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The Climate of History in a Planetary Age
For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider—from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals.
Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty’s work—the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.
Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty’s work—the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.
292 pages, Paperback
Published March 22, 2021
26 people are currently reading
647 people want to read
About the author
Dipesh Chakrabarty
50 books72 followersDipesh Chakrabarty (b. 1948) is a Bengali historian who has also made contributions to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.
He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.
He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.
In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.
He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.
He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.
In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.
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October 12, 2023
I have a deep interest in attempts to understand the present era of environmental crisis through the lens of the humanities, and that is at least nominally what this book is about. But I must say I found it nearly devoid of useful or noteworthy ideas. As far as I can gather, the book attempts to think through some of the implications of the Anthropocene for academic historiography and its accompanying theoretical apparatus, now that we have reached a threshold at which human activity does not merely exist within the context of a natural world that obeys its own dynamics, but in which those dynamics are themselves substantially shaped by the human being.
The loss of the concept of the autonomous subject in an effectively static environment or world is not only a commonplace in any discussion of the Anthropocene, it is something that has been intensively investigated philosophically at least since the Phenomenology of Spirit was published in 1806. As a historical event, it is not obvious to me that there is much to be said about that fact beyond what I have already relayed. I believe Chakrabarty is attempting to read that realization in terms of historical theorists who have come before, and would note that many of those figures are fairly marginal today, such as Gadamer and Dilthey (is there truly anyone who still reads Dilthey?).
I don't believe I came away from this book with one significant new idea or perspective. I found it curiously vacant.
The loss of the concept of the autonomous subject in an effectively static environment or world is not only a commonplace in any discussion of the Anthropocene, it is something that has been intensively investigated philosophically at least since the Phenomenology of Spirit was published in 1806. As a historical event, it is not obvious to me that there is much to be said about that fact beyond what I have already relayed. I believe Chakrabarty is attempting to read that realization in terms of historical theorists who have come before, and would note that many of those figures are fairly marginal today, such as Gadamer and Dilthey (is there truly anyone who still reads Dilthey?).
I don't believe I came away from this book with one significant new idea or perspective. I found it curiously vacant.
August 1, 2021
A well-documented discussion on the differences between Anthropocene and Capitalocene and why Chakrabarty prefers to use the former. It's also an important critic of how subaltern studies have somehow missed this discussion. However, the book is a bit repetitive, and it is not a significant novelty from other Chakrabarty's takes published before.
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August 5, 2023Not giving a star-rating for this one because it's unlike most other books I read. It's hugely impressive when it comes to command of scholarship, but its readability is shocking at times. Perhaps it's best as a resource to dip in and out of, only reading individual chapters or parts of chapters at a time. Case-in-point: this is probably the 4th time reading the first chapter (on the "Four Theses"), and I'd still struggle to outline what he's arguing. And my heart truly sank every time he ended a subsection saying that we need to go back to the thinking of some French or German philosopher to better understand whatever esoteric problem he's dreamt up. That might sound like it's me being dismissive of the work - not at all. The book is ultra ambitious in scope and honestly does a decent job of living up to that ambition. This is just a reminder to me to actually come back to (parts of) it in the future when it's actually relevant for me to do so.
