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98-571: The Capitalocene is a critique of "man versus nature" thinking in climate politics. Frequently misunderstood as an alternative geological periodization to the Anthropocene proposal, the Capitalocene's leading proponents argue for the centrality of capitalism in the making of climate crisis. The Capitalocene is a way to understand capitalism as a geohistorical process, not a geological event as conventionally understood. For Andreas Malm, this

196-704: A geological epoch distinct from the Holocene. The Anthropocene Working Group met in Oslo in April 2016 to consolidate evidence supporting the argument for the Anthropocene as a true geologic epoch. Evidence was evaluated and the group voted to recommend Anthropocene as the new geological epoch in August 2016. In April 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) announced that they would vote on

294-434: A depositional regime, engineered structures will tend to be buried and preserved, along with litter and debris. Litter and debris thrown from boats or carried by rivers and creeks will accumulate in the marine environment, particularly in coastal areas, but also in mid-ocean garbage patches . Such human-created artifacts preserved in stratigraphy are known as "technofossils". Changes in biodiversity will also be reflected in

392-667: A dramatic rate. The Atomic Age also started around the mid-20th century, when the risks of nuclear wars , nuclear terrorism and nuclear accidents increased. Twelve candidate sites were selected for the GSSP; the sediments of Crawford Lake , Canada were finally proposed, in July 2023, to mark the lower boundary of the Anthropocene, starting with the Crawfordian stage/age in 1950. In March 2024, after 15 years of deliberation,

490-557: A formal proposal to the International Commission on Stratigraphy , to continue the process started at the 2016 meeting. In May 2019, 29 members of the 34 person AWG panel voted in favour of an official proposal to be made by 2021. The AWG also voted with 29 votes in favour of a starting date in the mid 20th century. Ten candidate sites for a Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point have been identified, one of which will be chosen to be included in

588-621: A formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale, Anthropocene will nevertheless continue to be used not only by Earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large. It will remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the Earth system." An early concept for the Anthropocene was the Noosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky , who in 1938 wrote of "scientific thought as

686-622: A geological force". Scientists in the Soviet Union appear to have used the term Anthropocene as early as the 1960s to refer to the Quaternary , the most recent geological period . Ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer subsequently used Anthropocene with a different sense in the 1980s and the term was widely popularised in 2000 by atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen , who regards the influence of human behavior on Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute

784-407: A joint association rather than within the confines of their own mill. In sum, Malm's thesis is that the rise of fossil fuels was not a collective decision of mankind nor the inevitable result of its nature, but the outcome of specific dynamics of capitalist production. “Capitalocene,” in his opinion, therefore has the advantage of being more accurate and precise than “Anthropocene.” Jason W. Moore, on

882-430: A key marker the group chose to place the start of the Anthropocene in the 1950s, along with other elevated markers including carbon particles and nitrates from the burning of fossil fuels and widespread application of chemical fertilizers respectively. Had it been approved, the official declaration of the new Anthropocene epoch would have taken place in August 2024, and its first age may have been named Crawfordian after

980-431: A new geological epoch. The pressures we exert on the planet have become so great that scientists are considering whether the Earth has entered an entirely new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, or the age of humans. It means that we are the first people to live in an age defined by human choice, in which the dominant risk to our survival is ourselves. — Achim Steiner , UNDP Administrator The term Anthropocene

1078-450: A new, post- Holocene era in which in the global atmosphere is undergoing major, long-term transformation on account of human activity, particularly global warming. Crutzen suggested that this era began in the late eighteenth century with James Watt 's design of the steam engine . Since the publication of Crutzen's essay, the Anthropocene has come to be widely discussed in academic and popular settings. Ecological Marxism traces its roots to

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1176-419: A precise date of start to highly diachronous processes of human-influenced Earth system change. The argument indicated that finding a single GSSP would be impractical, given human-induced changes in the Earth system occurred at different periods, in different places, and spread under different rates. Under this model, the Anthropocene would have many events marking human-induced impacts on the planet, including

1274-410: A range of activities around the world that seek to ameliorate these issues or prevent them from happening. Changes in drainage patterns traceable to human activity will persist over geologic time in large parts of the continents where the geologic regime is erosional. This involves, for example, the paths of roads and highways defined by their grading and drainage control. Direct changes to the form of

