2001_mcneill_Something new under the sun - Énergies, Temps & Cosmotechniques

Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world === > [!tldr] Tags > #cat/litterature #type/book > [!info] Meta Data >**FirstAuthor**:: [[McNeill, John Robert]] ~ > **Title**:: Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world > **Year**:: 2001 > **Citekey**:: [[2001_mcneill]] > **itemType**:: book > **Publisher**:: W. W. Norton > **Location**:: New York > **ISBN**:: 978-0-393-32183-8 > **ISSN**:: > > [!Cite] > McNeill John Robert, _Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world_, First published as a Norton paperback., New York, W. W. Norton, 2001. > > %%[@2001_mcneill]%% > **URL**:: . > > **Related**:: . > > **Attachment**::[McNeill_2001_Something new under the sun.pdf](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/84WPBHQC). --- > [!important] Synthesis > **Contribution**:: > > [!Abstract] > > The history of the twentieth century is most often told through its world wars, the rise and fall of communism, or its economic upheavals. In his startling book, J. R. McNeill gives us our first general account of what may prove to be the most significant dimension of the twentieth century: its environmental history. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the earth's air, water, and soil, and the biosphere of which we are a part. Based on exhaustive research, McNeill's story--a compelling blend of anecdotes, data, and shrewd analysis--never preaches: it is our definitive account. >> --- # Note. --- # Annotations%% begin annotations %% ### Imported: 2025-04-08 8:03 pm Quote > its “energy regime,” the collection of arrangements whereby energy is harvested from the sun (or uranium atoms), directed, stored, bought, sold, used for work or wasted, and ultimately dissipated. Quote > OPEC’s high prices shaped world economic history from 1973 to 1985, weakening oil-importing industrial economies and strengthening some—not all—oil exporters Quote > The energy regime of the twentieth century implied massive oil transport, especially after petroleum-poor European and Japanese economies converted to oil Quote > This energy regime allowed wealth and ease on scales quite Quote > impossible in earlier centuries for a billion or two people. 14 It had enormous social, economic, and geopolitical consequences for the twentieth century. It also polluted air and water and changed environments generally on scales equally impossible in earlier centuries. 15 Oil, on one reckoning at least, was the single most important factor in shaping environmental history after the 1950s. Quote > Nuclear power was an unpopular and uneconomic innovation, less lethal than cars, but with mind-boggling ecological implications. Quote > Nuclear power held some of the same political attraction as dam building: it signified vigor and modernity. Quote > the momentum of integration continued. Indeed, it accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, propelled by falling transport costs, 33 instant electronic communications, by assertive privatization and deregulation of financial markets and major industries, and most importantly by the ideological collapse of autarkic socialism in China (after 1978) and its political collapse in eastern Europe and the USSR (1989–1991). In terms of both the prevailing economic ideology and the prominence of international trade and finance, the post-1980 era resembled that of pre-1914 Quote > When states abandoned efforts to regulate capital flows, which many did under the influence of the ideas and pressures of the Reagan-Thatcher era, they made it much easier to make money in finance than in, say, trade or manufacturing. International financial flows dwarfed trade flows after 1980, filling the world’s banking systems with cash. This too had its ecological consequences, because banks must lend. %% end annotations %% %% Import Date: 2025-04-08T20:03:29.182+02:00 %%