May 20, 2023
Public conversation about global warming/climate change tends to focus on scientific and environmental topics, such as temperature, drought, air quality, oceanic acidification, and mass extinction, etc. Dipesh Chakrabarty argues that what we need is a humanistic understanding of the effect that this is having on our species. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is an attempt to offer a philosophical/intellectual/humanistic framework to the public discourse on global warming. A couple of key points. First, Chakrabarty wants to re-orient focus to the planet, not the globe. This is more than semantics. The latter conjures up globalism and the human-manufactured world, while the latter, according to Chakrabarty, should be associated with looking more broadly at the planet, as an independent entity in something of James Lovelock Gaia way, that de-centers humankind. In fact, according to his argument, we are not the dominant species and thus the barrier between humans and the natural world is a relic of the Enlightenment that should be discarded altogether. Second, since we are on this point, the Enlightenment created another false belief regarding our relationship with nature, which is that it is full of economic resources that will always provide for or sustain us. Industrialization has completely blown this concept to smithereens. Yet, it is still an essential canon of modern thought. Third, he finds discussions that emphasize capitalism or that claim that the problem of climate change cannot be addressed until capitalism is first dismantled are distracting, if not useless. Why? Because, as Chakrabarty writes, socialism doesn’t have a better track record, and, also, while he genuinely decries economic inequality, it is, in his deep history approach, a very recent issue. I think this is to say that the issue is not poverty, but wealth, which is, again, human-centered, global thinking, not one fitting the impending planetary age. We need to emphasize the non-human inhabitants of earth. Of course, there are enormous challenges when everyone wants an air conditioner (a whole chapter is dedicated to this topic) to cool themselves, which is only making the problem worse, and our local, national, and international governments and organizations have no solutions either. I admit that I am not really doing Chakrabarty’s argument anything like justice. This book really speaks to me. I was drawn to it in the first place because it was referenced numerous times in a workshop for scholars working on environmental historians and humanities that I attended in 2022 and frankly I felt embarrassed that was totally unfamiliar with it. Connecting his comments about the Enlightenment to my own observations collected outside this work, really leaves me concerned that we are on the cusp of, or in the midst of, a major paradigm shift. Finally, I understand that others might not be as impressed with this book as I am or might not find his points (and there are so many more than what I enumerated above) convincing or actionable. But I found it thought invoking, and I think that is the best outcome any reader or author can aspire to.
July 12, 2025
A wonderful journey on the challenges of history and the process of giving perspective to the place of humans as species in the magnificent scale of the history of our planet, the sheer weight of our political incapacity and our adolescent presumption of uniqueness. This book is more necessary now than ever.
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June 9, 2025This book can be seen as an extended version of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s influential 2009 article, The Climate of History: Four Theses. At its core, the book argues that discussions of the Anthropocene cannot—and should not—be reduced to conversations about the Capitalocene (or other similar “-cenes” rooted in a modernist, human-centered conception of politics and the world). Let me give a brief summary using the theses as signposts:
Thesis 1: Anthropogenic Explanations of Climate Change Spell the Collapse of the Humanist Distinction Between Natural History and Human History
Until relatively recently—perhaps up to the 1960s—history was understood primarily as the history of human agency. Natural forces were seen as non-intentional (without agency) and thus excluded from what constitutes 'proper' history. At best, natural changes were seen as stable and slow, a cyclical and largely predictable background to human events, thus carried little to no historical significance. One of the strongest sections of the book, Chapter 8, critiques this long-standing assumption in more detail (theory of mutuality). As a side note, this critique also resonates with Amitav Ghosh’s discussion of the dominance of gradualism in the geological sciences, which similarly cast nature as predictable and incremental in its changes (rather than leaping "beast" it is).
However, the Anthropocene has made it impossible to sustain this view. We now witness rapid, often catastrophic transformations in the natural world—melting ice sheets, increasingly frequent and severe weather events, etc. These changes are anthropogenic, tied directly to human action at a species level. Furthermore, developments in Earth sciences (discussed in detail in the book) have allowed us to conceptualize a “deep history” of the planet—one that is radically indifferent to human existence. This scientific shift moves the emphasis from sustainability (a human concern) to the planet’s long-term habitability, which may not include humans at all. Thus, our current predicament demands that we think historically in two registers at once: the familiar human histories of industrialization, globalization, and modernity, and the broader, impersonal histories of the Earth itself.
Thesis 2: The Idea of the Anthropocene, the New Geological Epoch When Humans Exist as a Geological Force, Severely Qualifies Humanist Histories of Modernity and Globalization
While Chakrabarty’s choice of the notion of freedom in this section feels slightly arbitrary, the broader critique remains compelling. He explains that mid-20th-century humanist disciplines (including subaltern, critical race, and gender theories) often equated modernization with liberation. The postcolonial push for industrialization in countries like India and China was framed as part of this emancipatory project. Yet, as Chakrabarty shows, the promise of “modern living standards for all” has proven illusory—and environmentally unsustainable.