1372-471: A social history of energy exploitation, IFP School professor Victor Court evaluates and ultimately rejects the Capitalocene. Like Moore, he objects to Malm's situation on fossil industry as eliding the importance of earlier merchant capitalism . Beyond this, he too raises the objection of twentieth century socialism's environmental record, and is not persuaded by Malm's aforementioned rejoinder: to concede that other economic systems contributed to climate change

1470-456: A system founded on the value form , claims Moore, can function only because these “Four Cheaps” are kept “off the books” of value exchange and acquired at little or no expense. Such appropriation is itself only possible because of an ideological development of the early modern era that posited a newly absolute conceptual division between society and nature, which Moore equates with Cartesian dualism . Operating from these premises, Moore dates

1568-487: A vain attempt to countermand the trends of nature. The Capitalocene moves the root of the problem back into the sphere of historically contingent social priorities that can be challenged and remade by those with the will and organization to do so. Since the Capitalocene notion's debut, it has been applied by scholars in such diverse fields as architecture , literary analysis , digital studies, and pedagogy . It has been invoked approvingly by philosopher Frédéric Lordon and

1666-469: Is a decrease or disappearance of species in a specific area. Biodiversity loss means that there is a reduction in biological diversity in a given area. The decrease can be temporary or permanent. It is temporary if the damage that led to the loss is reversible in time, for example through ecological restoration . If this is not possible, then the decrease is permanent. The cause of most of the biodiversity loss is, generally speaking, human activities that push

1764-514: Is because the widely-adopted 1950 start date was found to be prone to recency bias. It also overshadowed earlier examples of human impacts, many of which happened in different parts of the world at different times. Although the proposal could be raised again, this would require the entire process of debate to start from the beginning. The results of the vote were officially confirmed by the IUGS and upheld as definitive later that month. Crutzen proposed

1862-413: Is defined by the imperative of endless capital accumulation, which implies increasingly serious metabolic antagonisms. The Capitalocene, in its simplest terms, is a species of geopoetry, literally "earth poetry." It is a critique of the Anthropocene as a geohistorical concept and its deeper, animating philosophy of "humanity" and "nature." In contrast, historical materialists emphasize the labor process and

1960-437: Is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) content. This signal in the Earth's climate system is especially significant because it is occurring much faster, and to a greater extent, than previously. Most of this increase is due to the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil , and gas . Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to

2058-510: Is informally used in scientific contexts. The Geological Society of America entitled its 2011 annual meeting: Archean to Anthropocene: The past is the key to the future . The new epoch has no agreed start-date, but one proposal, based on atmospheric evidence, is to fix the start with the Industrial Revolution c. 1780, with the invention of the steam engine . Other scientists link the new term to earlier events, such as

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2156-466: Is not obvious that steam-powered mechanization should have prevailed over more established water power . Beginning in 1824, Scottish engineer Robert Thom developed a highly advanced industrial water supply system, first implemented in the town of Greenock , Scotland, which could power mills at one-eighth the expense of steam power. This attracted wide interest from British manufacturers, and ambitious plans were made to construct similar infrastructure on

2254-575: Is now firmly established as the sixth factor of soil formation. Humanity affects pedogenesis directly by, for example, land levelling, trenching and embankment building, landscape-scale control of fire by early humans , organic matter enrichment from additions of manure or other waste, organic matter impoverishment due to continued cultivation and compaction from overgrazing . Human activity also affects pedogenesis indirectly by drift of eroded materials or pollutants. Anthropogenic soils are those markedly affected by human activities, such as repeated ploughing,

2352-456: Is the theory of fossil capital. For Jason W. Moore, it is the theory of Cheap Nature in the capitalist world-ecology . Both argue, with Karl Marx, that capitalism is a labor process, and a class struggle, in the web of life. While Malm sees the origins of climate crisis with the ascendancy of fossil capital after 1830, Moore locates the dawn of "capitalogenic" crisis in the long seventeenth century (c. 1550-1700). Both agree with Marx that capitalism

2450-422: Is to undermine the whole Capitalocene premise. Fundamentally, Court believes that while capitalist dynamics undeniably cause environmental damage, they are only one exemplar of the true problem, namely “protean and omnipresent relations of domination between individuals.” Ending capitalism, therefore, is a necessary but not sufficient step toward environmental equilibrium; even a hypothetical socialist society of

