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 due not simply to a lack of political will: it also stems from the fact that the modern system of state legitimacy is rooted in the ability of each state to guarantee prosperity for its citizens, a guarantee backed up by a regime of cheap energy. In the twenty-first century, argues Charbonnier, this paradigm has become obsolete, since we must both guarantee peace and security and respect planetary limits – in other words, learn to make peace without destroying the planet. It is in this context that the possibility of a war ecology is emerging, according to which sustainability and security no longer appear as contradictory injunctions but converge in the need to move towards a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This highly original work will be of interest to a wide readership in social and political theory, philosophy, politics, environmental studies, war and peace studies and the social sciences and humanities generally, as well as anyone concerned about war, conflict and the climate crisis.