This short essay first presents the itinerary of a research project that has gone from a history of the colonial dimensions of secularization to an examination of its environmental consequences. How can we rewrite the history of the Anthropocene as an effect of secularization? While exhibiting an alternative theory of modernity, this text deploys some of the implications of this theory in contemporary debate. Two central authors of contemporary ecological thought are critically discussed: Andreas Malm and Philippe Descola.