The only thing more dangerous than war for the climate would be peace: this is the hypothesis behind the book "Vers l'écologie de guerre - Une histoire environnementale de la paix" (Towards the ecology of war - An environmental history of peace) published by Pierre Charbonnier. In it, the author states that our societies are heirs to an intellectual and political history that considers that creating the conditions for peace requires exploiting nature. According to this logic, in order to eradicate conflicts, we need to fight against the scarcity of resources and develop a universal language: the language of science, technology and development. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the development of fossil fuel infrastructures was combined with a pacifist discourse designed to undermine the causes of war by liberating productivity. So peace, or the balance of power established by the United States, was largely a gift of fossil fuels. However, this paradigm has become obsolete in the 21st century, since peace must now be guaranteed while taking into account planetary limits. It is in this context that the possibility of the ecology of war is emerging, according to which sustainability and security must be aligned to enable a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Pierre Charbonnier has a doctorate in philosophy and is currently a research fellow at the CNRS and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. His work focuses on the history, epistemology and forms of power associated with the government of nature in modern societies. He is the author of several books, including Abondance et liberté (La Découverte, 2019) and Culture écologique (Presses de Sciences Po, 2022).
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