2548-734: The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) rejected the Anthropocene Epoch proposal for inclusion in the Geologic Time Scale . The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) of the ICS voted in April 2016 to proceed towards a formal golden spike (GSSP) proposal to define the Anthropocene epoch in the geologic time scale . The group presented

2646-711: The K-Pg boundary between the Cretaceous and the Paleogene .” In contrast to historical investigation, she considers it necessary to imagine what sort of epoch—the "Chthulucene"—could be constructed on the other side of this boundary. Although Haraway considers the Capitalocene the most appropriate term for our era, she distances herself from any version of it “told in the idiom of fundamentalist Marxism, with all its trappings of Modernity, Progress, and History”; in short, from its articulation as an overly grand narrative . Though

2744-473: The River Irwell and near Saddleworth , before being abandoned. While the exact reason for the cancellation of these projects is uncertain due to the loss of relevant documents , Malm argues that it was fundamentally a collective action problem : manufacturers were not willing to make a necessary large, pooled investment that might benefit their competitors more than them, and which would be controlled by

2842-561: The Upper Fremont Glacier in Wyoming, there is a layer of chlorine present in ice cores from 1960's atomic weapon testing programs, as well as a layer of mercury associated with coal plants in the 1980s. From the late 1940s, nuclear tests have led to local nuclear fallout and severe contamination of test sites both on land and in the surrounding marine environment. Some of the radionuclides that were released during

2940-475: The biosphere . Though he does not deny the importance of other forms of environmental disruption, he considers climate change worthy of special attention and an adequate yardstick for all the others. Malm departs from Crutzen, however, in his periodization . The Capitalocene begins not with the invention of Watt's steam engine, but with its ascendancy as the main source of power for the British cotton industry in

3038-418: The climate system include an overall warming trend , changes to precipitation patterns , and more extreme weather . As the climate changes it impacts the natural environment with effects such as more intense forest fires , thawing permafrost , and desertification . These changes impact ecosystems and societies, and can become irreversible once tipping points are crossed. Climate activists are engaged in

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3136-609: The first atomic bomb in 1945 or the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963). The name Anthropocene is a combination of anthropo- from the Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος ( ánthropos ) meaning 'human' and -cene from καινός ( kainós ) meaning 'new' or 'recent'. As early as 1873, the Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani acknowledged the increasing power and effect of humanity on

3234-661: The mass extinction of large vertebrates , the development of early farming , land clearance in the Americas, global-scale industrial transformation during the Industrial Revolution , and the start of the Atomic Age . The authors are members of the AWG who had voted against the official proposal of a starting date in the mid-20th century, and sought to reconcile some of the previous models (including Ruddiman and Maslin proposals). They cited Crutzen 's original concept, arguing that

3332-631: The planetary boundaries too far. These activities include habitat destruction (for example deforestation ) and land use intensification (for example monoculture farming). Further problem areas are air and water pollution (including nutrient pollution ), over-exploitation , invasive species and climate change . Studies of urban evolution give an indication of how species may respond to stressors such as temperature change and toxicity. Species display varying abilities to respond to altered environments through both phenotypic plasticity and genetic evolution . Researchers have documented

3430-736: The 2021 Economics of Biodiversity review, written by Partha Dasgupta and published by the UK government, "biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history." A 2022 scientific review published in Biological Reviews confirms that an anthropogenic sixth mass extinction event is currently underway. A 2022 study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment , which surveyed more than 3,000 experts, states that

3528-473: The Anthropocene Epoch proposal of the AWG was voted down by a wide margin by the SQS, owing largely to its shallow sedimentary record and extremely recent proposed start date. The ICS and the IUGS later formally confirmed, by a near unanimous vote, the rejection of the AWG's Anthropocene Epoch proposal for inclusion in the Geologic Time Scale. The IUGS statement on the rejection concluded: "Despite its rejection as

3626-481: The Anthropocene have been proposed, ranging from the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution (12,000–15,000 years ago), to as recently as the 1960s. The biologist Eugene F. Stoermer is credited with first coining and using the term anthropocene informally in the 1980s; Paul J. Crutzen re-invented and popularized the term. However, in 2024 the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and

3724-531: The Anthropocene is much better and more usefully conceived of as an unfolding geological event, like other major transformations in Earth's history such as the Great Oxidation Event . In July 2023, the AWG chose Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada as a site representing the beginning of the proposed new epoch. The sediment in that lake shows a spike in levels of plutonium from hydrogen bomb tests,

