Review Essay: Energopolitics, the Eurocene, and Critical Theory

• Author: Bruce Baum
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917211039749
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Review Essay

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(6) 964 –974

© The Author(s) 2021

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Review Essay

Review Essay:

Energopolitics,

the Eurocene, and

Critical Theory

The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work,

by Cara New Daggett. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, 280 pp.

Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World,

by Jairus Victor Grove. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, 368 pp.

Reviewed by: Bruce Baum, Department of Political Science, University of British

Columbia

DOI: 10.1177/00905917211039749

Our current environmental crises combined with deepening global inequal-

ities among people within and across countries pose major challenges. As I

was finishing this review in Vancouver, BC, in June 2021, the second to last

day of school in Vancouver public schools was canceled due to an “extreme

heat alert.” With a climate change–exacerbated heat wave blanketing the

Pacific Northwest, the temperature in Vancouver surpassed 95°F (35°C).

The temperature in Portland, Oregon, reached 116°F, and the town of

Lytton, BC, where the high temperature set a Canadian record of 121°F

(49°C), went up in flames. The heat wave killed nearly 200 people in

Washington and Oregon; scientists have estimated that “[t]he combination

of extraordinary heat and drought that hit the Western United States and

Canada over the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of marine

animals and continues to threaten untold species in freshwater.”1 Other

parts of the planet have seen worse. Regarding the implications of these

1039749PTXXXX10.1177/00905917211039749Political TheoryBook Review

book-review2021

1. Henry Fountain, “Climate Change Drove Western Heat Wave’s Extreme Records,

Analysis Finds,” The New York Times, July 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.

com/2021/07/07/climate/climate-change-heat-wave.html; Catrin Einhorn, “Like

in ‘Postapocalyptic Movies’: Heat Wave Killed Marine Wildlife en Masse,” The

New York Times, July 9, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/climate/

marine-heat-wave.html.