global system to control and optimize formed part of a Weltanschauung of the 'closed world' forged in each bloc by the culture of the Cold War... The United States...saw itself as the guardian of the progress of the whole world and worked for the establishment of a global market."
  
  "[Geoengineering's] ...aim is...'improvement of the environmental characteristics of the atmosphere,' or even the entire functioning of the planet, biosphere included."
  
  "...poet Henri Michaux...: By slowing down, you feel the pulse of things; ...you have all the time in the world; ....We have all the time. ...We no longer believe that we know. We have no more need to count...We feel the curve of he Earth...We no longer betray the soil, no longer betray the minnow, we are sisters by water and leaf."
• 
  philosovamp

  Bonneuil and Fressoz breakdown the "Anthropocene" concept and modern environmentalism as a whole. They do not dispute that the Earth's climate is changing because of human actions in a drastic and non-linear fashion, but they do think the prevailing expressions of the "Anthropocene" are illusory. This is a historiographical move you're likely familiar with, and they show that: environmentalism is not at all a modern movement, and that people (both for and against progress they know is damaging) who recognized the impact different groups and technologies were having on the environment have been ignored; the "Anthropocene" should more accurately be called "Capitalocene" or "Anglocene," because British and American capitalist organizations started this process, not mankind as a whole; and the deterministic march of progress, the notion that technological advances and swelling economic growth meant we would always end up here, is bogus, and that major attacks on the environment can be pinned on random assholes in power who just chose to not listen to people who knew better or were fighting their plans. Bonneuil and Fressoz are quite convincing and have a wealth of citations and references.
  
  There are some avenues that they could have gone down and didn't, or explicitly talked about and didn't follow through on. For example, in the section on the "Phagocene," or the consumer society, they begin the section asking why anti-consumerist writers were hugely popular in the post-war years (in academia we have the Frankfurts or Situationists, but there were also bestselling books like The Lonely Crowd) but seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the growth of consumption. Bonneuil and Fressoz then describe the history of consumption and certain moves that CEOs and advertisers made to build the consumer society. But they never follow up on the question of why all of this widely-read denunciation of consumption had no effect. It seems to me this was an important point and has suggestive implications about the contemporary environmentalist movement.
  
  The Shock of the Anthropocene is an interesting and satisfyingly radical approach to climate change. Bonneuil and Fressoz's breakdown of the Anthropocene is wide-ranging and reveals lots of things about the West since the birth of Capitalism that you probably never knew before.
• 
  Leif

  A remarkable duo of historians produce an elegant, fast-paced, and methodical collection of historical sketches to contextualize our age: the Anthropocene. Read. Read again.
• 
  Andreas

  This book was recommended to me, and I must say that it is quite impressive in showing how man has set the course for the planet in ways I hadn't thought of before. It also convincingly shows that in many respects, society wilfully chose to ignore the effects of its action on the planet. Climate change was not some 'discovery' made around the 80s-90s, it was well known before that the use of fossil fuels would harm the environment and cause warming of the climate. The role of capitalism and colonialism is also well documented.
  But now for the negatives: sometimes too much references to filosofical and other works undermine the reading experience. Also I think especially in the beginning of the book, the IPCC's worst case projections (4-5° warming, tipping point scenarios), and not the mean projections are taken as the reference. Furthermore, it lacks possible avenues to sway public opinion and to find politically acceptable solutions. But all in all I would recommend it.
• 
  Ron Pratt

  An important dissection of a hot-button word, this book challenges us to alter our preconceptions about our place in nature -- and our current negative impact on the planet. Part exploration of how we got here, part suggestions on how to go forward in a more earth-centric way, one that will make our future survival more likely. Academic and topical, and for that reason quite readable.
• 
  Lars K

  By far the best book on the Anthropocene and its many narratives. Shows the concept's likely future as a legitimation of a yet-to-emerge geocratic power, but also its emancipatory potential for humans worldwide. Pretty much essential reading for anyone interested in climate change, politics, and humanities future
• 
  Antonio Vena

  Il più completo, esauriente, puntuale libro sul tema. Un vero grande romanzo storico dell'Antropocene e delle sue declinazioni su guerra, tecnologia, imperialismo.
  Che nessuno lo abbia tradotto in italiano mi sembra una cosa incredibile o da pura dissociazione cultural-cognitiva.
• 
  pozharvgolovu

  Good compendium of the historical and technological reasons of the current so-called crisis of the environment. First step to climate change activism should be reading this book.
  
