In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, French forests were exploited heavily by emerging large-scale industries and an expanding navy. It became a crime to cut down trees or even to collect acorns without authorisation. This exploitation was also of great concern to those who noticed the ecological effect that deforestation was having on the region. Charles Fourier, the utopian socialist who once said that in a perfect future, the seas would be made of lemonade, was nearer the mark when he wrote in his 1821 text De la Détérioration Matérielle de la Planète (On the Material Degradation of the Planet):
It is thus completely ridiculous to stop at making decrees [on the forests] that enjoin civilisation to be no longer itself, to change its devastating nature, to stifle its rapacious spirit ... One might as well decree that tigers should become docile and turn away from blood.
Fourier realised fairly early on that individualistic mercantile capitalism (he didn’t actually use the C-word, as it hadn’t been coined yet) would ravage the planet. It’s just one example given by French scientific historians Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz of the way in which history, politics and ecology have been entwined for centuries. And they argue their case well. Even if you think that exploring the political and social factors behind climate change adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to a crisis that demands, above all, swiftness of action, this is a book that contains eye‑opening connections. (Incidentally, are we all clear on what “Anthropocene” means? It is the term approved by the International Commission on Stratigraphy to describe the geological age we are now living in, one in which human agency is affecting the planet more than any natural force.)
Take, for example, the rise of the disposable menstrual pad, which is causing headaches for those who are worried about landfill sites. It came about initially because of a surplus stock of bandages after the first world war. (As the book reveals, the drive to create a disposable and ecologically dangerous society has been going on for a lot longer than you might think.) Or consider consumer credit – a nice term the authors use for this is “disciplinary hedonism” – which came about with Henry Ford’s desire to sell cars to the populace, and without which consumerism would not have taken off. Or look at the US military’s approach to the environment, with its deforestation of Vietnam and its plans in the 50s to build a second Panama Canal by detonating 300 atom bombs.
“Energy history must free itself first of all from the concept of transition,” they write. We are not now living in a post-coal age, or a post-wood age, even: these fuels are still being used, and everything non-renewable or carbon-based is choking the planet in its own way. Meanwhile economists are asking the wrong questions, or taking the wrong measurements. As the authors point out, a car that costs twice as much and burns twice as much petrol as another is considered to be a greater contributor to GDP: there really should be some other way of taking stock of a country’s economy.
This book does not make for the easiest of reads. The authors introduce new terms for our era: the Thermocene (for its rising CO2), the Thanatocene (for the effects of war), the Phagocene (consumption), the Agnotocene (closing one’s ears and eyes to the evidence)Occasionally – but not nearly as much as I might have feared – they veer off into a peculiarly French kind of jargon (tackled well by David Fernbach, the translator). The way they find connections in everything makes it feel like the literary equivalent of an Adam Curtis film, with the accompanying sense that perhaps the connections aren’t quite as strong as the narrative drive suggests. But even so, there are enough well chosen examples from history to make you sit up and rub your eyes. Climate change deniers, of course, won’t be reading this.
• The Shock of the Anthropocene is published by Verso. To order a copy for £9.34 (RRP £10.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
