Cover art for Happy Apocalypse
Published
New Left Books Ltd, September 2024
ISBN
9781839765506
Format
Softcover, 272 pages
Dimensions
23.4cm × 15.3cm × 2.1cm

Happy Apocalypse A History of Technological Risk

Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

Why do we accept pollution in the name of progress? Why has the pursuit of modernity permitted increasing exposure to environmental catastrophe. In Happy Apocalypse, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz - co-author of the highly successful The Shock of the Anthropocene - shows how debates on risk and profit in the Industrial Revolution set the foundations of our own precarious times.

This book plunges us into the controversies and struggles around vaccines and factories, railways and urban infrastructure, steam engines and chemical industries. Presenting the dangers of progress as everyday hazards to be tolerated. For instance, the 'polluter pays principle' is often seen as a 1970s invention aimed at curbing pollution. In fact, it was established in the early 19th century under the pressure of industrial capitalists themselves and it replaced a far more stringent way of regulating pollution based on police.

Furthermore Fressoz argues that the determination of risk management has been used to suppress protests and alternative models of economic advancement.

Related books