• 
  Kriegslok

  This is not the easiest of reads (and I don't mean in this case due to the sense of doom and gloom usually attached to any writing on the Anthropocene). It is a book written in academic language and assumes the reader is fairly well schooled in political theory and international politics as well as having some grounding in linguistics. I came close to abandoning the book during the first 100 pages but, having finished it, I am very glad I persevered.
  The term Anthropocene - "a sign of our power, but also our impotence" - , used to describe our current geological age, distinguished by the impact of humanity on the planet and its natural global systems, has become well established. This book asks what the Anthropocene is, who decided that is where we now are, when did it happen, how did it happen and how inevitable was it. In conclusion it also raises the question is what happens now it is here.
  That humanity was having an impact on the planet has been known for many generations. This is an important angle for the authors who note Eugene Huzar (among others), commenting on the emissions from transport and industry, wrote in 1857 "... these hundreds of billions of cubic metres of carbonic acid and carbon oxide may indeed disturb the harmony of the world..." . Geologically the Anthropocene is seen to be marked by drastic changes in the atmosphere, stratigraphic changes (human terra-forming of the physical world) and the introduction of novel substances into the environment. A lot of the book is concerned with identifying the processes that could be seen as heralding this new era commonly seen as the industrial revolution and the coming of the steam age. However, evidence of an earlier origin is offered one tied up with empire, empire building and the development of an international trade in slaves, plantation farming and timber which provided the small seafaring British Empire the materials to enslave much of the world in a crude form exploitation, control and capital accumulation which paved the way for the explosion of production with the coming of steam and mechanisation.
  The terminologies, histories, meanings and perhaps the ownership and interpretation of the meanings and resulting proposals for action and reaction to the impacts of the Anthropocene run through this work. The leading role of science in setting the agenda of the Anthropocene, and the science which presents the crisis as a challenge to be risen to with grand technological fixes, is heavily questioned and criticised here. The exclusion of much of humanity from the existential questions facing it also informs this work, as does the question of about beneficiaries and losers through its history so far. It is in examining these various "narratives" that I found the writing particularly, maybe necessarily, difficult to get to grips with. The Anthropocene, it is argued "...challenges certain distinctions that were formerly deemed fundamental to the modern West: human exceptionalism and the ontological break between the human being as subject of entitlement and the object of nature.Environmental ethics therefore undertakes a basic rethinking of the different moral rules that organise relations between humans and non-humans."
  The absence of nature and the natural world from much of the historical record occupies much of the second part of the book. This is concerned both with looking at how politics, economics and "development" have impacted on the planet. We can see clearly how conflict and war have long been a driving force in the expansion of frontiers of trade, resource extraction and the removal of both human and non-human flora and fauna which has stood in the way. The authors illustrate how capitalism emerging in the pre-industrial era went onto knowingly put profit before environmental destruction as commodities lost their use value and became primarily a means to accumulation. In one of the most accessible parts of the book the degree of popular awareness and resistance to destruction of long established and self sustaining forms of community is explored. They suggest that, before Marxists embraced a productivist outlook, and industry became panacea on the road to a brighter future, there was a strong element of resistance