War Ecology
- Introduction
- Environmental History of Ideas and International Relations
- The Opening and Closing of the Frontier as a Historical Metaphor
- The Political Meaning of Limits
- Carbon Peace, Fossil Developmentalism and Liberal Environmentalism
- The Return of Industrial Policy in the Era of Sino–American Rivalry: A Race to Net Zero?
- The Climate Coalition Between Environmental and Climate Justice
- Farewell to the Proletariat: The Composite Make-Up of the Ecological Subject
- Full version
Introduction
Biography of Pierre Charbonnier
Pierre Charbonnier is a philosopher and CNRS research fellow affiliated with the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po. He works on the history, epistemology, and forms of power associated with the government of nature in modern societies. His early work focused on the history of social anthropology and on critiques of the nature-society dualism that structures classical sociological rationality. This research led to the publication of La fin d’un grand partage (CNRS Éditions, 2015).
At the same time, he pursued research on contemporary anthropology and its ontological turn, which resulted in a book of conversations with Philippe Descola, La composition des mondes (Flammarion, 2014), as well as the edited volume Comparative Metaphysics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), co edited with G. Salmon and P. Skafish.
He then undertook a study of the historical links between the process of conquering political autonomy in modern Europe and the transformations of these societies’ material foundations. This work, which formed the basis of his habilitation, was published under the title Abondance et liberté. Une histoire environnementale des idées politiques (La Découverte, 2020; English translation, Polity, 2021).
He is also the author of Vers l’écologie de guerre (La Découverte, 2024) and La Coalition climat (Seuil, 2025).
He is a regular contributor to Le Grand Continent and edited the issue of the journal Green entitled Écologie de guerre: un nouveau paradigme.
Biography of Pierre Charbonnier
Pierre Charbonnier is a philosopher and CNRS research fellow affiliated with the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po. He works on the history, epistemology, and forms of power associated with the government of nature in modern societies. His early work focused on the history of social anthropology and on critiques of the nature-society dualism that structures classical sociological rationality. This research led to the publication of La fin d’un grand partage (CNRS Éditions, 2015).
At the same time, he pursued research on contemporary anthropology and its ontological turn, which resulted in a book of conversations with Philippe Descola, La composition des mondes (Flammarion, 2014), as well as the edited volume Comparative Metaphysics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), co edited with G. Salmon and P. Skafish.
He then undertook a study of the historical links between the process of conquering political autonomy in modern Europe and the transformations of these societies’ material foundations. This work, which formed the basis of his habilitation, was published under the title Abondance et liberté. Une histoire environnementale des idées politiques (La Découverte, 2020; English translation, Polity, 2021).
He is also the author of Vers l’écologie de guerre (La Découverte, 2024) and La Coalition climat (Seuil, 2025).
He is a regular contributor to Le Grand Continent and edited the issue of the journal Green entitled Écologie de guerre: un nouveau paradigme.
Prolog
Since the onset of the age of ecology, which historians date to the 1970s, a deceptively whiggish vision of the environmental predicament has prevailed.
The fledgling environmental movement cast global awareness as the prelude to a coordinated effort by humankind to secure its survival. The universalist image of Earth as a fragile “spaceship” captured this new condition, portraying humankind as a single crew aboard the same vessel and exposed to a shared vulnerability.
Almost half a century later, however, humankind appears more fragmented than ever. While fossil powers work to consolidate a new imperial axis stretching from Washington to Moscow, and through Riyadh, China has transformed itself, in the space of two decades, from the world’s primary greenhouse gas emitter into an industrial hegemon in green technologies. China now holds a near-monopoly over exports of what the Chinese Communist Party calls “the new three”—solar panels, lithium batteries, and electric vehicles—accounting for over 70% of global production. It also controls about 50% of global wind turbine energy capacity and oversees most of the processing and refining of strategic minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The environmental question thus lies at the heart of international rivalries, which some commentators describe as a “new ecological Cold War”.
Pierre Charbonnier is one of the leading voices in the ecological interpretation of this emerging geopolitical order. According to Charbonnier, the link between international relations and the environment is an enduring problem that has shaped modern thought since its inception. In our interview, he discusses his approach to the environmental question in political theory and his interpretation of the history of geopolitical thought. In his work Ecology of War, he identifies a persistent oscillation between optimistic and pessimistic conceptions of political coexistence on a finite planet. For some, scientific and technical progress, together with economic development, foster peace and shared prosperity; for others, they intensify resource scarcity and exacerbate conflict.
Our interview retraces this oscillation. We open by looking at the liberal international order in the eighteenth century, in the wake of theories of perpetual peace and doux commerce in the works of Kant and Montesquieu. This liberal era, however, which had been founded on the promise that economic interdependence would bring peace and abundance, was overturned at the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of geopolitical thinking heralded by Friedrich Ratzel and Halford Mackinder announced the beginning of a post-Columbian age, marked by the end of colonial expansion and the intensification of conflict in a now fully populated world. After World War II, the reconstruction of the international order under the supervision of the United States inaugurated the period of “carbon peace”. In 1892 the historian Frederick Jackson Turner had proclaimed the closure of the American frontier. Now, however, Vannevar Bush, a chief engineer of the Manhattan Project, elevated science to the status of an “endless frontier”, shifting the horizon of expansion from territory to technological innovation.
