“If you want to understand the long path to the climate crisis,
read this book.” –Deborah Coen, Professor of History and the
History of Science and Medicine, Yale University
Politicians and
scientists have debated climate change for centuries in times of
rapid change
Nothing
could seem more contemporary than climate change. Yet, in Chaos
in the Heavens,
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher show that we have been
thinking about and debating the consequences of our actions upon the
environment for centuries. The subject was raised wherever history
accelerated: by the Conquistadors in the New World, by the French
revolutionaries of 1789, by the scientists and politicians of the
nineteenth century, by the European imperialists in Asia and Africa
until the Second World War.
Climate
change was at the heart of fundamental debates about colonisation,
God, the state, nature, and capitalism. From these intellectual and
political battles emerged key concepts of contemporary environmental
science and policy. For a brief interlude, science and industry
instilled in us the reassuring illusion of an impassive climate. But,
in the age of global warming, we must, once again, confront the chaos
in the heavens.