based on self sufficiency and craft which inspired visions of an alternative utopia. The degree to which this stream seems to have anticipated today's situation is quite surprising. A quote offered from John Stuart Mill "If the earth must loose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely hope for the sake of posterity that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it." (Principles of Political Economy, 1848) nicely illustrates the awareness and concern about what Bonneuil and Fressoz describe as the "dematerialized marginalist paradigm" which became the unspoken mantra of a system in which gain from stocks, shares and dividends became the purpose of production and the product a mere catalyst and accesory.
  This book is packed not only with some theory that is hard to master (but worth the effort) but also with a lot of fascinating historical data and research which questions commonly held assumptions or helps explain anomalies or completes pictures which have been purposefully only part painted. One in particular which caught my attention was this, the "...basic ecological difference between Communist and the capitalist systems lay in the fact that the Communist camp, for its development, exploited and degraded its own environment above all, whereas the Western countries built their growth on a gigantic draining of mineral and renewable resources from the rest of the non-Communist world whose economies were burdened by a heavy footprint on their territory" - while those countries smugly claimed an environmental cleanliness - in contrast to the heavily publicised environment degradation of the Communist bloc - safe in the knowledge their own equally destructive activities were safely hidden away in the "Third World", hidden, backyard.
  So industrialisation and the Anthropocene were made possible by "ecologically unequal exchange" with colonial regions in the 18th and 19th centuries. The "Great Acceleration ... corresponds to a capture by Western industrial countries of the ecological surplus of the Third World. It then appears as the construction of an ecological gap between national economies that generated a great deal of wealth without subjecting their own territories to excessive impacts, and the countries of the rest of the world whose economies were burdened by a heavy footprint on their territory" bringing about consumerism, the "blind alleys of industrial modernity". It also leaves us in a crisis the very components of which are being in turn monetised for the purpose of profit and gain and opportunities are seen in impending doom much as arms dealers get excited about the profit of war and destruction.
  I think this book is especially good when it comes to looking at the place of what we call the environment is written, or more often not written, into history. This book isn't directly a how to guide to save humanity and its life support system. It is however a book that makes you think about how we got here, who is trying to direct, frame and control the debate and why they might be doing it. there are three broad suggestions for living in the Anthropocene. Firstly, the need to understand the science of climate change and the empirical evidence that tells us that human existence is in for violent change and how it might be possible to imagine mitigations and new "environmental humanities" and "political radicalisms" for changing times. Secondly, to challenge "grand narratives" offering tech-fixes and insist on wider public participation against a developing trend toward "oligarchic geopower" solutions. Finally, acceptance that this is not a "temporary 'environmental crisis' " and so a situation in which it is necessary to adapt to survive but in so doing "...strive for a decent life for everyone, in a diversity of cultures and an equality of rights and conditions, in relations that liberate human and non-human alterities, in an infinity of aspirations, a sobriety of consumption and a humility of interventions". This final waxing of idealistic lyrical perhaps best demonstrates how this is not a "how to save humanity" guide. However, it is a book which while sometimes feeling like it has disappeared up its own backside, is thought provoking and worth the effort.
• 
  Shelby

