Dipesh Chakrabarty's "The Climate of History: Four Theses" (Summary

 

The Climate of History: Four Theses

The ongoing global crisis of climate change, also known as global warming, evokes diverse responses from individuals, groups, and governments. These responses range from denial and indifference to active engagement and activism. Alan Weisman's popular book, "The World without Us," proposes a thought experiment to help us grasp the urgency of our present situation. He asks us to imagine a world where human extinction has occurred, prompting us to consider the impact of our existence on the planet.

 

Weisman's experiment illustrates a challenge to our historical sensibility, disrupting the usual connection between past, present, and future. The discipline of history assumes a continuity in human experience across these temporal dimensions. However, the contemporary sense of the present, heightened by concerns about the future, creates a paradox. We need to project ourselves into a future "without us" to comprehend it, leading to a contradiction in our historical understanding.

 

This confusion arises from our current perception of the present, particularly in relation to anxieties about humanity's limits. Weisman's experiment reveals how this sense of the present can be destructive to our overall historical awareness. The essay suggests a need to reconsider our historical practices in light of the challenges posed by climate change.

 

The climate change debate offers valuable insights for those engaged in discussions about history. The growing recognition that environmental risks result from the accumulation of greenhouse gases challenges traditional ideas about human history. Scientific findings on climate change not only question established notions of humanity but also challenge analytical strategies used by historians, especially in response to postcolonial and postimperial contexts.

 

In the concluding part of the essay, the author plans to revisit Weisman's experiment, emphasizing its relevance to contemporary historical discussions. Overall, the scientific insights into climate change force a reevaluation of historical concepts, including those related to the birth of the modern world, and prompt a critical reflection on postcolonial and postimperial historical approaches.

 

In the following discussion, I present insights on the current crisis from a historian's perspective. Before delving into the topic, it's important to acknowledge my connection to the literature on climate change. As a practicing historian deeply interested in the nature of history as a form of knowledge, my understanding of global warming is largely derived from scientific findings shared with the general public.

 

Scientific investigations into global warming trace back to the 1890s, notably with the work of Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. However, public discussions on global warming gained prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coinciding with the discourse on globalization among social scientists and humanists. Despite this temporal parallel, these discussions developed independently. While globalization quickly captured the attention of humanists and social scientists, global warming did not become a significant public concern until the 2000s.

 

The delayed recognition can be attributed to various factors, including government reluctance influenced by special interests and political concerns. Even as early as 1988, warnings from figures like James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, went unheeded. It wasn't until the 2000s, with increasingly dire predictions and visible signs of the crisis, that global warming gained political and economic attention. Events such as droughts in Australia, frequent cyclones and wildfires, crop failures worldwide, melting glaciers, polar ice cap deterioration, rising sea acidity, and damage to the food chain became impossible to ignore. Concerns also grew about the rapid destruction of other species and the global impact of a human population expected to exceed nine billion by 2050.

 

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In recent years, as the crisis intensified, I realized that my extensive readings in theories of globalization, Marxist capital analysis, subaltern studies, and postcolonial criticism did not adequately prepare me to comprehend this global situation. Despite their usefulness in studying globalization, these theories fell short in helping me make sense of the planetary challenges humanity faces today.

 

The shift in the mood of globalization analysis is evident when comparing Giovanni Arrighi's earlier work, "The Long Twentieth Century" (1994), with his later "Adam Smith in Beijing" (2007). The former, a meditation on the internal chaos of capitalist economies, concludes with thoughts on capitalism's role in the world's escalating violence. In contrast, the latter emphasizes ecological limits to capitalism, reflecting Arrighi's evolving concern over thirteen years. This evolution prompts the question of how to integrate our understanding of globalization and global warming, considering their interconnected processes.

 

Despite not being a scientist, I make a fundamental assumption about climate change science—I trust that the broad outlines of the science are accurate. I rely on the views expressed in authoritative reports like the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Stern Review, and recent publications by scientists and scholars explaining global warming. Unless there is a significant shift in scientific consensus, I accept the anthropogenic theories of climate change as largely truthful.