3822-666: The Anthropocene should be extended back many thousand years"; this would make the Anthropocene essentially synonymous with the current term, Holocene . In 2008, the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London considered a proposal to make the Anthropocene a formal unit of geological epoch divisions. A majority of the commission decided the proposal had merit and should be examined further. Independent working groups of scientists from various geological societies began to determine whether

3920-639: The Anthropocene will be formally accepted into the Geological Time Scale . In January 2015, 26 of the 38 members of the International Anthropocene Working Group published a paper suggesting the Trinity test on 16 July 1945 as the starting point of the proposed new epoch. However, a significant minority supported one of several alternative dates. A March 2015 report suggested either 1610 or 1964 as

4018-451: The Capitalocene is the era governed by “fossil capitalism,” a mode of production characterized by “self-sustaining growth predicated on the growing consumption of fossil fuels and therefore generating a sustained growth in CO₂ emissions.” Malm, then, follows Crutzen in narrowly identifying CO₂-driven warming as the defining attribute of our era, on account of its major consequences for every part of

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4116-557: The Earth System has departed from its Holocene state since c. 1950 CE, forcing abrupt physical, chemical and biological changes to the Earth's stratigraphic record that can be used to justify the proposal for naming a new epoch—the Anthropocene." A December 2020 study published in Nature found that the total anthropogenic mass, or human-made materials, outweighs all the biomass on earth, and highlighted that "this quantification of

4214-484: The Earth's surface by human activities ( quarrying and landscaping , for example) also record human impacts. It has been suggested that the deposition of calthemite formations exemplify a natural process which has not previously occurred prior to the human modification of the Earth's surface, and which therefore represents a unique process of the Anthropocene. Calthemite is a secondary deposit, derived from concrete, lime , mortar or other calcareous material outside

4312-402: The Earth's systems and referred to an 'anthropozoic era'. The human impact on biodiversity forms one of the primary attributes of the Anthropocene. Humankind has entered what is sometimes called the Earth's sixth major extinction. Most experts agree that human activities have accelerated the rate of species extinction. The exact rate remains controversial – perhaps 100 to 1000 times

4410-595: The Industrial Revolution as the start of Anthropocene. Lovelock proposes that the Anthropocene began with the first application of the Newcomen atmospheric engine in 1712. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change takes the pre-industrial era (chosen as the year 1750) as the baseline related to changes in long-lived, well mixed greenhouse gases. Although it is apparent that the Industrial Revolution ushered in an unprecedented global human impact on

4508-739: The Royal Society B , Rodolfo Dirzo , Gerardo Ceballos, and Paul R. Ehrlich write that the term is "increasingly penetrating the lexicon of not only the academic socio-sphere, but also society more generally", and is now included as an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary . The University of Cambridge, as another example, offers a degree in Anthropocene Studies. In the public sphere, the term Anthropocene has become increasingly ubiquitous in activist, pundit, and political discourses. Some who are critical of

4606-550: The State examines the tendency of government expenditures to outpace revenues in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, its relevance extends beyond the U.S. context, as it sheds light on similar challenges faced by other countries during that period and even in today’s global economy. Here are some key points from O’Connor’s analysis: 1. Anatomy of American State Capitalism: O’Connor delves into

4704-485: The addition of fertilisers, contamination, sealing, or enrichment with artefacts (in the World Reference Base for Soil Resources they are classified as Anthrosols and Technosols ). An example from archaeology would be dark earth phenomena when long-term human habitation enriches the soil with black carbon . Anthropogenic soils are recalcitrant repositories of artefacts and properties that testify to

4802-399: The atmospheric CO 2 , and infiltrating the biosphere , through ocean-atmosphere gas exchange . Increase in thyroid cancer rates around the world is also surmised to be correlated with increasing proportions of the I radionuclide. The highest global concentration of radionuclides was estimated to have been in 1965, one of the dates which has been proposed as a possible benchmark for

4900-441: The beginning of the Anthropocene. Other scholars pointed to the diachronous character of the physical strata of the Anthropocene, arguing that onset and impact are spread out over time, not reducible to a single instant or date of start. A January 2016 report on the climatic, biological, and geochemical signatures of human activity in sediments and ice cores suggested the era since the mid-20th century should be recognised as

