Best Seller
Carbon
Hardcover
$32.00
Available on Feb 23, 2027 | 352 Pages
Renowned economic historian and “crisis whisperer” Adam Tooze (Crashed) tells the story of climate change as the first truly global crisis of our time—and the struggle that is shifting the center of power from the West to China
For decades, climate change was framed as a Western drama: American oil companies, European carbon markets, UN summits, and partisan battles in Washington. The solution seemed clear: liberal democracies would lead, markets would innovate, and global agreements would bend the curve of emissions downward. In Carbon, Adam Tooze argues that this vision belonged to a fleeting moment of American supremacy—and that it no longer describes the world we live in.
Beginning in the waning days of the Cold War and moving through Rio, Kyoto, the financial crisis, and the turbulence of the 2020s, Tooze traces how climate politics emerged from an era of Western dominance before giving way to a profound shift in the global economy. Today, China is not only the world’s largest emitter; it dominates the supply chains of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles and stands at the center of the new energy economy. The energy transition is no longer Western-led but increasingly shaped by China’s extraordinary industrial ascent.
Tooze examines the forces behind this transformation: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the globalization shocks of the 1990s and 2000s, the explosive growth of Asian manufacturing, the shale revolution, the global financial crisis, and America’s wavering commitment to climate action. He shows that climate politics was never simply a fight between scientists and oil companies but a struggle over trade, development, state power, and who gets to build the industries that will define our future.
Drawing on his unparalleled authority as one of the world’s leading historians of political economy, Tooze brings historical depth and analytical precision to the contemporary climate emergency. At its core, Carbon asks who will build the technologies and energy systems of the future, and what it means for the balance of power to shift away from the West. Urgent and provocative, it reveals the climate crisis as the defining struggle of the twenty-first century.
For decades, climate change was framed as a Western drama: American oil companies, European carbon markets, UN summits, and partisan battles in Washington. The solution seemed clear: liberal democracies would lead, markets would innovate, and global agreements would bend the curve of emissions downward. In Carbon, Adam Tooze argues that this vision belonged to a fleeting moment of American supremacy—and that it no longer describes the world we live in.
Beginning in the waning days of the Cold War and moving through Rio, Kyoto, the financial crisis, and the turbulence of the 2020s, Tooze traces how climate politics emerged from an era of Western dominance before giving way to a profound shift in the global economy. Today, China is not only the world’s largest emitter; it dominates the supply chains of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles and stands at the center of the new energy economy. The energy transition is no longer Western-led but increasingly shaped by China’s extraordinary industrial ascent.
Tooze examines the forces behind this transformation: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the globalization shocks of the 1990s and 2000s, the explosive growth of Asian manufacturing, the shale revolution, the global financial crisis, and America’s wavering commitment to climate action. He shows that climate politics was never simply a fight between scientists and oil companies but a struggle over trade, development, state power, and who gets to build the industries that will define our future.
Drawing on his unparalleled authority as one of the world’s leading historians of political economy, Tooze brings historical depth and analytical precision to the contemporary climate emergency. At its core, Carbon asks who will build the technologies and energy systems of the future, and what it means for the balance of power to shift away from the West. Urgent and provocative, it reveals the climate crisis as the defining struggle of the twenty-first century.
Author
Adam Tooze
Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University and the author of Crashed, winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize, a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, one of The Economist‘s Books of the Year, and a New York Times Critics’ Top Book; Wages of Destruction, winner of the Wolfson and Longman History Today Prize; and The Deluge, winner of The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He formerly taught at Yale University, where he was Director of International Security Studies, and at the University of Cambridge. He has worked in executive development with several major corporations and contributed to the National Intelligence Council. He has written and reviewed for Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Sunday Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Tageszeitung and Spiegel Magazine, New Left Review, and the London Review of Books.
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