The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History Jonathan Curry-Machado (ed.) et al. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197502679.001.0001 Published: 2023 Online ISBN: 9780197502686 Print ISBN: 9780197502679 Search in this book CHAPTER https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197502679.013.28 Pages 479–506 Published: 18 December 2023 Abstract Keywords: climate change, commodities, carbon, greenhouse gases, land-use emissions, industrial emissions, Anthropocene Subject: World History, History Series: Oxford Handbooks Collection: Oxford Handbooks Online 21 Commodities, Carbon, and Climate  John L. Brooke, Eric Herschthal, Jed O. Kaplan Commodities and climate are both deeply connected to carbon, as the stu of earthly matter and the most signicant of the atmosphere greenhouse gases, CO 2 . Both agricultural land-use and the industrial combustion of fossil fuels produce carbon emissions that pass through the atmosphere. This chapter reviews the long history of climate change and commodities production through the lens of atmospheric CO 2 and carbon emissions rising from economic activity. Human derived, or anthropogenic, carbon emissions may have begun in advancing agricultural societies six to seven thousand years ago, and can be measured in early-modern commodity production, most eastly in the Caribbean. The chapter closes with a review of the rise of agricultural and industrial emissions through the ‘Great Acceleration’ after 1945, a discussion of the history of fossil fuels as commodities, and the recent trajectory toward a decarbonization of the energy stream. THE histories of climate and commodities are deeply entangled, part of the dynamic push and pull between human economies and nature that is the subject of a wider environmental history. Natural forces shape the circumstances of the human condition, but humanity also, and increasingly powerfully, reshapes nature. At the centre of this push and pull, directly connected to the issue of commodities, is the innate biological metabolism of energy. Ultimately energy is xed in carbon by photosynthesis, and it is here that commodities are directly linked to climate, through the earth’s carbon cycle. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/55348/chapter/431187072 by Standford University user on 30 March 2024