War, Empire and Racism in the Anthropocene

But the Anthropocene is about far more than just climate change. It is about an entire system of life, whose design is to maximise resource extraction at the expense of expendable ‘Others’. It is bound up, intimately, with a global system of racism emerging from the legacy of centuries of colonialism. And it is inseparable from the ceaseless sequence of industrial wars, culminating in today’s permanent state of the endless ‘war on terror’.

Why the “Anthropocene” is not “Climate Change”

The challenges of our altered, unpredictable Earth System cannot be met by technological tinkering within the very systems that pushed it over the edge in the first place. There’s nothing for it but to roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work of transforming our political and economic systems with the aims of decency and resilience.

Robert Macfarlane: “The Metaphors we Use Deliver us Hope, or they Foreclose Possibility”

These debates are precisely what makes the Anthropocene so valuable as an idea.  It stops us short.  It buttonholes us.  It head-butts us.  Then it asks us really, really hard questions while we’re reeling.  I think that’s where its value lies. 

Film in the Anthropocene

Film is of course the art form of Industrial Civilization and its mass culture, whether as a simple historical fact, a manifestation of technical possibility, or in the various ideologies it is adept at expressing. But it is also the art form of the Anthropocene.  I am overstating the case somewhat, but not entirely, when I note that the prevailing message of film is the power of belief and trust. 

Imagination and Will in the Anthropocene

This is about building, for the first time in history, a capacity for collective self-awareness, a sense of shared identity, and a political expression of our common will in pursuit of our common interest – not only as nations, tribes and social groups but as the species whose ancestors first ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Unearthing the Capitalocene: Towards a Reparations Ecology

Today’s human activity isn’t exterminating mammoths through centuries of overhunting. Some humans are currently killing everything, from megafauna to microbiota, at speeds one hundred times higher than the background rate. We argue that what changed is capitalism, that modern history has, since the 1400s, unfolded in what is better termed the Capitalocene.

Rebranding the Anthropocene

While there seem to be credible, even noble, reasons for adopting this designation, however, there is some cause for alarm, namely that the enthusiasm behind the campaign to adopt this marker smacks of an obvious, species-centric narcissism.  Human beings naming a whole geological epoch for themselves?  How marvelous!  How fabulously egotistical!  Indeed, how exquisitely Anthropocentric!

The Twelve Days (and Months) of Climate Justice Day Ten: Being(s) Fully Alive: The New Science of Enlivenment and the Struggle for Climate Justice

Linking science and spirituality more closely to our own and others’ worlds, and seeing these entangled worlds through the lens of poetic objectivity is challenging – and humbling – stuff.