 

My position is supported by observations such as those presented by Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at the University of California, San Diego. She examined 928 papers on global warming published in specialized peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and found that none disputed the consensus among scientists regarding human-induced climate change. While there may be disagreements about the extent and direction of change, virtually all professional climate scientists agree on the reality of human-induced climate change, with ongoing debates on the specifics.

 

In my readings, I haven't found any compelling reasons to remain skeptical about global warming. The scientific consensus, particularly regarding the human influence on the current climate crisis, forms the basis of my discussion here.

 

To provide clarity and focus, I present my ideas in the form of four theses. The subsequent three theses stem from the first one. I start with the proposition that explanations attributing climate change to human activities challenge and essentially dissolve the traditional distinction between natural history and human history. This leads to a broader question: How does the climate change crisis impact our understanding of universal human experiences while simultaneously challenging our ability to comprehend it historically?

 

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Thesis 1: Anthropogenic Explanations of Climate Change Spell the Collapse of the Age-old Humanist Distinction between Natural History and Human History

 

Philosophers and historians have often consciously separated human history, or the narrative of human affairs, from natural history. This tendency, as described by R. G. Collingwood, has deep historical roots. One starting point is the Viconian-Hobbesian idea suggesting that humans could have proper knowledge only of civil and political institutions because they create them, while nature remains God's work and fundamentally inscrutable to humanity. This understanding contributed to Marx's famous statement that "men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please."

 

Vico's ideas, though not always as distinctly separating natural and human sciences as later readings suggested, influenced the nineteenth and twentieth-century historian's common sense. Collingwood, influenced by Croce, played a significant role in perpetuating this distinction, evident in his impact on E. H. Carr's influential work "What Is History?" Collingwood's arguments developed along Viconian lines, emphasizing that nature lacks an "inside," and events in nature are mere happenings, not the acts of intentional agents. As Collingwood put it, "all history properly so called is the history of human affairs."

 

Collingwood's perspective suggested that historians should focus on actions with human thought behind them, making a distinction between historical and non-historical human actions. Activities determined by basic human instincts were considered non-historical, while those influenced by thought, convention, and morality were deemed historical. Collingwood argued that the historian should be concerned with social customs created by human thought, framing natural instincts in ways approved by convention and morality. This separation led Collingwood to conclude that studying the history of the social construction of the body was relevant, but not the history of the body itself. By delineating the human into the natural and the social or cultural, Collingwood saw no necessity to reconcile the two aspects.

 

In discussing Croce's 1893 essay "History Subsumed under the Concept of Art," Collingwood pointed out that Croce, by rejecting the German idea that history was a science, distanced himself from naturalism. Croce embraced the idea that history was fundamentally different from nature. Drawing on the works of Ernst Mach and Henri Poincaré, Croce argued that the concepts of natural sciences are human constructs created for human purposes. According to Croce, when we observe nature, we find reflections of ourselves, and our understanding of the natural world is shaped by our human perspective.

 

Croce's idealism suggested that material objects, like rocks, only exist within human thought. They neither exist nor do not exist independently of human concerns and language. Both Croce and Collingwood integrated human history and nature into purposive human action, considering what exists beyond this human framework as not having meaningful existence.

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In the twentieth century, other sociological or materialist arguments existed alongside the Viconian one, justifying the separation of human and natural history. An example is Stalin's publication in 1938, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," where he asserted that geographical environment influences societal development but is not the determining factor. Stalin argued that changes in human society occur at a much faster rate than changes in the geographical environment.

This separation of human and natural history persisted, with historians assuming that man's relationship to his environment changed so slowly that it was almost timeless. Even Fernand Braudel, in his rebellion against this stance, acknowledged that the environment was often treated as a passive backdrop to historical narratives. While Braudel introduced a more dynamic role for the environment, the underlying assumption was similar to Stalin's—that the history of man's relationship to the environment progressed at a slow and almost timeless pace.

