The Shock of the Anthropocene

by Christophe Bonneuil

  The ‘peaceful’ use of nuclear weapons could also be included in this category. In 1949, the Soviet ambassador to the UN justified his country’s first nuclear tests by invoking civilian aims: ‘We want to put atomic energy to blowing up mountains, changing the course of rivers, irrigating deserts, laying new lines of life there where the human foot has rarely stepped.’29 This inaugurated the ‘atoms for peace’ discourse that Eisenhower took up in 1953. The following year, Camille Rougeron, considered the great French strategist of the Cold War, published a monograph describing the possible applications of the bomb: to alter climate and the course of rivers, melt glaciers, build underground power stations, mine otherwise inaccessible minerals, etc.30

  In the United States, the secret ‘Project Plowshare’ was launched in 1957 by the Atomic Energy Commission. Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, proposed the construction of a second Panama canal with the help of 300 nuclear explosions. Another option involved 764 bombs for a canal route across Colombia. In 1958, the US administration studied the possible use of the H-bomb in building an artificial port on Cape Thompson in Alaska. In 1963, the AEC and the Californian highways department proposed constructing a freeway across the Bristol Mountains in the Mojave Desert by exploding twenty-two nuclear devices.

  The most promising use for nuclear explosions seemed to be for extracting bituminous oil from Alberta. A hundred underground explosions were planned, to liquefy the oil and make it extractable by existing technologies. This project was well advanced in 1962 when Canada changed its mind on the desirability of nuclear tests. In Colorado, on the other hand, the Americans did use the bomb to extract gas, but it turned out to be too heavily contaminated with radioactive elements to be marketable. The growing opposition to radioactive contamination led to Plowshare being abandoned in 1977. Altogether, over twenty years, the US spent $770 million and conducted twenty-seven explosions for civilian aims. The equivalent Soviet programme (Programme no. 7 on Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy) was still more destructive, with a total of 128 explosions to test thirteen possible civilian uses.31

  Transfers between war and agriculture, both technological and ideological, have become better known thanks to the work of historians Sarah Jansen and Edmund Russell. The development of chlorinated gases during the First World War demonstrated the insecticidal properties of certain organochloride compounds. The US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service, in particular, showed the effectiveness of chloropicrin in the battle against typhus. In 1916, the chemist Fritz Haber proposed using the gases developed for warfare by the German Army for exterminating pests. Together with entomologists and foresters, he tested different compounds and different forms of spraying on fields, in flour-mills and in barracks. In 1925, this application to forestry served as a pretext for Haber and the German Army to conduct experiments with chemical shells that were forbidden by the Versailles Treaty.32

  In the United States, the chemical industry underwent a change of scale during the First World War, as a result of the need to substitute for German imports and the demand for explosives. DuPont, Monsanto and Dow grew into powerful corporations. The income from confiscated German patents financed a trade association, the Chemical Foundation,33 which particularly promoted the conversion of the gas warfare industry to pesticides. The biplanes of the First World War, symbol of the alliance between military technologies and agriculture, were used to spread herbicides.

  But it was especially after the Second World War and the invention of DDT, another organochloride compound, that the damaging dream of a purified nature entirely subjected to agricultural needs took concrete form. DDT, invented by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939, was used on a massive scale by the US Army from 1942 on, to struggle against typhus and malaria during the Pacific War. Very rapidly, farmers were faced with the problem of resistance. In Korea, the US Army also noted the ineffectiveness of DDT against certain mosquitoes. This was the start of an endless battle between innovation and evolution. The 1950s were marked by the rapid development of the American chemical arsenal, centred on organophosphate compounds such as Sarin, gases known as ‘innervating’ on account of their capacity to block an enzyme in the nervous system. As they had a similar effect on insects, phytosanitary and military inventions reciprocally fuelled one another. For example, it was working on the basis of the pesticide Amiton that British researchers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down perfected the powerful battle gas VX.34

  War and chemistry powerfully contributed to the development of a culture of annihilation: from the First World War to the Second, the transition was steadily made from a control of pests based on entomology (protecting crops by the use of predators on insects, or by natural substances) to a logic of extermination. Stephen Forbes, one of the great American ecologists, explained in 1915: ‘The struggle between man and insects began long before the dawn of civilization, has continued without cessation to the present time, and will continue, no doubt, as long as the human race endures.’35

  During the Second World War, insect phobia and racism mutually fuelled one another: Japanese and Germans were often caricatured with the features of insects, beetles or vermin to be exterminated by means of chemical insecticides. Nazi Germany took this process of dehumanization to its culmination. Connections both ideological (degeneration, purity, species health) and technological (Zyklon B was a pesticide developed by Haber) linked the extermination of pests with that of Jews and others in the death camps. We should finally note that, from the Second World War to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the chemical industry in the US enjoyed a great prestige thanks to its involvement in the war effort, despite awareness of the danger of pesticide residues in foodstuffs and their acute toxicity for agricultural workers.36

  Figure 10: A Japanese depicted as a louse in a wartime US magazine

  Autarchic technologies

  Along with the invention of brutal technologies for killing people and, by extension, life forms in general, we have also to examine a set of more complex historical phenomena that indirectly link war and the Anthropocene. For example, the imperative of supplying a war economy leads to the duplication of productive infrastructure and finally the build-up of excess industrial capacity in many fields. Or again, industrial mobilization, war emergency, blockades and the imperative to substitute imports play a role in the establishment of autarchic productive systems that are particularly polluting and devouring of energy.

