A new conservative campaign aims to discredit efforts to define the new and dangerous stage of planetary history, by driving a wedge between social scientists and the Anthropocene Working Group.
With Donald Trump in the White House the future for our climate looks bleak, but capitalism’s love affair with fossil energy runs much deeper than the desires and personalities of individual politicians.
How will future geologists recognize the beginning of the Anthropocene in rock records? Quite possibly by an unprecedented accumulation of fossilized trash.
‘Ian Angus’s distinctive contribution is to underscore, with his geologically grounded perspective, the need to combine immediate measures of relief with a long-term agenda of transformation.’
The authors of this book have very little to say about the Anthropocene, the crisis of the Earth System, or the new global epoch, and most of what they do say is misleading or wrong.
Long before the Anthropocene Working Group reported on the new epoch, Yrjö Haila and Richard Levins argued that global ecohistory entered a new stage sometime after World War II
Mark your calendars: Ian Angus speaks on ‘Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System,’ at public meetings in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa
Dharna Noor of Real News Network interviews C&C editor Ian Angus about the proposal to declare a new geological epoch, and his new book, ‘Facing the Anthropocene.’
Key conclusion of Anthropocene Working Group report to Geological Congress: the ‘Great Acceleration’ in the second half of the 20th century marked the end of the Holocene and the beginning of a new geological epoch.
Ian Angus: “I can’t recall another book that positions the present global crisis in Earth’s deep history so well, in a form that can be readily understood by non-specialists. Every ecosocialist should read it.”
Ian Angus: “We must have a concrete materialist understanding of how our world works and is changing. Without that, our political views would be floating in mid-air, with no concrete foundation.”
Five new books for green lefts and left greens. Cuban science fiction … the birth of the Anthropocene … agribusiness and disease … surviving catastrophe … rising seas … private plunder of public assets.
An important history of the Anthropocene updates the classic ‘Something New Under the Sun.’ It describes how our world has been transformed since 1945, but avoids discussing why.
Kamran Nayeri argues that Jason W. Moore’s theories involve major departures from Marxism, and do not themselves provide a coherent alternative approach to understanding capitalism’s impact on the natural world.
Video: John Bellamy Foster discusses the theoretical and programmatic challenges that the Anthropocene, a dangerous new epoch in planetary history, poses for socialists in the 21st century.
Fred Murphy argues that John Bellamy Foster misrepresented and unfairly criticized Jason W. Moore in a recent C&C interview about ecological Marxism. Ian Angus disagrees, and explains why he thinks Foster’s remarks were measured and accurate.
“In the opening pages, I immediately recognized that here was an author who actually gets what the ‘Anthropocene’ entails both in terms of the physical science and the political economy of our times and conveys this in such a readable and accessible style.”
Author’s presentation at book launch meeting for ‘Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System,’ at the Socialism for the 21st Century Conference in Sydney, Australia, May 13, 2013.
Climate change and extreme weather events are not devastating a random selection of human beings from all walks of life. There are no billionaires among the dead, no corporate executives living in shelters, no stockbrokers watching their children die of malnutrition.
“We don’t know how long we have before climate change goes from dangerous to extremely dangerous, but we know that continuing with business as usual makes such a shift increasingly likely.”