 

In today's understanding of climate change, climatologists emphasize the idea of tipping points, where the climate and overall environment can rapidly transform, posing a significant threat to human beings. This concept challenges the earlier assumption that the history of human-environment relationships unfolds at a slow and timeless pace.

 

While Braudel began to challenge the binary division of natural and human history, the rise of environmental history in the late twentieth century widened this breach. Environmental historians, to some extent, moved towards creating natural histories of humans. However, a crucial distinction lies in the understanding of human beings in these histories compared to the agency proposed by scientists studying climate change.

 

Environmental history, when not entirely cultural, social, or economic, viewed humans primarily as biological agents. Scholars like Alfred Crosby argued that humans are biological entities before being categorized as members of specific cultures or economic systems. Recent works, such as Daniel Lord Smail's "On Deep History and the Brain," explore connections between evolutionary and neurosciences with human histories. Smail's focus is on the history of human biology, not on recent ideas about humans acquiring geological agency.

 

The current discourse on climate change introduces a novel perspective. Climate scientists challenge the long-standing distinction between natural and human histories by asserting that humans have evolved into geological agents. This means that humans, once considered solely biological agents, now wield a geological force capable of altering fundamental Earth processes.

 

Naomi Oreskes emphasizes that denying global warming is, in essence, denying that humans have become geological agents, influencing the basic physical processes of the Earth. Unlike the perspective of environmental history, which often envisioned humans as prisoners of climate, the current discourse sees humans as the makers of the planet's conditions.

 

Calling humans geological agents implies a significant scaling up of our understanding of humanity. While humans have always been biological agents, the attribution of geological agency comes into play only historically and collectively. This occurs when human population numbers and technologies reach a scale large enough to impact the planet on a geological scale. This transformation into geological agents is a recent development, intensifying since the Industrial Revolution and particularly in the second half of the twentieth century.

 

This shift challenges a fundamental assumption in Western political thought—the idea that humans interact with nature. Instead, the claim now is that humans are forces of nature in a geological sense, marking a departure from traditional Western perspectives on the relationship between human and natural histories.

 

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Thesis 2: The Idea of the Anthropocene, the New Geological Epoch When Humans Exist as a Geological Force, Severely Qualifies Humanist Histories of Modernity/Globalization

 

One of the fundamental questions underlying human histories from 1750 to the present era of globalization is how to reconcile human cultural and historical diversity with human freedom. Gadamer highlighted that diversity itself was considered a symbol of freedom in the historian's imagination of the historical process. Freedom, over this period, has encompassed various meanings, ranging from notions of human and citizens' rights to those of decolonization and self-rule.

 

Examining the works of philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the historical events such as the struggle against slavery, revolutions, and civil rights movements, freedom emerges as a central theme in written accounts of human history spanning the past 250 years. However, the meaning of freedom has varied among different thinkers and contexts.

 

What has been notably absent in discussions of freedom since the Enlightenment is an awareness of the geological agency that humans have been acquiring simultaneously with and through processes linked to their pursuit of freedom. Philosophers focused on human escape from injustice, oppression, inequality, or uniformity imposed by other humans or human-made systems, while geological time and the chronology of human histories remained unrelated.

 

The period from 1750 to the present is marked by a significant shift from renewable fuels to the widespread use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. The foundations of modern freedoms are closely tied to the extensive use of fossil fuels, making most of our freedoms energy-intensive.

 

The same historical period, associated with the development of civilization's institutions, also coincides with the Holocene, the geological epoch in which we currently reside. However, the concept of the Anthropocene has been proposed by scientists, suggesting a new geological era where humans act as the primary determinant of the planet's environment. This proposal, introduced by chemist Paul J. Crutzen and marine science specialist Eugene F. Stoermer in 2000, suggests that human impacts on the Earth's atmosphere justify recognizing a distinct epoch named the Anthropocene. Crutzen further explained in 2002 that the Anthropocene could be considered to have started in the late 18th century, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution and the significant increase in carbon dioxide and methane concentrations due to human activities. This period also aligns with James Watt's design of the steam engine in 1784.