Of course, this is not to dismiss the vital claims of climate justice. The Global South and low-emitting island nations should not bear the costs of a crisis created by centuries of Western industrialization. Yet, since the 1980s, it has become increasingly clear that the model of continuous growth—air conditioning in every home, multiple cars per household—is simply incompatible with planetary limits.
At times, Chakrabarty seems to suggest that while humans as a species created this problem, we may not be capable of solving it. That acknowledgment, though unsettling, seems to me like an honest assessment of the scale and complexity of the issue.
Thesis 3: The Geological Hypothesis of the Anthropocene Requires Us to Put Global Histories of Capital in Conversation with the Species History of Humans
This thesis is perhaps the most contentious, especially among leftist critics who argue that the very term "Anthropocene" erases the unequal contributions to climate change. The critique is understandable—after all, fossil fuels (coal, oil, and more recently, natural gas) are deeply enmeshed in the development and continuation of capitalism. It is difficult to discuss the Anthropocene without addressing the structures of extraction and exploitation that have brought us here.
Still, Chakrabarty offers two compelling rejoinders. First, he reminds us that humans have become the dominant species, and leftist critiques sometimes overlook the significance of biodiversity loss (species extinction) and the broader ecological crisis. Second, he argues that the language of culpability and responsibility, while essential to political discourse, becomes empty when viewed from a planetary perspective. The planet, he insists, will persist even if humans do not—just not within the temporal frame that matters to us. In this sense, the Anthropocene is not a planetary problem so much as it is a human (species-human) one.
Thesis 4: The Crosshatching of Species History and the History of Capital Is a Process of Probing the Limits of Historical Understanding
Ultimately, Chakrabarty explores the boundaries of what historical thinking can do when confronted with climate change. We are, he suggests, caught between two modes of thought: the global and the planetary. The global is concerned with systems we’ve constructed—capitalism, industrial modernity, international law. The planetary, by contrast, is indifferent to these categories. Understanding our predicament requires a kind of thinking that crosses these domains, though we have not yet developed the conceptual tools to do so fully.
Thesis 1: Anthropogenic Explanations of Climate Change Spell the Collapse of the Humanist Distinction Between Natural History and Human History
Until relatively recently—perhaps up to the 1960s—history was understood primarily as the history of human agency. Natural forces were seen as non-intentional (without agency) and thus excluded from what constitutes 'proper' history. At best, natural changes were seen as stable and slow, a cyclical and largely predictable background to human events, thus carried little to no historical significance. One of the strongest sections of the book, Chapter 8, critiques this long-standing assumption in more detail (theory of mutuality). As a side note, this critique also resonates with Amitav Ghosh’s discussion of the dominance of gradualism in the geological sciences, which similarly cast nature as predictable and incremental in its changes (rather than leaping "beast" it is).
However, the Anthropocene has made it impossible to sustain this view. We now witness rapid, often catastrophic transformations in the natural world—melting ice sheets, increasingly frequent and severe weather events, etc. These changes are anthropogenic, tied directly to human action at a species level. Furthermore, developments in Earth sciences (discussed in detail in the book) have allowed us to conceptualize a “deep history” of the planet—one that is radically indifferent to human existence. This scientific shift moves the emphasis from sustainability (a human concern) to the planet’s long-term habitability, which may not include humans at all. Thus, our current predicament demands that we think historically in two registers at once: the familiar human histories of industrialization, globalization, and modernity, and the broader, impersonal histories of the Earth itself.
Thesis 2: The Idea of the Anthropocene, the New Geological Epoch When Humans Exist as a Geological Force, Severely Qualifies Humanist Histories of Modernity and Globalization
While Chakrabarty’s choice of the notion of freedom in this section feels slightly arbitrary, the broader critique remains compelling. He explains that mid-20th-century humanist disciplines (including subaltern, critical race, and gender theories) often equated modernization with liberation. The postcolonial push for industrialization in countries like India and China was framed as part of this emancipatory project. Yet, as Chakrabarty shows, the promise of “modern living standards for all” has proven illusory—and environmentally unsustainable.
