A review by florisw
The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us by Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
5.0
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.
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.