  The first major industrial chemical system based on the Leblanc process for synthesizing soda, using sulphuric acid and sea salt, appeared during the Napoleonic Wars: in 1808–09, deprived of natural soda that had been imported from Spain (the ash of marine plants, indispensable to the textile, soap-making and glass industries), French chemists succeeded in synthesizing this ‘artificial soda’. The process was very likely the most polluting industry of its time: the production of two tonnes of soda emitted one tonne of hydrochloric acid vapour, which corroded everything in its vicinity and particularly destroyed crops and trees.

  Beside its direct environmental effects, the historical consequences of this artificial soda are very important, as it was to protect these extraordinarily polluting chemical works, often owned by industrialists close to ruling circles (Jean-Antoine Chaptal above all, who was at the same time chemist, industrialist and interior minister) that the 1810 decree on classified establishments was issued. This decree caused a fundamental shift in the logic of environmental regulation: from now on, factories were subject to administrative jurisdiction (the préfectures and the Conseil d’État), in other words by institutions swayed by national considerations, and thus far more industrialist in their mentality than local jurisdictions or the town police of the ancien régime.37 Since in 1810 the empire was at its apogee, this industrialist shift in environmental regulation had repercussions throughout Europe.

  The second major chemical system born from war and the project of national autarchy was b
ased on a reaction discovered in 1896 by the French chemist Paul Sabatier: hydrogenation. By way of a catalyst, hydrogen can be added to a number of organic and inorganic compounds.38 The hydrogenation of nitrogen to obtain ammonia (NH3) was perfected by the German chemical firm BASF just before the First World War, and turned out to be of prime importance during the war, since nitrate was an essential component of explosives and the Germans were cut off from guano supplies coming from Chile and Peru. It was still more important in agriculture, making possible the production of artificial fertilizers to replace imports of guano or the effort of recycling organic matter.

  The synthesis of ammonia is certainly a key piece in the historic jigsaw of the Anthropocene: artificial fertilizers have deeply disturbed the natural biogeochemical cycle of nitrogen on a global scale, leading to the eutrophication of estuaries and the release of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Ammonia synthesis also requires extreme conditions of pressure and temperature (400°C and 200 bars), thus consuming great amounts of energy.

  The other major hydrogenation process involved carbon and the production of synthetic fuel. Once again, the context of national self-sufficiency and war preparation was the determining factor. One of the great priorities of the Nazi four-year plan of 1936 was self-sufficiency in fuel. Hermann Göring was in charge of supervising fuel production, and the IG Farben company was commissioned to produce artificial petrol. In 1944, the Germans produced 25 million barrels in this way. In energy terms, the process was highly inefficient, requiring six tonnes of coal to obtain one tonne of petrol. After the war, this technology was abandoned except in East Germany, cut off from the international oil market, and South Africa under apartheid. China is currently interested in the technology in order to increase its strategic oil reserves. In the perspective of peak oil, coal hydrogenation would make possible a continuation of the Thermocene in the medium term, and accordingly an aggravation of climate change with incalculable consequences.39

  Mobilizing the world

  War, by disturbing or interrupting trade relations, forces states and businesses to explore new supply solutions. If autarchic technologies are the response of the dominated, the hegemonic powers – Great Britain and the US – preferred a geographical expansion of the material base of their economy. Historically, wars have contributed to the discovery of new sources of strategic materials and thus to integrating new spaces into the industrial exploitation of nature.

  In this light, it is highly significant that long-distance trade first grew to mass proportions during the Napoleonic Wars. Up till then, it was only high-value products that crossed the Atlantic: above all, sugar (50,000 tonnes per year in the late eighteenth century), followed by rice, tobacco and precious metals. In 1808, the continental blockade imposed by Napoleon cut off the British supply of timber from the Baltic, a resource indispensable to the Royal Navy. Britain turned therefore to North America. Timber exports rose from 21,000 tonnes in 1802 to 110,000 in 1815. This exploitation of American timber created trading habits, and far from going into reverse at the end of the war, it continued its sharp increase in peacetime. Before the war, only 6 per cent of British timber imports came from America, a figure that rose to 74 per cent after 1815. This transformation in the timber trade was a major historical phenomenon, as in a few years it tripled the capacities of transatlantic shipping and thus made possible the waves of mass emigration of the nineteenth century.40