  Cogent and comprehensive overview of the Anthropocene
• 
  Floris

  Overall:
  Probably the best book on the “Anthropocene” that I’ve read so far. It’s not perfect of course – some of the attempts to include non-Euro-American voices feel a bit contrived, for instance. But Bonneuil and Fressoz manage to take what conventionally are considered “critiques” of the Anthropocene and use them to strengthen it. They also manage to include an impressive amount of thoroughness and breadth in their work, whilst also maintaining a sense of directness. I like that the condition of the Anthropocene is pretty much presupposed, and the focus is more on what this implies and what we should take away from it.
  
  It's nice that the authors distinguish between environmental history as it developed in the US and the history of the environment as it developed in France (38). Given that the American brand of environmental history is often taken as the default one, this kind of reminder that other perspectives exist is welcome, even if it’s only moving across the Atlantic ocean. What’s also great is the discussion about the early Anthropocene thinkers of the 2000s, whom they call the “Anthropocenologists”, and their ideas of the world as a totality to be governed. The works of these Anthropocenologists also deserves to be passed through a "sieve of criticism" (48-49). In particular, their ideas about technical fixes to climate problems, and their narratives of “stocks and flows” in natural accounting, deserve attention. (55).
  
  The first four chapters are excellent, and worth reading on their own. The following seven offer really nice overviews of the different ways the Anthropocene can be diagnosed, for example through the lens of war, energy, or consumerism. The titles of these chapters refer to the common alternative “-cenes” that scholars have used to critique the idea of the Anthropocene. By incorporating them in this way the authors resolve a tricky issue with this type of scholarship, namely that people fixate on slagging off existing terms and finding new ones that are ultimately just as flawed. Sure, the Anthropocene itself is not a great concept. The authors acknowledge this, for example by not shying away from the fact that much of this type of discourse has homogenised “humanity” (the richest individuals have, after all, had an outsized impact on the environment (66-71)).
  
  
  Outline for the fans:
  Chapter 6 focusses on the “Thermocene”, or energy history, which has seen a bit of a revival in recent years. The authors critique of the idea that we have had energy "transitions" - we've never really transitioned, only "added". They suggest that it is much more useful to think in terms of energy reduction or crisis (100-105), and that it’s worth looking at histories of energy inefficiency (105-107) and alternative energy (especially given the arguments that fossil fuels weren't as important as we often think they were to industrialised countries) (107-112). They also point out the heavy Anglo-American bias in energy emissions, noting GB & USA made up 50% of CO2 emissions in 1980, which shows that CO2 emissions are mainly a by-product of historical (and current) Anglophone hegemony and globalisation (jokingly suggesting we rename the Anthropocene to the Anglocene) (116-120). The chapter ends with a discussion of a social argument about energy history made by Bruce Podobnick and Tim Mitchell: the reason why oil far surpassed coal in energy use during C20 was social- oil infrastructure weakened the power of unions and workers (120-121).
  
  Chapter 6 looks at the “Thanatocene”, or the links between warfare (primarily C20) and environmental destruction (deliberate and accidental). Classic cases, such as the destruction of Western European landscapes during the World Wars or the eradication of Vietnamese forests by the Americans, are placed primarily in the context of the much larger impact of wartime industrial production, which in itself caused massive amounts of environmental damage. Military industries during wars are therefore looked at as the foundation for mass consumption, which is the subject of chapter 7. This chapter examines the “Phagocene”, or the rise of consumerism, and all that comes with it (advertising, credit, waste and convenience, growth, primarily American urban planning & suburbia, etc.) In particular they look at how production became the motto of consumer-era industry. The chapter ends with a short discussion of the “Anthropocene body”, i.e a human body that suffers more and more from chronic diseases. Lots of blame is being heaped on the US here, far more so than Britain or France, given that they were nowhere near as gregarious as the US in terms of consumption, credit, waste, etc.
  
  Chapter 8 examines the “Phronocene”, or environmental reflexivity (the methods we use to think about the environment). It is quite similar to Etienne Benson’s recent book Surrounding (2020), but formulates this history in terms of the “six grammars” of environmental reflexivity: 'circumfusa', climate, metabolism, economy of nature, thermodynamics, exhaustion. They also include critiques of economics based on thermodynamics (from the mid-C19 worries about resource exhaustion to degrowth). Chapter 9 deals with the “Agnotocene”, inspired by the idea that humans willingly or unwillingly let themselves destroy the environment. It looks in particular at how people react to indicators of environmental decay (e.g. rising prices); how environments are commercialised (making them transactable), how environments became objects of accounting, and how nature has been externalised (something that exists outside of human space) and internalised (becoming part of human space). They make the important point that historically, "polluter pays" models of compensation do not prevent pollution, but rather legitimise the degradation of environments (221).
  
  Chapter 10 examines the now famous concept of the “Capitalocene”, or the way the history of capitalism shapes the Anthropocene. They note that origins of the Anthropocene cannot be placed in the brain of James Watt, the steam engine, and coal - but rather in the exploitation of slave/coerced labour in the 16th Century New World. There’s lots in here about how the Global North "got ahead" at the cost of the Global South. The Ecological Debtors & Ecological Creditors map (251) in particular is quite cool. Rather than simply wanting to replace the Anthropocene with Capitalocene, they argue that "a rematerialized and ecologized history of capitalism appears as the indispensable partner of the Earth system sciences in order to understand our new epoch" (252).
  
