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Happy Apocalypse

A History of Technological Risk

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz David Broder

$40

Hardback

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English
Verso Books
03 September 2024
Why do we accept pollution in the name of progress? Why has the pursuit of modernity permitted increasing exposure to environmental catastrophe. In Happy Apocalypse, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz - co-author of the highly successful The Shock of the Anthropocene - shows how debates on risk and profit in the Industrial Revolution set the foundations of our own precarious times.

This book plunges us into the controversies and struggles around vaccines and factories, railways and urban infrastructure, steam engines and chemical industries. Presenting the dangers of progress as everyday hazards to be tolerated. For instance, the 'polluter pays principle' is often seen as a 1970s invention aimed at curbing pollution. In fact, it was established in the early 19th century under the pressure of industrial capitalists themselves and it replaced a far more stringent way of regulating pollution based on police.

Furthermore Fressoz argues that the determination of risk management has been used to suppress protests and alternative models of economic advancement.
By:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Verso Books
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 21mm
Weight:   430g
ISBN:   9781839765506
ISBN 10:   183976550X
Pages:   272
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
List of Abbreviations Introduction: Little Modern Disinhibitions 1 Inoculated with Risk 2 The Philanthropic Virus 3 The Ancien Régime and Humanity's 'Environmental Surroundings' 4 Liberalising the Environment 5 Lighting up France after Waterloo 6 The Mechanics of Fault Conclusion Afterword Index

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 Shock of the Anthropocene (with C. Bonneuil) and Les révoltes du ciel (with F. Locher).

Reviews for Happy Apocalypse: A History of Technological Risk

Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: This revelatory, lucid and daring book rejects the delusions of control implicit in conventional environmentalism, and outlines the enormity of the changes necessary for us to continue to live in the Anthropocene. -- David Edgerton, King's College London Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: This bold, brilliantly argued history of the Anthropocene epoch is a corrective to cosy thinking about humanity's grave disruptions to Earth systems . [Bonneuil and Fressoz] call for a 'new environmental humanities,' and a shift away from market-based approaches that feed the beast. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature * Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: In questioning the idea of an apolitical Anthropocene and raising the spectre of a new self-selecting scientific geocracy, their book should begin a vital discussion. We do need a new politics of the Anthropocene. * New Scientist * Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: At a time when the word 'Anthropocene' is becoming so fashionable, this well-documented and well-argued book will help readers sort out the various meanings of this most unstable label . The authors show the bewildering varieties of historical actors at work in what is called the 'environmental crisis'. -- Bruno Latour Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: A very important book. In this historically rich and meticulously detailed work, Bonneuil and Fressoz show us how to keep our head without losing our heart to technocracy. -- Timothy Morton, author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: Cleverly argued and extremely compelling, this book offers a remarkably timely analysis and critique of the very notion of the Anthropocene. It's widely held that modern industrial societies innocently and ignorantly generated the forces that have wrought such dramatic ecological effects on their world. It's also believed that only very recently, because of the heroic work of a few visionaries, has this ignorance been overcome and the truth of the Anthropocene at last revealed. Using an astonishing range of sources from climate sciences and economics, history and technology, Bonneuil and Fressoz brilliantly show the utter falsity of this story, and why it matters so much. -- Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: A timely book which firmly grounds history in the stuff that the sciences now tell us about what commodified life does to the planet. This is an essential volume for the project of historical thought and action. -- McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: A wide-ranging essay that combines elements of environmental history, history of science and technology, and economic and intellectual history, while covering an extensive geographic base including British, American, French, and German cases. * Public Books * Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: This is the first book to seriously come to terms-philosophically and psychologically as well as scientifically-with the overwhelming planetary transformation implied by the word 'Anthropocene.' Bonneuil and Fressoz have done humanity a great service by thinking through the startling issues raised by the fact that our species has launched the entire ecosphere onto a new and frightening trajectory. -- Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: What histories must we write as we learn to inhabit the Anthropocene? This book offers an excellent starting place. * Geoscientist * Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: This is an important book, an informative and interesting book, and anyone thinking about where we go from here should read it. -- Nathalie Bennett * Ecologist * Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: Impressively researched, intellectually rigorous and elegantly written . it should be assigned reading for all current and aspiring Anthropocenologists. * Environment and History * Praise for The Shock of the Anthropocene: One of the most insightful books on the Anthropocene. * Ecozoic *


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