Can Marxism strengthen our understanding of ecological crises? The author of Marx’s Ecology replies to a critic on metabolic rift, sustainable human development, degrowth, population growth, and industrialism.
Essential Debates
Archive | Anthropocene
emissions crisis
Carbon dioxide levels now rising at record speed
CO2 growth rate sets new record in 2015-16. Increase in the past ten years is 100 to 200 times as fast as the increase that ended the last ice age
The Anthropocene Formula
The terrifying mathematics of the Anthropocene
For four billion years, one formula summarized global change. That has changed in just four decades, and if we don’t act quickly, human civilization may not survive.
Protecting business as usual
Another attack on Anthropocene science
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.
Deadly devotion
Why capitalism is hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels
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.
Geology
The Age of Garbage
How will future geologists recognize the beginning of the Anthropocene in rock records? Quite possibly by an unprecedented accumulation of fossilized trash.
Book Review
Victor Wallis reviews ‘Facing the Anthropocene’
‘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.’
Book Review
‘Anthropocene or Capitalocene?’ misses the point
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.
Global change
Two more radical precursors of Anthropocene science
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
Book Launch Events
Facing the Anthropocene: September book launch events
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
Interview
Video: Ian Angus on the Crisis of the Earth System
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.’
AWG report
Expert panel: The Anthropocene epoch has definitely begun
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.
Ecosocialist Bookshelf
Book Review: The Birth of the Anthropocene
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.”
Marxism today
Science, Socialism and the Anthropocene
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.”
New books
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, August 2016
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.
Book Review
How the Great Acceleration has changed the planet
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.
Book Review
‘Capitalism in the Web of Life’ – A Critique
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.
Marxist ecology
The Anthropocene and Marxism Today
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.
Theory and Practice
Two Views on Marxist Ecology and Jason W. Moore
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.
Book Launch
Video: Christopher Wright on ‘Facing the Anthropocene’
“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.”