 

Certainly, Crutzen stating the Anthropocene's existence doesn't officially designate it as an accepted geological period, as periodization in geology is a complex and debated process. The term Holocene, denoting the post-glacial epoch of the past ten to twelve thousand years, faced similar challenges before its acceptance in 1885 after fifty years of debate.

 

Concerning the Anthropocene, scientists, including the Geological Society of London's Stratigraphy Commission, have accepted Crutzen's definition and dating, suggesting it as a new geological epoch for formal consideration. This acceptance is gradually extending to social scientists.

 

The period from 1750 to the present prompts questions: Is it an era of freedom or the Anthropocene? Does the Anthropocene critique narratives of freedom? Is human geological agency the cost of pursuing freedom? In some ways, yes, as human decisions have inadvertently led to becoming geological agents. However, the relationship between Enlightenment ideals of freedom and the merging of human and geological timelines is complex.

 

While the Anthropocene results from human choices, the way forward requires reason and global, collective efforts for sustainability, according to Crutzen and Stoermer. This underscores the need for Enlightenment values in the Anthropocene era. However, optimism about the role of reason is qualified by the predominant shape freedom takes in societies: politics. Politics, especially in a world marked by mass populations and inequalities, cannot rely on reason alone. Urban population growth, increasing food and energy crises, and uncertain global conditions pose challenges with unclear solutions.

 

 

It's not surprising that the climate change crisis brings about anxieties, particularly about future scenarios that are challenging to envision. Scientists expressing hope in reason guiding us out of the current predicament reflects a tension Bruno Latour discusses in his "Politics of Nature" between the idealized myth of Science and the practical politics within scientific endeavors. Edward O. Wilson, lacking a political perspective, can only express his practical optimism with a mix of hope and anxiety, stating, "Perhaps we will act in time."

 

However, the scientific understanding of global warming inherently generates political imperatives. Tim Flannery's book highlights the ominous possibility of an "Orwellian nightmare" in a section titled "2084: The Carbon Dictatorship." Mark Maslin, in concluding his book, presents a pessimistic view, suggesting that relying solely on global politics may not effectively address global warming. He warns against potentially problematic technofixes and notes the challenge of long-term planning in societies driven by short-term political considerations. Maslin emphasizes the need to prepare for the worst and adapt. These perspectives, along with observations from Mike Davis about an impending "planet of slums," cast a shadow over the concept of human freedom in the Anthropocene era.

 

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Thesis 3: The Geological Hypothesis Regarding the Anthropocene Requires Us to Put Global Histories of Capital in Conversation with the Species History of Humans

 

Analytic frameworks that criticize capitalist globalization haven't become obsolete in the era of climate change. On the contrary, climate change might intensify global inequalities if the interests of the poor are ignored. While critiques of capitalism remain relevant, they aren't enough to comprehend human history considering the climate crisis and the emergence of the Anthropocene. The challenge is to intertwine the geological now of the Anthropocene with human history.

 

Scholars distinguish between recorded history (the last ten thousand years, especially the past four thousand with written records) and deep history, encompassing genetic and cultural changes over hundreds of thousands of years. Understanding the crisis of climate change necessitates recognizing the consequences of global warming in the context of human history as part of the broader history of life on Earth.

 

Terms like "species" used by scholars such as Wilson and Crutzen in discussing human life don't typically appear in standard histories or analyses of globalization. Species thinking is connected to deep history and is crucial for visualizing human well-being in the context of climate change. To address the crisis effectively, it's essential to reconcile different intellectual perspectives, including planetary and global considerations, deep and recorded histories, and species thinking with critiques of capitalism.

 

This perspective challenges the prevailing view in historians' thinking on globalization and world history, which emphasizes multiple modernities and a fragmented humanity. Scientists advocating the Anthropocene argue that humans, as a specific species, have become a geological force. This requires creating a dialogue between these contrasting positions.

