War Ecology: An Environmental History of Peace

For nature and the climate, the only thing more dangerous than war is peace - this is the startling claim made by the French philosopher Pierre Charbonnier in his new book War Ecology.Charbonnier shows that we are the heirs of an intellectual and political history which maintained that creating the conditions for peace between human beings requires exploiting nature, exchanging resources and providing sufficient prosperity for all. This idea, which can be traced back to the eighteenth century, found striking expression in the mid-twentieth century.In the aftermath of the Second World War, the development of fossil fuel infrastructures was combined with a pacifist and universalist discourse that sought to undermine the causes of war by liberating productivity.So peace, or the balance of great powers established by the United States, is largely a gift of fossil fuels, particularly oil.The fact that the climate crisis continues to gather pace today, with little effective intervention, is