The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Ghosh argues that Asia’s centrality in the climate crisis is a result of pure numbers: The majority of those living under threat of climate-induced disasters reside in Asia. He offers specific examples of people under threat, such as the 250 million people living in the Bengal Delta, at risk of flooding and storm surges as sea levels rise. Ghosh notes that landmasses in these regions are subsiding as a result of human activities such as dam building and oil extraction, allowing water levels to rise even more dramatically. He shows that climate change on the Asian continent is also affecting reserves of fresh water: As glaciers in the Himalayas melt, for example, rivers are rising, causing floods, and access to fresh water is dwindling. Ghosh concludes that no strategy to combat the climate crisis will work unless it works first in Asia and is widely adopted by Asians.

Ghosh acknowledges that, while the people of Asia are at greatest risk from the climate crisis, the continent has played a significant role in creating the forces that cause climate change. Once again, numbers are at the heart of the issue: Although the West’s contributions are outsized compared to the size of their population, Asia’s massive population means that even a small increase in carbon output by individuals has a large impact when aggregated across the continent. Although the planet would certainly have experienced climate change without Asian contributions, Ghosh points to the period of steady economic growth in the 1980s as evidence of the continent’s contribution to the climate crisis.

Ghosh argues that the continent of Asia has played the role of “simpleton” in the drama of the climate crisis (91). As the Asian economy has grown, their progress reveals the problem at the heart of modernity: The Earth cannot sustain a reality in which everyone has access to the luxuries of modern life. Ghosh imagines an Asia trapped by the consequences of its own luxuries alongside the Western world.

Ghosh notes that most histories of the climate crisis suggest that industrialization was a Western process that spread outward. While acknowledging that Western nations, especially the United States, have played a significant role in driving climate change, Ghosh argues that there has not always been a technological gap between Asia and the West. He shows that the early modern period (from the 16th to the 19th centuries) was a time of parallel development in Europe and Asia and that ideas and technologies circulated globally. He cites examples of intellectual exchange in the fields of weapons technology, mathematics, and philosophy as evidence of this global exchange. Ghosh argues that the Western world insists on the uniqueness of its modernity but that history does not support this perspective.

Ghosh explores the use of fossil fuels in China as evidence of modernity beyond the Western world. He notes that an economic revolution in medieval China led to extensive deforestation and an altered coastline; as a result, wood supplies for fuel ran dangerously low. Ghosh quotes from an 11th-century Chinese poet celebrating the discovery of coal reserves in the mountains. He notes that the Chinese also used other fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, as early as the 18th century, quoting a Chinese manual with specific instructions for storing oil in bamboo tubes. Ghosh uses these excerpts as evidence of China’s early engagement with a fossil-fuel economy.

Ghosh quotes extensively from his novel The Glass Palace, which describes a place in Burma where oil naturally rises to ground level. He describes the history of the Burmese oil industry, which was well established by the time British colonial forces first noted it in the late 18th century. In a series of wars starting in 1852, the British began to seize Burmese land, and the oil with it. Ghosh explains that the Burmese King Mindon took concrete steps to seize government control of the oil industry and consolidate it, in the same way modern petro-states have done. Ghosh points to these as the first steps in the creation of a modern oil industry. In 1885, the British invaded again, and colonialists took control of the industry out of Burmese hands completely. Ghosh argues that the Burmese government would have been able to meet the challenges of a modernized oil industry had British imperialism not intervened. He uses the example of Burma to argue that Western industrialism is not unique and that the oil industry does not have its roots in the West, as has been argued.

In this chapter, as in Chapters 5 and 6, Ghosh analyzes the history of fossil fuels in an Asian nation (in this case, India) in order to demonstrate the influence of imperialism on the current climate crisis. His history of coal and steam technologies in India demonstrates that Indian engineers and industrialists quickly understood and integrated the new steam technologies introduced by the colonial power. He suggests that it was precisely this efficiency that caused the British to view Indian industrialists as a threat. As a result, the British government banned the import of Indian steamships and redirected Indian industry into the service of British empire at large. He uses this as evidence that the fossil-fuel economies that emerged in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries relied on the suppression of similar economies elsewhere. Ghosh argues that this suppression had a devastating impact on the Indian economy that lingers into the present day.

Given the histories of fossil-fuel economies in China, Burma, and India, Ghosh argues that the narrative of the climate crisis is far from simple. The most important element in shaping the modern carbon economy is the fact that European nations had established colonial and military presences in Asian and African nations when fossil-fuel technologies were industrialized. As a result of this colonial presence, European powers were able to use fossil-fuel technologies to reinforce their power, further exploiting Indigenous groups in the process. Ghosh points to the Opium War of 1839-1842, in which British steam superiority played a large role, as an example. As further evidence of the connection between colonialism and industry, he points to the fact that economic acceleration in many Asian countries coincided with the era of decolonization: As European powers left, fossil-fuel economies began to grow.

As a result, Ghosh ultimately concludes that European imperialism delayed the onset of the global climate crisis. He suggests that, had an Asian or African country been the primary colonial power during the Industrial Revolution, the climate crisis may have begun much earlier than it did. Ghosh argues that the processes of imperialism were designed to keep poor nations at a disadvantage and that the current climate crisis reflects this disadvantage.

Ghosh acknowledges that imperialism was not the only obstacle blocking Asian industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries. He points to the advocacy of Mahatma Gandhi, who argued that Indian industrialization would have an apocalyptic effect on the Earth. Ghosh notes that Gandhi carried his arguments to their logical conclusion by renouncing the luxuries of modern life. Similarly, in 20th-century China, minister of education Zhang Shizaho argued against the industrial greed and the depletion of finite resources. Ghosh notes that these criticisms of industrialization appeared before the climate crisis became a common topic in the Western world. As a result, he suggests that arguments for climate reparations for Asian countries have ethical and historical weight. He suggests that China’s one-child policy—which dictated that families could only have one child—had a net positive effect: Although the policy inflicted suffering on numerous families, it also reduced the growth rate of the world’s largest population for decades.

Ghosh highlights the injustice of Western leaders depicting India and China as the causes of the climate crisis, when activists from these nations have long been warning about the dangers of industrialization and when the nations have not always benefited from their own industrialization. Nevertheless, he warns against an “us versus them” mentality pitting the global north and south against one another. Because the climate crisis is global, Ghosh argues, the solutions must also be global.