  War also imposes an increased mobility on men and things. It requires new infrastructures whose economic and environmental effects persist long after the return of peace. Thus it was to resolve logistic problems bearing on the supply of army and navy that the Grand Junction Canal between London and the Midlands was inaugurated in 1805, then the Grand Union Canal the following year. The most well-known example is that of the German motorways. If Nazi propaganda vaunted the modernity of these great infrastructure projects and their contribution to economic revival, the precocious development of motorways in a country still only little motorized actually aimed at resolving Germany’s strategic dilemma, i.e., its vulnerability to a coordinated attack on both eastern and western fronts. In 1933, Fritz Todt was charged by Hitler with constructing 6,000 kilometres of motorway in five years. The justification of this programme was drawn from the First World War and the famous ‘taxis of the Marne’ that had saved France from defeat in September 1914. Thanks to Todt’s motorways, 300,000 men could cross the Reich from east to west in just two days.41

  By extension, it would be possible to argue that the petrolization of Western societies in the 1950s and ’60s was prepared during the Second World War. The British case is a striking example. Before the war, this country was the world’s leading exporter of energy. The war and the massive resort to American oil made it the leading importer by the 1950s. Besides, the war required the construction of refineries and a network of pipelines to take oil to military airfields. This infrastructure, extremely expensive and financed largely out of public funds, made possible the mass expansion of the automobile in the post-war years.42

  After the war, American suburbanization (and thus motorization) was encouraged by the nuclear threat. Strategists saw US cities from the point of view of strategic bombing. Given the success of the German policy of industrial dispersion from 1942 to 1944, they deemed it indispensable to spread the US industrial system more widely in order to make it more resilient to the nuclear threat. In 1951, a national policy of ‘industrial dispersion’ began. The government granted tax reductions, as well as favourable access to strategic resources, low-interest loans and military contracts, to businesses that agreed to relocate away from industrial centres. Satellite towns and ring roads (such as Route 128 around Boston) emerged during this time as the preferred locations for strategic industries. The suburb was officially promoted as a pleasant context for life, far from pollution and traffic jams.43

  Eisenhower, who had been very impressed by the German Autobahnen, launched under his presidency one of the most ambitious civil engineering projects of the twentieth century: the construction of 70,000 kilometres of freeway in fifteen years, at a cost of $50 billion (the total cost of the Marshall Plan was $15 billion).44 This colossal investment was justified to Congress for reasons of national defence: the freeways would permit the evacuation of cities in case of nuclear attack. In 1956, after years of negotiation, Congress passed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. The routes of these interstate highways partly followed military objectives, crossing regions that were thinly populated so as to serve the 400 American military bases. The width of the roads, tunnels and bridges was fixed to accommodate military vehicles.45

  The war also played a fundamental part in establishing the infrastructure of economic globalization in the second half of the twentieth century. The global nature of the war raised tremendous logistic challenges for merchant shipping. In Suez in 1941, 117 ships were waiting to be discharged, and 171 in Bombay in May 1942. The ports of the Middle East were transformed in order to receive American war material. Because the war was global, it reconfigured the conditions of globalization.46 In January 1941, the United States launched an emergency programme of cargo construction, the ‘Liberty ships’. Over 2,700 were built between 1941 and 1946. The result was that the volume of global merchant shipping was greater in 1946 than in 1939, despite the loss or obsolescence of half of all pre-war ships. The destruction of war and the Liberty ships explain the conversion of world shipping to oil: from a level of 30 per cent before the war to 52 per cent after.47

  Figure 11: German motorways in 1936

  The history of containerization, which deeply shaped the economic globalization that we have seen since the 1980s, has also been linked to the history of war. In 1956, Malcolm McLean, the head of a major road transport business, bought two Second World War tankers which he converted into container carriers. The business stagnated until the Vietnam War opened an immense new market. In 1965, the US Army was faced with logistic di
saster: defective ships, theft, losses, etc. Lacking trained dockers and suitable cranes, ships awaiting discharge piled up in the port of Saigon.48 Their contents had to be offloaded into small boats, which increased both costs and losses. In 1966, McLean persuaded the Pentagon to entrust him with logistics, and by 1973 the Sea-Land Service’s income from the military was $450 million. McLean, not wanting his container ships to make the inward journey empty, decided to seek port facilities in Japan, then experiencing rapid economic growth. The Japanese government grasped the opportunity, and the ports of Tokyo and Kobe were rapidly equipped with the necessary infrastructure. The reduction in transport costs increased Japanese exports (electronic products and vehicles) bound for the United States, beginning what is now called ‘globalization’.

  Burn, kill

  One of the major historical challenges for the Anthropocene is to study the many connections to be made between Thermocene and Thanatocene. The military played a major role in the deployment of high-energy technologies, in which power mattered far more than efficiency.

  During the Napoleonic Wars, European governments paid increased attention to coal. The proliferation of cannon foundries accelerated the development of mines. In France, the legal framework was simplified, the rights of concessionaires strengthened, while the state financed mineral prospecting on a major scale. In 1811, mining engineers conducted large-scale surveys in the region of Saint-Étienne with a view to locating sources of ore and tracing the boundaries of concessions. While coal was still rejected for domestic consumption on account of its dirtiness and bad smell, the army signed large purchasing contracts that stabilized and encouraged mining investment. According to Chaptal, coal production in France rose from 250,000 tonnes per year in 1794 to 820,000 in 1814.49 Suddenly it became a strategic resource. The Saar, annexed to France by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, underwent an expansion of its iron mines and an initial development of coal.