 

It's understandable that historians might be concerned about the term "species" sounding biological, as it raises worries about a more deterministic worldview, potential essentialism, and the historical misuse of biology. However, scholars like Smail argue against essentialism, emphasizing that species, according to Darwin, are not fixed entities with inherent essences.

 

Different academic disciplines position their practitioners differently in terms of how they perceive the human being. While medicine or biology might reduce humans to specific understandings, humanist historians may overlook that their historical protagonists—individuals—are also reductions. The crisis of climate change challenges scholars to transcend disciplinary biases, emphasizing the multi-dimensional nature of the crisis.

 

Observing the role of the "species" category among scholars, including economists, reveals its significance in understanding the climate crisis. Economists like Jeffrey Sachs use the idea of species as central to their arguments, acknowledging the role of the Anthropocene. The concept of species plays a pivotal role, analogous to the Marxist notion of the multitude or masses, in envisioning a collective self-recognition and unity among humans. For Edward Wilson, recognizing ourselves as a species becomes crucial for achieving self-understanding and addressing the challenges posed by climate change.

Critics on the Left might raise doubts about using the idea of "species" in the context of climate change, arguing that anthropogenic factors contributing to global warming are tied to the broader story of capitalism's development in the West and its imperial domination globally. The question is, why include all of humanity using terms like species or mankind when the blame for the crisis lies primarily with the rich nations and classes?

 

While some scientists suggest dating the Anthropocene from the time of agriculture, it's crucial to understand that falling into the Anthropocene was neither ancient nor inevitable. The transition from wood to coal and then to petroleum and gas had historical contingency, demonstrated by scholars like Kenneth Pomeranz. Historical accidents and coincidences played a role in the development of capitalist societies, and human population growth since World War II has been substantial.

 

If industrial civilization led us into this crisis, why use the category of species, which belongs to a much longer history? The narrative of capitalism, with its critique, might seem sufficient as a framework for understanding climate change. However, the crisis has exposed conditions for human life that go beyond the logics of capitalist, nationalist, or socialist identities. These conditions connect to the history of life on Earth, interrelations between different life forms, and the potential dangers of mass extinction. Without considering this broader history of life, the crisis of climate change lacks human "meaning" because it is not a crisis for the inorganic planet.

 

In simpler terms, the industrial way of life has led us into a situation where we must recognize certain boundary conditions essential for the existence of institutions central to our idea of modernity. Take the agricultural revolution as an example. It was not just a result of human inventiveness but was made possible by changes in the atmosphere, climate stability, and planet warming. Parameters like the Earth's temperature zone, crucial for human existence, are independent of specific socioeconomic or technological choices. While celebrating rights and freedoms, we cannot afford to destabilize these parametric conditions that have allowed humans to become the dominant species on Earth, even if unintended consequences now make us geological agents disturbing these essential conditions for our own existence.

 

This doesn't negate the historical responsibility of wealthier Western nations in emitting greenhouse gases. Mentioning "species thinking" doesn't oppose the politics of "common but differentiated responsibility" pursued by developing countries like China and India when it comes to reducing emissions. Whether blame is placed retrospectively on the West for past emissions or prospectively on emerging economies like China is tied to the histories of capitalism and modernization. However, the discovery that humans have become a geological agent points to a shared catastrophe affecting all.

 

Crutzen and Stoermer describe this catastrophe caused by human expansion: population growth, depletion of fossil fuels, release of pollutants, and alteration of ecosystems. Understanding this catastrophe requires interdisciplinary conversations and an exploration of both recorded and deep histories, similar to explaining the agricultural revolution through geology, archaeology, and history.

 

While scientists like Wilson and Crutzen may be politically naive, they articulate Enlightenment ideals, emphasizing reason as a guide for collective choices. Although not explicitly anti-capitalist, they acknowledge the need for a wiser use of resources. Their focus on knowledge of humans as a species, interdependent with other species in the history of life, highlights actions detrimental to our existence, regardless of political choices. Global warming cannot be comprehended without considering their propositions.