4998-418: The capitalist world-system, and thus a part of the Capitalocene in their own way. Since the publication of Audier's book, sociologist Zsuza Gille has published a study on the “Socialocene,” from a similar world-systems approach. This study devotes particular attention to how industrial waste and waste-producing processes were outsourced from the imperial core to the socialist bloc. In L'Emballement du monde ,

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5096-485: The case of weaving, however, mechanization was actually caused by the extremely low cost of labor power . Following the Panic of 1825 , weavers' wages plummeted to bare subsistence level; this, however, compelled weavers—who generally worked from home, without continual supervision—to make a living by embezzling their product and selling it on the side, incurring losses to their employers. Yet even in this case, writes Malm, it

5194-414: The cave environment . Calthemites grow on or under man-made structures (including mines and tunnels) and mimic the shapes and forms of cave speleothems , such as stalactites , stalagmites , flowstone etc . Human activities like deforestation and road construction are believed to have elevated average total sediment fluxes across the Earth's surface. However, construction of dams on many rivers around

5292-533: The class struggle. Class and labor are, for the Capitalocene thesis, metabolic relations through which capitalism shapes environments, and is shaped by webs of life. This critique of Man versus Nature thinking allows the Capitalocene thesis to move beyond theory, and reconstruct a history of the origins of planetary crisis rooted in imperialism, class struggle, and world accumulation, all with and within webs of life. In this approach, class and capital are not only driving forces of planetary crisis, but "guiding threads" for

5390-416: The concept, at least two distinct formulations thereof emerged concurrently in the early-to-mid 2010s. The first is that of Malm himself, joined by Alf Hornborg, Kohei Saito , and others broadly associated with the metabolic rift school. The other was developed by Moore, and endorsed by Haraway. The disagreement between these two camps is derived from differences over the periodization of capitalist origins and

5488-589: The debate over Capitalocene and Anthropocene terminology as “silly.” Peter Sutoris, writing in The Conversation , concedes that the Anthropocene is not a perfect framing, but defends it for the sense of urgency and dire consequences that it conveys. A common objection to the Capitalocene is to highlight environmental damage on the part of socialism , or regimes which defined themselves as such. Philosopher Serge Audier  [ fr ] , in his 2019 book L'âge productiviste , writes: "If we are to speak of

5586-537: The decisive unit of analysis: England versus the Atlantic world. Malm hews closely to the “ Political Marxism ” of Robert Brenner . Moore is often mischaracterized as an adherent of world-systems analysis. Moore and Wallerstein agree on the periodization of capitalism. Moore has emphasized his distance from world-systems analysis while agreeing with Wallerstein on the centrality of imperialist "political accumulation" in world class formation and class struggle. For Malm,

5684-544: The dominance of the human impact, and hence appear to be reliable markers for the Anthropocene. Some anthropogenic soils may be viewed as the 'golden spikes' of geologists ( Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point ), which are locations where there are strata successions with clear evidences of a worldwide event, including the appearance of distinctive fossils. Drilling for fossil fuels has also created holes and tubes which are expected to be detectable for millions of years. The astrobiologist David Grinspoon has proposed that

5782-424: The editorial board of Scientific American , and has been discussed in various general-audience publications. The “Capitalocene” framework originated in the early twenty-first century from a dialogue between proponents of the “Anthropocene” and thinkers from the eco-Marxist and ecofeminist traditions. The Anthropocene concept was first proposed by atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen in 2002, who described it as

5880-571: The entire Black Sea may have changed during the last 2000 years as a result of nutrient and silica input from eroding deforested lands along the Danube River . Researchers have found that the growth of the human population and expansion of human activity has resulted in many species of animals that are normally active during the day, such as elephants, tigers and boars, becoming nocturnal to avoid contact with humans, who are largely diurnal. One geological symptom resulting from human activity

5978-495: The expenses of production over time. 4. Financing the Budget: The book explores various potential mechanisms for financing increased budgetary outlays, including state enterprises, state debt issuance, and tax rate adjustments. O'Connor's analysis remains relevant for understanding contemporary social policy and economic systems. His subsequent works Accumulation Crisis and The Meaning of Crisis sought to further explore

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6076-505: The extinction crisis could be worse than previously thought, and estimates that roughly 30% of species "have been globally threatened or driven extinct since the year 1500." According to a 2023 study published in Biological Reviews some 48% of 70,000 monitored species are experiencing population declines from human activity, whereas only 3% have increasing populations. Biodiversity loss happens when plant or animal species disappear completely from Earth ( extinction ) or when there

