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
Circa l’autore
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science and technology, previously at Imperial College London, now based in Paris at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is the author of The Happy Apocalypse (forthcoming) and The Shock of the Anthropocene (with C. Bonneuil).