 

Simultaneously, the story of capital and the contingent history leading to the Anthropocene cannot be dismissed by embracing the idea of species. Combining these perspectives challenges the traditional notion of historical understanding. Addressing the crisis of climate change necessitates thinking across both capital and species history, bridging the seemingly incompatible chronologies. This amalgamation, however, fundamentally stretches the conventional concept of historical understanding.

 

Thesis 4: The Cross-Hatching of Species History and the History of Capital Is a Process of Probing the Limits of Historical Understanding

 

Understanding history, as per the Diltheyan tradition, involves critical thinking that draws on generic ideas about human experience. Dilthey viewed the individual's private experience as the starting point for a broader understanding, filling it with the richness of historical experiences through a living transposition. Historical consciousness, in this view, is a form of self-knowledge gained through critical reflections on personal and others' historical experiences.

 

Humanist histories of capitalism rely on the assumption that there is something called the experience of capitalism. For example, E. P. Thompson's exploration of working-class experience of capitalist labor presupposes this assumption. Humanist histories create meaning by appealing to our ability not just to reconstruct but, as Collingwood suggested, to reenact past experiences in our minds.

 

However, when Wilson suggests achieving self-understanding as a species for our collective future, it doesn't align with the historical understanding that connects past and future experiences through the assumption of continuity in human experience. The statement raises questions about who the "we" is, as humans never directly experience themselves as a species. While we can intellectually comprehend the concept of the human species, we don't have a phenomenology of being a species. The discussion about the climate change crisis can elicit emotions and knowledge about collective human pasts and futures, but it operates at the limits of historical understanding. Specific effects of the crisis are experienced, but not the phenomenon as a whole.

 

This situation prompts a question: should we assert, as Geyer and Bright suggest, that "humanity no longer comes into being through 'thought'" or agree with Foucault's notion that "the human being no longer has any history"? Geyer and Bright, adopting a Foucaultian perspective, argue that world history's task is to reveal the structures of power, supported by information, that compress humanity into a singular humankind.

The critique that views humanity as an effect of power has been valuable for postcolonial scholarship and its hermeneutics of suspicion, particularly in analyzing national and global structures of domination. However, this perspective seems insufficient when addressing the global warming crisis.

 

Firstly, vague images of humanity and alternative conceptions persist in our understanding of the current crisis. This is evident in titles like Weisman's "The World Without Us" and his attempt to depict the experience of New York after human absence.

 

Secondly, the distinction between human and natural history has eroded. While we may not perceive ourselves as geological agents, it appears we have become one at the species level. Understanding this crisis that affects us all requires knowledge that surpasses historical understanding. While climate change, influenced by global capital, may intensify the inequalities inherent in capitalist rule, reducing the entire crisis to a capitalist narrative is insufficient.

 

Unlike in capitalist crises, there are no guaranteed escape routes for the rich and privileged in the face of climate change (as seen in events like droughts in Australia and fires in affluent Californian neighborhoods). The anxiety induced by global warming is comparable to the fear of a global nuclear war, but with a crucial difference. Nuclear war would have been a deliberate decision by those in power, whereas climate change is an unintended consequence of human actions. Scientific analysis reveals the effects of our actions as a species.

 

The concept of "species" might serve as a placeholder for an emerging, new universal history of humans prompted by the imminent danger of climate change. However, this universal is distinct – it doesn't arise dialectically from historical movements or as a product of the crisis of capital. Geyer and Bright rightly reject these notions of the universal. Climate change raises questions about a collective human identity, an "us," pointing to a universal that eludes our ability to experience the world directly. It resembles a universal born from a shared awareness of catastrophe – a "negative universal history." This calls for a global approach to politics without the illusion of a global identity, as it cannot encompass particularities like a Hegelian universal would.