ecological crisis

Question 1

ecological crisis

Answer 1

• rising co2 as a result of burning fossil fuels + deforestation
• rising global temperatures ice melting, sea levels rising, biodiversity declining
• implications for where we live, what we eat and how healthy we are

Question 2

Anthropocene

Answer 2

• ‘age of man’
• necessary result of human progress
• Moore (2017) - “the driving force behind coal and steam? not class. not capital. not imperialism. not even culture. But… the anthrops: humanity as an undifferentiated whole”

Question 3

capitalocene

Answer 3

• ‘age of capital’
• result of our current way of pursuing human progress
• Moore (2016) - “destruction of nature has largely been the result of an economic system organised around a minority class and its pursuit of profit”

Question 4

Moore (2017) - current epoch

Answer 4

“how one answers the historical question shapes ones analysis of- and response to - the crisis of the present”

• blaming all of humanity for our current crisis lets capitalism off the hook

Question 5

is capitalism purely economic?

Answer 5

• an all-encompassing system - cant change one bit without changing it all
• involves nature, people, economics and politics
• always requires exploitation - both of people and the work they do and the work of nature

Question 6

exploitation of nature

Answer 6

• degrading the environment for the production of oil, gas or minerals
• e.g. deforestation, mass cattle farming (reproductive labour, sexual wellbeing, length of life, personal wellbeing)

Question 7

Moore and Patel (2018)

Answer 7

capitalism “seeks to mobilize work… as cheaply as possible, and that is a fundamentally violent process”

Question 8

Did capitalism cause contemporary ecological crisis?

Answer 8

three camps:
eco-crisis is a human-made phenomenon
eco-crisis is a natural phenomenon
eco-crisis is a capitalism-made phenomenon (Marx, Moore, Harvey)

Question 9

O’Connell (2018)

Answer 9

“the currently fashionable term ‘anthropocene’, they argue suggests our current state of ecological emergency is merely the result of humans doing what humans do”

Question 10

First Contradiction of Capitalism

Answer 10

capitalism undermines itself through: overaccumulation, overproduction & underconsumption

Question 11

Second Contradiction of Capitalism

Answer 11

The tendency for capitalism to eventually undermine the environmental conditions for its own perpetuation, through degradation of natural resources or damage to the health of workers.
- destroy rather than conserve the conditions it relies on for production