The final phase of this history corresponds to a geoeconomic shift in the global economy, marked by Sino-American rivalry and by the resurgence of industrial policies aimed at securing value chains. Clearly, the environmental question has become decisive in the reconfiguration of the international order informed by what Carl Schmitt once called the pluriverse — in other words, a multipolar world. These realignments showcase the new challenges facing climate cooperation–irreducible to either liberal optimism or geopolitical pessimism.
Current international tensions are also coupled with unprecedented social polarization at the domestic level. The unequal distribution of the responsibility for, impact of, and capacity to respond to the ecological crisis is fueling a new climate class struggle. By advancing the proposal of a “climate coalition”, Pierre Charbonnier locates himself within the tradition of political ecology. He advocates substituting a “new ecological class” for the proletariat of yore. The climate coalition Charbonnier envisions must be capable of enforcing the phase-out of fossil fuels. It must also be capable of effecting the redistribution of the risks and social costs to which the dismantling of carbon-based industries exposes its workers. Otherwise, the exploitation of material insecurity by a denialist far-right appears to be an all-too plausible scenario.
Our interview took place in Paris on October 3, 2025.
Prolog
Since the onset of the age of ecology, which historians date to the 1970s, a deceptively whiggish vision of the environmental predicament has prevailed.
The fledgling environmental movement cast global awareness as the prelude to a coordinated effort by humankind to secure its survival. The universalist image of Earth as a fragile “spaceship” captured this new condition, portraying humankind as a single crew aboard the same vessel and exposed to a shared vulnerability.
Almost half a century later, however, humankind appears more fragmented than ever. While fossil powers work to consolidate a new imperial axis stretching from Washington to Moscow, and through Riyadh, China has transformed itself, in the space of two decades, from the world’s primary greenhouse gas emitter into an industrial hegemon in green technologies. China now holds a near-monopoly over exports of what the Chinese Communist Party calls “the new three”—solar panels, lithium batteries, and electric vehicles—accounting for over 70% of global production. It also controls about 50% of global wind turbine energy capacity and oversees most of the processing and refining of strategic minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The environmental question thus lies at the heart of international rivalries, which some commentators describe as a “new ecological Cold War”.
Pierre Charbonnier is one of the leading voices in the ecological interpretation of this emerging geopolitical order. According to Charbonnier, the link between international relations and the environment is an enduring problem that has shaped modern thought since its inception. In our interview, he discusses his approach to the environmental question in political theory and his interpretation of the history of geopolitical thought. In his work Ecology of War, he identifies a persistent oscillation between optimistic and pessimistic conceptions of political coexistence on a finite planet. For some, scientific and technical progress, together with economic development, foster peace and shared prosperity; for others, they intensify resource scarcity and exacerbate conflict.
Our interview retraces this oscillation. We open by looking at the liberal international order in the eighteenth century, in the wake of theories of perpetual peace and doux commerce in the works of Kant and Montesquieu. This liberal era, however, which had been founded on the promise that economic interdependence would bring peace and abundance, was overturned at the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of geopolitical thinking heralded by Friedrich Ratzel and Halford Mackinder announced the beginning of a post-Columbian age, marked by the end of colonial expansion and the intensification of conflict in a now fully populated world. After World War II, the reconstruction of the international order under the supervision of the United States inaugurated the period of “carbon peace”. In 1892 the historian Frederick Jackson Turner had proclaimed the closure of the American frontier. Now, however, Vannevar Bush, a chief engineer of the Manhattan Project, elevated science to the status of an “endless frontier”, shifting the horizon of expansion from territory to technological innovation.
The final phase of this history corresponds to a geoeconomic shift in the global economy, marked by Sino-American rivalry and by the resurgence of industrial policies aimed at securing value chains. Clearly, the environmental question has become decisive in the reconfiguration of the international order informed by what Carl Schmitt once called the pluriverse — in other words, a multipolar world. These realignments showcase the new challenges facing climate cooperation–irreducible to either liberal optimism or geopolitical pessimism.
Current international tensions are also coupled with unprecedented social polarization at the domestic level. The unequal distribution of the responsibility for, impact of, and capacity to respond to the ecological crisis is fueling a new climate class struggle. By advancing the proposal of a “climate coalition”, Pierre Charbonnier locates himself within the tradition of political ecology. He advocates substituting a “new ecological class” for the proletariat of yore. The climate coalition Charbonnier envisions must be capable of enforcing the phase-out of fossil fuels. It must also be capable of effecting the redistribution of the risks and social costs to which the dismantling of carbon-based industries exposes its workers. Otherwise, the exploitation of material insecurity by a denialist far-right appears to be an all-too plausible scenario.
Our interview took place in Paris on October 3, 2025.