  Chapter 11 concerns the “Polemocene”, or the ways in which environmental destruction has been resisted and challenged. The authors start with eighteenth century forest management in France (their expertise), and continue to list examples of anti-industrialism movements from Luddites to Socialists to Gandhi to the mid-20th Century, in which we start to see technological critiques of the Great Acceleration. Although they say they look at the Polemocene from the perspective of the core and the periphery, their discussion of the “environmentalism of the poor” in non-Euro-American contexts is a bit scant. They do, however, provide a nice takeaway: "[w]e need to guard against the scientistic illusion that ecological awareness and 'salvation' can only come from scientists and not also from the struggles and initiatives of other Earthlings and citizens of the planet" (287).
  
  The concluding chapter offers more of these takeaways, notably that we should abandon the idea of a temporary environmental crisis: "the irreversible break [i.e. the past 2 centuries of industrial growth] is behind us. The Anthropocene is here. It is our new condition. We have therefore to learn to survive, that is, to leave the Earth habitable and resilient, limiting the frequency of catastrophes and sources of human misery" (288-9). Of course the authors also want people to strive for a decent life. But the underlying message here – that we should embrace a forward-looking approach to the climate crisis, rather than one which seeks to “return” to a previous state of being – is a valuable one.
  
  
• 
  Olan McEvoy

  The term “Anthropocene” has always struck me as being the sort of thing that overeducated humanities graduates use and causes most people to immediately disconnect from any conversation about the climate. Thankfully, this book does a great job at providing historical and scientific grounding and context to the term, and was for me a very useful summary of the ways in which history can be re-conceptualised from a number of angles with the climate in mind.
  
  An excellent overview of the ‘climate humanities’ which always keeps them closely tied to earth system science, rather than going off on some pseudo-philosophical tangent as many who write about the climate from this angle tend to. I’d recommend it to anybody looking to broaden their historical understanding of climate change and to dispel a lot of the myths which surround common understanding of the history of the climate and environmentalism.
• 
  Soph Nova

  Good history, I learned a lot reading this. It covers a lot though and is certainly not a 101, which I was sort of expecting going in. And it doesn't propose much in the way of solutions (although I suppose that's not really the function of this book). Worth reading if you are interested in larger (meta)narratives informing 'the Anthropocene' and the historical moment we are in!
• 
  Pais

  A very impressive historiographical work compiling many different perspectives on the Anthropocene. The text can be a bit dry at times, but what it might lack in momentum it makes up for in sheer amounts of compiled information.
• 
  Stacey Balkan

  The most satisfying environmental history since Cronon's 'Nature's Metropolis'! Its erudition is unmatched--a thorough scrutiny of the Anthropocene's many proposed histories form the Thermocene to the Capitalocene.
• 
  David Biello

  Shocked
  
  Read this for the most astute and concise political
  take on our new unnatural world. Broad and provocative on the challenge ahead of us, nothing less than true emancipation.
• 
  Ellie Botoman

  at times a bit dense, but a necessary read nonetheless
• 
  Dan

  A forcefully argued, impeccably researched and suitably urgent intervention in the climate change discussion.
• 
  Lauren Hough

  read 2 years ago in Nature & Society
• 
  Raquel Frescia

  "The Shock of the Anthropocene" by Christophe Bonneuil is a remarkable book that critically analyses the current environmental crisis and the emergence of the Anthropocene era. Bonneuil's writing is insightful, thought-provoking, and engaging, making this book a must-read for anyone interested in our planet's environment and future.
  
  One of the most significant strengths of this book is Bonneuil's ability to connect the scientific, political, and cultural aspects of the Anthropocene. He provides a comprehensive overview of the various debates surrounding the Anthropocene, including its definition, causes, and implications for the future of humanity and the planet. He also critically examines the dominant narratives surrounding the Anthropocene, which often focus on technological solutions rather than fundamental changes in our economic and political systems.
  