6174-426: The final proposal. Possible markers include microplastics , heavy metals , or radioactive nuclei left by tests from thermonuclear weapons . In November 2021, an alternative proposal that the Anthropocene is a geological event , not an epoch, was published and later expanded in 2022. This challenged the assumption underlying the case for the Anthropocene epoch - the idea that it is possible to accurately assign

6272-529: The fossil record, as will species introductions. An example cited is the domestic chicken, originally the red junglefowl Gallus gallus , native to south-east Asia but has since become the world's most common bird through human breeding and consumption, with over 60 billion consumed annually and whose bones would become fossilised in landfill sites. Hence, landfills are important resources to find "technofossils". In terms of trace elements, there are distinct signatures left by modern societies. For example, in

6370-613: The future would still have to specifically tackle the problem of resource use. Anthropocene The Anthropocene is a rejected proposal for a geological epoch following the Holocene , dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth up to the present day. This impact affects Earth's oceans , geology , geomorphology , landscape , limnology , hydrology , ecosystems and climate . The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen for example in biodiversity loss and climate change . Various start dates for

6468-492: The geologic record." The official start-dates, according to the panel, would coincide with either the radionuclides released into the atmosphere from bomb detonations in 1945, or with the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. The peak in radionuclides fallout consequential to atomic bomb testing during the 1950s is another possible date for the beginning of the Anthropocene (the detonation of

6566-454: The human enterprise gives a mass-based quantitative and symbolic characterization of the human-induced epoch of the Anthropocene." Although the validity of Anthropocene as a scientific term remains disputed, its underlying premise, i.e., that humans have become a geological force, or rather, the dominant force shaping the Earth's climate, has found traction among academics and the public. In an opinion piece for Philosophical Transactions of

6664-435: The increasing levels of carbon in the geologic record in the 19th century as the beginning of the Capitalocene, because these were merely the delayed effects of a system which emerged centuries earlier. Donna Haraway, another popularizer of the concept, largely concurs with Moore's formulation and periodization. Drawing from Anna Tsing , however, she proposes that “the Anthropocene is more a boundary event than an epoch, like

6762-451: The investigation of power, profit and life in the modern world—and for the elaboration of a socialist climate politics in the twenty-first century. While these thinkers appreciate the Anthropocene perspective's role in advancing environmental debate in the public sphere, they believe that it ultimately serves to reify and mystify the real causes of environmental crisis, and even impede the action needed to mitigate it, since doing so would be

6860-516: The lake. In March 2024, the New York Times reported on the results of an internal vote held by the IUGS : After nearly 15 years of debate, the proposal to ratify the Anthropocene had been defeated by a 12-to-4 margin, with 2 abstentions. These results were not out of a dismissal of human impact on the planet, but rather an inability to constrain the Anthropocene in a geological context. This

6958-457: The movement of many species into regions formerly too cold for them, often at rates faster than initially expected. Permanent changes in the distribution of organisms from human influence will become identifiable in the geologic record . This has occurred in part as a result of changing climate, but also in response to farming and fishing, and to the accidental introduction of non-native species to new areas through global travel. The ecosystem of

7056-448: The normal background rate of extinction. Anthropogenic extinctions started as humans migrated out of Africa over 60,000 years ago. Increases in global rates of extinction have been elevated above background rates since at least 1500, and appear to have accelerated in the 19th century and further since. Rapid economic growth is considered a primary driver of the contemporary displacement and eradication of other species. According to

7154-452: The ocean due to dams, reservoirs and diversions. Humans have produced so many millions of tons of plastic each year since the early 1950s that microplastics are "forming a near-ubiquitous and unambiguous marker of Anthropocene". The study highlights a strong correlation between global human population size and growth, global productivity and global energy use and that the "extraordinary outburst of consumption and productivity demonstrates how

7252-501: The onset of the Capitalocene to “a radical shift in the scale, speed and scope of landscape change [that] occurred in the long sixteenth century ,” corresponding to the emergence of the capitalist world-system—in Moore's jargon, the capitalist world-ecology . While acknowledging that humans have transformed their environments since prehistory , he posits an enormous acceleration of such practices beginning around 1450, intertwined with

7350-549: The other hand, argues that while climate change is surely the most prominent attribute of the Capitalocene, it is only part of a larger complex of crises in the “web of life.” The root of all these, in his view, is capitalism's drive to appropriate “Cheap Nature” in the form of food, labor, energy, and raw materials. This process is just as foundational to capitalism as those of primitive accumulation , commodification , or proletarianization described in Marx's Capital . Capitalism as