Of course, this is not to dismiss the vital claims of climate justice. The Global South and low-emitting island nations should not bear the costs of a crisis created by centuries of Western industrialization. Yet, since the 1980s, it has become increasingly clear that the model of continuous growth—air conditioning in every home, multiple cars per household—is simply incompatible with planetary limits.
At times, Chakrabarty seems to suggest that while humans as a species created this problem, we may not be capable of solving it. That acknowledgment, though unsettling, seems to me like an honest assessment of the scale and complexity of the issue.
Thesis 3: The Geological Hypothesis of the Anthropocene Requires Us to Put Global Histories of Capital in Conversation with the Species History of Humans
This thesis is perhaps the most contentious, especially among leftist critics who argue that the very term "Anthropocene" erases the unequal contributions to climate change. The critique is understandable—after all, fossil fuels (coal, oil, and more recently, natural gas) are deeply enmeshed in the development and continuation of capitalism. It is difficult to discuss the Anthropocene without addressing the structures of extraction and exploitation that have brought us here.
Still, Chakrabarty offers two compelling rejoinders. First, he reminds us that humans have become the dominant species, and leftist critiques sometimes overlook the significance of biodiversity loss (species extinction) and the broader ecological crisis. Second, he argues that the language of culpability and responsibility, while essential to political discourse, becomes empty when viewed from a planetary perspective. The planet, he insists, will persist even if humans do not—just not within the temporal frame that matters to us. In this sense, the Anthropocene is not a planetary problem so much as it is a human (species-human) one.
Thesis 4: The Crosshatching of Species History and the History of Capital Is a Process of Probing the Limits of Historical Understanding
Ultimately, Chakrabarty explores the boundaries of what historical thinking can do when confronted with climate change. We are, he suggests, caught between two modes of thought: the global and the planetary. The global is concerned with systems we’ve constructed—capitalism, industrial modernity, international law. The planetary, by contrast, is indifferent to these categories. Understanding our predicament requires a kind of thinking that crosses these domains, though we have not yet developed the conceptual tools to do so fully.
February 6, 2024
Sehr gutes buch aber schwer verständlich ohne austausch, spricht auch gegen sein buch zu provinzialisierung europas das wissen machtstrukturen aufbrechen muss, weil subalterne beim verfassen safe nicht mitgedacht wurden, bissi mies aber sonst gruselig gut und neue perspektiven
Fuck neoliberalismus 🦦🦦🦦🦦
Fuck neoliberalismus 🦦🦦🦦🦦
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November 4, 2022"Ich weiss nicht",
ich fand dies ist auch wieder ein gut gemeintes Buch welches keine Ideenansätze oder Antworten enthält.
Ausserdem verliert sich das Buch öfters in Spezialdiskursen welche ausufernd wirken.
ich fand dies ist auch wieder ein gut gemeintes Buch welches keine Ideenansätze oder Antworten enthält.
Ausserdem verliert sich das Buch öfters in Spezialdiskursen welche ausufernd wirken.
April 28, 2023
war mir teilweise bisschen zu konservativ und er wiederholt sich auch recht oft, war teilweise etwas anstrengend
January 15, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, in which Chakrabarty proposes that we have entered a new era of writing history as the geological conception of time has converged with the political. According to his thesis, the Anthropocene – the geological definition of our current climactic epoch of humans as geological actors – has coincided with the human-defined periodization of time of ‘modernity’ as the present. As our ability to act as geological agents in the Anthropocene is inseparable from our building of modern political regimes and globalisation, it only makes sense that the geological time of the Anthropocene is also the ‘now time’ of politics and history.
The most insightful oncall among Chakrabarty's theses was why we must think beyond the construction that we call 'the globe.' The globe is, according the Chakrabarty, a human-centric construct, which is based on interhuman relations, but not necessarily those between species or landscapes. Chakrabarty’s book thus promotes a need for thinking beyond the ‘global’ – a human-centric construct – towards a ‘planetary’ in the Anthropocene, a geological time in which historians must begin to think of new ways of writing history.