  Bonneuil's writing is clear and accessible, making complex ideas and concepts easy to understand. He uses a wide range of examples and case studies to illustrate his arguments, from the history of fossil fuel consumption to the contemporary politics of climate change. Additionally, his analysis is supported by an extensive range of references and sources, demonstrating the depth of his research and understanding.
  
  Overall, "The Shock of the Anthropocene" is a thought-provoking and enlightening book that contributes to the current debates surrounding the environment and the Anthropocene. Bonneuil's critical analysis and engaging writing style make this book a valuable resource for anyone interested in our planet's future and humanity's role in shaping it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the challenges we face and the actions we can take to address them.
• 
  Sarah Yribarren

  Similarly read this for a class, liked it less than Energy of Slaves but it was written just as well. Super insightful and fascinating cultural/social theories and I give 4.5 stars to it.
  
  Very philosophical and contemplative. Sort of a comprehensive overview of the history, philosophical debates, and current progress and outlook for environmental problems from many different angles. Focuses on humans as being very small in comparison with the Earth geologic timescale, and frames pretty much any debate philosophers or geologists or social scientists have had around the different aspects of the environment. Here's a summary of the chapters so I can come back to it in the future if I want, as you can see it is a very good framing of history of the Anthropocene:
  
  1 - Anthropocene as a concept
  2 - Environmental humanities (argument for)
  3 - Climate/earth science as a discipline + history of the field and scientists
  4 - How humans came to be such an influence on Earth
  5 - Political history of CO2 and energy
  6 - Role of military in Anthropocene
  7 - Consumerism, history and social critique
  8 - Theory of grammar/phrasing/conceptualization of the environment over time
  9 - History of ways we have intellectualized away problems and planetary limits
  10 - Capitalism and the Anthropocene (Industrial Revolution, Great Acceleration)
  11 - History of movements and attempts to fight for environment/against industry
• 
  Vishal Misra

  This is a simply breathtaking history. Powerfully argued, compulsively readable, informative and a much needed critical insight into what being human means - and what it means for the planet.
  
  Part one lays out the framework for what the anthropocene means. The hard data that geologists have analyses to conclude that we are firmly in the grips of the anthropocene.
  
  Part two is where the book gets very interesting indeed. Laying bare the lie that we have sleepwalked in to this new geological age. Indeed, it even shows who the "we" are that have ushered in this new age. Industrial capitalism was the engine for the great acceleration for the changing environment and this was led by the US and UK.
  
  Climate science history lays bare that many people were sceptical of the powers of industrial capitalism to undo the devastation it wrought. Hubris in replacing forests without the diversity they held before ruined much land, and long held ideas about the economy needing to be tied to natural limits were silenced. No, we did not blindly arrive at this tipping point. We made political choices, silenced by apolitical scientific research, that led us here.
  
  Ultimately, it was the polemicists who led the charge, and may have to do so again. Resistance against the continued damage of the Earth, which has been so powerfully led here by the military and capitalism, is now more important than ever. It is the only way to re-politicise a situation that demands political solutions.
• 
  Quentin

  You don't need a PhD to read this, but it would help. For the concerned but uneducated reader, it is heavy enough to make Proust look like Seuss, and it took about 200 pages of hard work to finally feel like I'd got into it. Once I did, it was a fascinating and informative read, outstandingly well researched, and thoughtful in its presentation and discussion.
  
  Essentially it breaks down the climate mess we find ourselves in, by looking in turn at every major aspect that has led us to make the decisions that are so harmful to our planet. Most fascinating are the parallels drawn between historical decisions in seemingly abstract times, and our own modern thinking and decision making. For the sake of our future, one can only hope its readership includes leaders around the world.
  
  For all its virtues, 'The Shock of the Anthropocene" should perhaps come with a trigger warning on page one, along the lines of "There's no easy way to say this..." No, Christophe, apparently there isn't!