Christophe Bonneuil

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

Dissecting the new theoretical buzzword of the “Anthropocene” The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years. How did we get to this point? Refuting the convenient view of a “human species” that upset the Earth system, unaware of what it was doing, this book proposes the first critical history of the Anthropocene, shaking up many accepted ideas: about our supposedly recent “environmental awareness,” about previous challenges to industrialism, about the manufacture of ignorance and consumerism, about so-called energy transitions, as well as about the role of the military in environmental destruction. In a dialogue between science and history, The Shock of the Anthropocene dissects a new theoretical buzzword and explores paths for living and acting politically in this rapidly developing geological epoch.

The Earth, History and Us

The Shock of the Anthropocene

Fabien Locher

Les Révoltes du ciel. Une histoire du changement climatique XVe-XXe siècle

The radical, paradigm-shifting international bestseller that destroys our delusions about energy consumption and will change the way we talk about climate change. We have long been taught that humanity’s relationship with energy is one of progress, with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear—until at some future point everything will be replaced by “green” energy. But the long-held belief in transition and sustainability is completely untrue, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues. More and More and More demolishes this disastrous fallacy, showing how our industrial age and beyond has in fact been powered by an ever-greater accumulation of each major energy source feeding off the others. Using a fascinating array of examples from past and present, from the whaling and candle-making industries of the nineteenth century to our post-nuclear age today, Fressoz describes how humanity has gorged on all forms of energy—with whole forests used to prop up coal mines, and fossil fuels remaining central to the creation of innumerable new products we rely on every day. While nations have signed climate agreements aimed at reducing fossil fuels, the sad truth is that the world today burns more wood, coal, and carbon than ever before. More and More and More forces readers to confront hard truths, including how “transition” was originally promoted by energy companies, not as a genuine plan, but as a way to put off any meaningful change. It offers a clear-eyed understanding of the modern world in all its voracious reality and shines a hard light on the true nature of the enormous challenges eight billion of us face, as we stand at the precipice of planetary crisis.

An All-Consuming History of Energy

More and More and More

Frédéric Graber

Grégory Quenet

Ce livre présente les thèmes centraux de l'histoire environnementale. Parmi ceux-ci l'appropriation de la nature et la maîtrise technique de celle-ci, dont l'envers est l'histoire de la pollution et de la dégradation des milieux naturels; les interactions climat) société, par exemple l'effet de l'extraction coloniale des ressources ou, plus généralement, celui des inégalités de richesse e1 de puissance à l'échelle mondiale, jusqu'à l'impact des guerres sur l'environnement L'analyse porte sur les dynamiques socio-écologiques au coeur de phénomènes historiques aussi cruciaux que le mouvement de colonisation du globe par les puissance! occidentales (XVe-XXe siècles), la guerre froide ou la révolution industrielle. L'histoire environnementale propose un nouveau regard sur les défis du temps présent, comme sui l'histoire longue de nos sociétés: ce Repère! en dresse pour la première fois un panorama synthétique et raisonné.

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

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