The most insightful oncall among Chakrabarty's theses was why we must think beyond the construction that we call 'the globe.' The globe is, according the Chakrabarty, a human-centric construct, which is based on interhuman relations, but not necessarily those between species or landscapes. Chakrabarty’s book thus promotes a need for thinking beyond the ‘global’ – a human-centric construct – towards a ‘planetary’ in the Anthropocene, a geological time in which historians must begin to think of new ways of writing history.
December 19, 2025
o chakrabarty tem boas ideias e a importância de delinear um tempo planetário em paralelo ao global me parece sólida, sobretudo no campo da história que tem um viés um pouco mais tradicional e conservador do que outras ciências humanas... existem situações na modernidade que foram criadas pelas tecnologias modernas que fogem ao escopo dos nossos modelos políticos tradicionais - a emergência climática tem deixado isso bem evidente -. mas não consigo entender a rejeição ao termo "capitaloceno" ou no que ganhamos em termos históricos/historiográficos ao escrever uma história em termos geológicos, estratigráficos, apartados do global-social e afins... no fim das contas, concordo que pode ser um mecanismo despolitizante.
mas que o caminho da política mundial tem mostrado é que realmente a "racionalidade global" política está se esgotando e que as ciencias do sistema terra estão se mostrando mais eficazes para explicar ou no minimo trazer a tona a contradição de alguns conflitos
mas que o caminho da política mundial tem mostrado é que realmente a "racionalidade global" política está se esgotando e que as ciencias do sistema terra estão se mostrando mais eficazes para explicar ou no minimo trazer a tona a contradição de alguns conflitos
March 15, 2023
im writing on ecocriticism of course i have read the climate of history. pretty good, but i think chakrabarty is too conservative and willing to overlook valid criticisms of the anthropocene emanating from within the env. humanities. no one is denying that the anthropocene operates on deep time or that it employs "species thinking", and he treats this conflict and incommensurability between the env. humanities and env. sciences as something that is squarely the fault of the env. humanities which... i dont think is useful.
January 20, 2026
If you want to know more about humans and their effect on the climate - this is the wrong book for you.
The author tries very hard not to give new normative answers how we should approach climate and its change, but to rethink our roles in regard to the planet. It is a purely philosophical and very well researched book, that will give you a lot of new literature to investigate humans made climate change more throughly
The author tries very hard not to give new normative answers how we should approach climate and its change, but to rethink our roles in regard to the planet. It is a purely philosophical and very well researched book, that will give you a lot of new literature to investigate humans made climate change more throughly
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February 2, 2023Essai absolument formidable tant par sa justesse, que par sa mesure et les sources et citations qui l’émaillent et ouvrent de nouvelles pistes de réflexion. La richesse intellectuelle et le questionnement éthique sont brillamment articulés et permettent au lecteur de construire son propre chemin de questionnement. Un livre à lire sans attendre ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
October 18, 2023
One of those theory books where they can't help themselves with writing their ideas or discussions more clearly and directly. I don't feel it was worth reading more than his four theses, maybe except for his responses to its critics.
November 3, 2023
Sorry, way too tough going for me. I'm no longer in the profession of reading (or writing) very academical texts that make no particular effort to be accessible.
February 23, 2024
Thinking of an intense clarity that nails down the fundamental problems with humancentric conventions of time. World history vs the time of the planet, a problem visible everywhere all the time
January 7, 2025
super interessante thematiek, maar uiteindelijk een magere conclusie. En een irritante interpretatie van Heidegger
August 14, 2025
Concise account of familiar ideas, worthwhile, curious what this would be in a less overwhelmingly academic form.
October 5, 2022
Eine unglaublich detaillierte, wissenschaftliche und philosophische Untersuchung herkömmlicher Klimafragen. Das Buch vermittelt so viel neues Wissen und ist keineswegs mit anderen Klimawandel-Büchern zu vergleichen. Es werden so viele Facetten der Problematik aufgedeckt, die den Leser zum Nachdenken und Handeln anregen.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews