Pierre Charbonnier leads a philosophical inquiry into the origins of the contract between democracy and growth. Tracing the environmental history of modern political thought back to the 17th century, the book
seeks to identify changes in the legal and technical construction of our growth-oriented society, and how these have shaped our understanding of freedom. This essay untangles the complex and interconnected relationship between aspirations and the struggle for freedom in a material history. Managing to avoid a naive enthusiasm for either modernity or collapsology, it seeks to repoliticise the ecological question.