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Different Commencement Date

The Capitalocene

The Capitalocene is an alternative argument to the Anthropocene; the Capitalocene explores the idea that our current historical era is dominated by capitalism and therefore, we are living in the Capitalocene era (Moore 2016). Cheap Nature is central to capitalism; it is the idea that nature is separate from human society. Nature is exploited at little or no cost, and this is done through; cheap labour, cheap energy, cheap food and cheap raw materials. (Moore, 2017b). Jason Moore, a leading scholar of the Capitalocene, suggests that capitalism began with the Dutch and English agricultural revolutions and Columbus’ invasion of the Americas in the 1400s (Moore, 2017a). For example, the colonisation of the Americas saw a divide between nature and humans amid mass exploitation, such as cheap labour from the use of slaves who worked to produce cheap food such as sugar (Moore, 2016).

Since this time, capitalism has become the global economic system, driven by exploitation, which has caused a considerable depletion of natural resources. Humans are consuming more resources than the Earth can regenerate, and the overconsumption of resources has contributed to the effects of global warming such as pollution and sea level rise (Richardson, 2019). The exhaustion of cheap nature may mean that we cannot sustain the capitalist system, as capitalism relies on growth to survive, therefore, this poses a challenge to capitalism and could see the end of the Capitalocene (Moore, 2016).

More, J. W. (2016). The Rise of Cheap Nature. In J. W. Moore (Author), Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism (pp. 78-115). Oakland, CA: PM Press.

Moore, J. W. (2017a). The Capitalocene, Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies', 44(3), 594-630. doi:10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036.

Moore, J. W. (2017b). The Capitalocene Part II: Accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(2), 237-279. doi:10.1080/03066150.2016.1272587.

Richardson, R. B. (2019, August 09). Resource depletion is a serious problem, but 'footprint' estimates don't tell us much about it. The Conversation. Retrieved August 30, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/resource-depletion-is-a-serious-problem-but-footprint-estimates-dont-tell-us-much-about-it-120065.

'Planationocene’&‘Chthulucene'

‘Planationocene’ was generated by participants at a conversation for Ethnos at the University of Aarhus in October 2014. It identified the devastating transformation of diverse kinds of human-tended farms, pastures, and forests into extractive and enclosed plantations, relying on slave labor and other forms of exploited, alienated, and usually spatially transported labor. Also, Scholars have long understood that the slave plantation system was the model and motor for the carbon-greedy machine-base factory system that is often cited as an infection point for the Anthropocene.

To overcome the system such as plantation, Haraway (2015) focused on the capability of the land as the place where countless living things co-exist and repeat decomposition and reproduction. It entangles myriad temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages-including the more-than-human, other-than-human, inhuman, and human-as-humans. Therefore, in order to emphasize the power of the land, she suggested the ‘Chthulucene’ and it means that it is a representative era of ‘Chthulu’[1] rather than things such as mankind, capital, and large farms (Haraway, 2005).

Harway(2015) insists that the Anthropocene is more a boundary event than an epoch. The Anthropocene marks severe discontinuities; what comes after will not be like what came after. She said what we need to do is to make the Anthropocene as short and thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge.

[1] ‘Chthulu’ is created based on the Greek world ‘chthon’, which means land.

Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: Making kin. Environmental humanities, 6(1), 159-165.

Haraway, D., Ishikawa, N., Gilbert, S. F., Olwig, K., Tsing, A. L., & Bubandt, N. (2015). Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene. Ethnos, 81(3), 535-564.

Criticism of the Anthropocene

One of criticism for the Anthropocene narrative seems to be population growth: if it can be shown that fossil fuel combustion is largely fanned by the multiplication of human numbers, the species can indeed be held causally responsible. Granted, there is a correlation between human population and CO2 emissions, but the latter(CO2) increased by a factor of 654.8 between 1820 and 2010 (Boden et al., 2013), while the former(Human population) ‘only’ did so by a factor of 6.6 (Maddison, 2006: 241; United Nations, 2011), indicating that another, far more powerful engine must have driven the fires. For recent decades, the correlation has been revealed as outright negative.

David Satterthwaite juxtaposed rates of population growth to rates of emissions growth in the quarter-century between 1980 and 2005, and found that numbers tended to rise fastest where emissions grew slowest, and vice versa (Satterthwaite, 2009). The rise of population and the rise of emissions were disconnected from each other, the one mostly happening in places where the other did not – and if a correlation is negative, causation is out of the question. A significant chunk of humanity is not party to the fossil economy at all: hundreds of millions rely on charcoal, firewood or organic waste such as dung for all domestic purposes. Satterthwaite concluded that one-sixth of the human population ‘best not be included in allocations of responsibility for GHG emissions’(Satterthwaite, 2009: 547–550).

Malm, A., & Hornborg, A. (2014). The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative. The Anthropocene Review, 1(1), 62-69.

Boden TA, Marland G & Andres RJ (2013) Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Oak Ridge, CA: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy.

Maddison A (2006) The World Economy, Vol. 1: A Millennial Perspective, and vol. 2: Historical Perspectives. Paris: OECD.

Satterthwaite D (2009) The implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change. Environment & Urbanization 21: 545–567.

United Nations (2011) World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, CD-ROM edition.

Challenges to the Anthropocene - Anthropogenic Global Warming

A significant challenge to the Anthropocene era is Anthropogenic Global Warming, which is the increase in the average global air temperature due to human activity. Global warming causes severe effects such as sea level rise, extreme weather events, ocean acidification and shrinking ice sheets (NASA, 2020). States engaged in industrial actives such as burning coal have been the ones to contribute the most to global warming; however, it is often the states that contribute the least that experience the worst effects. For example, industrialised states such as Europe and America have been the major contributors to global warming. In contrast non-industrialised areas such as the Pacific Islands, are suffering severely from sea level rise, destroying livelihoods and communities (McCalman, 2018). One major challenge of addressing global warming is that it is a worldwide issue, and not everyone agrees with the scale of which to implement adaptation and mitigation mechanisms (McCalman, 2018). In 2016 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change developed the Paris Agreement to bring states together to tackle climate change and strength the global response by way of mitigation, adaptation and finance. While 189 parties have ratified the Paris Agreement, the lack of international sanctions and accountability of states to implement climate change policy is a significant obstacle of the agreement and poses a challenge to mitigation and adaptation efforts (UNFCCC, 2020). Anthropogenic Global Warming and how to tackle it on a global scale is, therefore, a significant challenge to the Anthropocene Era.

McCalman, I. (2018, October 21). An Introduction to the idea and implications of the Anthropocene. Retrieved August 31, 2020, from http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/opinion/introduction-idea-implications-anthropocene/.

NASA. (2020, May 27). Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know? Retrieved August 31, 2020, from https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

UNFCCC. (2020). The Paris Agreement. Retrieved August 31, 2020, from https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement.