Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a French historian of science & technology, shares how European societies grappled with climate change centuries before modern science proved the scale and breadth of its impact, revealing a forgotten saga where colonial ambitions and volcanic winters shaped our earliest understanding of Earth's shifting climate.
Grounding our discussion is Fressoz’s 2024 book Chaos in the Heavens: The Forgotten History of Climate Change, co-authored with Fabien Locher.
Watch now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple.
In a nutshell
In this interview, we explore how European understanding of climate change evolved from the 16th century onward, initially tied to colonialism and deforestation, through to modern CO2-driven climate science. Fressoz reveals how early climate theories were used to justify imperialism while also spawning some of the first environmental protection arguments, before nuclear scientists revolutionized climate science in the mid-20th century.
"The goal of [my latest two books] is to escape from presentism, the fact that we are obsessed with the present. It seems… that we are the very first generation to be aware of the fragility of the Earth — No! It is not true, actually. There is a long history of these discussions.”
– Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
We talk about
Early colonial perspectives on climate change and deforestation
The impact of major events like the Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815
The role of French Revolution in climate politics
Evolution from religious to scientific understandings of climate
The contributions of nuclear scientists to modern climate science
Historical links between climate and public health
Development of climate measurement techniques
Some takeaways
Climate change concerns are not new — societies have been discussing human impacts on climate since at least the 16th century
Early climate theories were often used to justify colonialism and imperialism as Europeans altered local climates through deforestation
The French Revolution politicized climate discourse, blaming the monarchy for poor environmental management in France
Nuclear scientists played a crucial role in developing modern climate science tools and understanding
Interest in climate declined in the late 19th century due to industrialization and new scientific disciplines, when new technologies made agriculture more resilient to fluctuations in climate
“There are very few references to climate change in antiquity, in all the Greek literature. Very, very little. It’s really after the 16th century that it became an important problem.”
– Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
Deeper Dive
The Tambora volcanic eruption in 1815, measuring 7 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (100 times stronger than Vesuvius), created the "year without summer" and sparked intense scientific investigation into climate change.
The development of mass spectrography through the Manhattan Project later enabled precise measurement of carbon isotopes, revolutionizing climate science.
Early colonial administrators like Pierre Poivre used climate theories to argue for forest conservation, though often for imperial rather than environmental reasons.
In Fressoz’s words
“From Columbus onwards, the discourse about climate change became a discourse of imperialism… [and] of the sanctification of conquest.”
"At the beginning [of the modern U.S. climate debate], the climate change issue was a discussion during the Carter administration over the project of relaunching coal, and it was a debate about two technologies: coal or nuclear."
References
"Chaos in the Heavens" by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher
"More and More and More" by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World, John D. Post (1977)
Keywords
climate history, deforestation, colonialism, volcanic eruption, Tambora, French Revolution, nuclear science, mass spectrography, environmental history, climate change, Columbus, carbon isotopes, climate measurement
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