7448-476: The planet, much of Earth's landscape already had been profoundly modified by human activities. The human impact on Earth has grown progressively, with few substantial slowdowns. A 2024 scientific perspective paper authored by a group of scientists led by William J. Ripple proposed the start of the Anthropocene around 1850, stating it is a "compelling choice . . . from a population, fossil fuel, greenhouse gasses, temperature, and land use perspective." In May 2019

7546-508: The poor environmental record of socialist states, but argues that the collapse of almost all such regimes has made this a far less pressing concern. “We do not live in the Vorkuta coal-mining gulag of the 1930s,” he writes. “It is no more. But the world that Lancashire founded in the 1830s encompasses us all as the ecological reality we have to deal with.” Moore's response is to consider Eastern Bloc states semi-peripheral territories of

7644-623: The proposal to the International Geological Congress in August 2016. In May 2019, the AWG voted in favour of submitting a formal proposal to the ICS by 2021. The proposal located potential stratigraphic markers to the mid-20th century. This time period coincides with the start of the Great Acceleration , a post- World War II time period during which global population growth , pollution and exploitation of natural resources have all increased at

7742-567: The rise of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution (around 12,000 years BP ). Evidence of relative human impact – such as the growing human influence on land use, ecosystems, biodiversity , and species extinction – is substantial; scientists think that human impact has significantly changed (or halted) the growth of biodiversity. Those arguing for earlier dates posit that the proposed Anthropocene may have begun as early as 14,000–15,000 years BP , based on geologic evidence; this has led other scientists to suggest that "the onset of

7840-586: The second quarter of the nineteenth century. To him, the mere invention of the engine (let alone that of fire , as argued by some Anthropocene proponents) is not sufficient, nor is the widespread use of coal for heating purposes in Elizabethan England. It was only when fossil fuels became a means of “self-sustaining growth” by way of provisioning generally applicable industrial power that massive and growing carbon emissions became an economic imperative. The adoption of fossil power, by Malm's account,

7938-503: The site of the Apollo ;11 Lunar landing, with the disturbances and artifacts that are so uniquely characteristic of our species' technological activity and which will survive over geological time spans could be considered as the 'golden spike' of the Anthropocene. An October 2020 study coordinated by University of Colorado at Boulder found that distinct physical, chemical and biological changes to Earth's rock layers began around

8036-593: The spread of European trade and colonialism through the world. Among the developments of this period were the sudden and rapid deforestation of the Baltic region , Dutch land reclamation , the explosion of mining in Central Europe and the Andes , and the enslavement of human beings relegated to the category of “nature” rather than “society.” It is a mistake, says Moore, to consider the rise of steam industry or

8134-429: The start of the formally defined Anthropocene. Human burning of fossil fuels has also left distinctly elevated concentrations of black carbon, inorganic ash, and spherical carbonaceous particles in recent sediments across the world. Concentrations of these components increases markedly and almost simultaneously around the world beginning around 1950. A marker that accounts for a substantial global impact of humans on

8232-426: The structure of American state capitalism, exploring how political power and budgetary control operate within the United States. 2. Social Capital Expenditures: He discusses social investment and social consumption, emphasizing that understanding government expenditures requires considering power dynamics within the private economy. 3. Social Expenses of Production: O’Connor argues that the state increasingly socializes

8330-507: The term Anthropocene nevertheless concede that "For all its problems, [it] carries power." The popularity and currency of the word has led scholars to label the term a "charismatic meta-category" or "charismatic mega-concept." The term, regardless, has been subject to a variety of criticisms from social scientists, philosophers, Indigenous scholars, and others. James O%27Connor (academic) He had two sons, Steven and Daniel O'Connor. O’Connor’s influential work, The Fiscal Crisis of

8428-427: The tests are Cs , Sr , Pu , Pu , Am , and I . These have been found to have had significant impact on the environment and on human beings. In particular, Cs and Sr have been found to have been released into the marine environment and led to bioaccumulation over a period through food chain cycles. The carbon isotope C , commonly released during nuclear tests, has also been found to be integrated into

8526-447: The themes of social and psychological crisis. The entire first part (five chapters) of his book Natural Causes was devoted to environmental history. In it O’Connor revised historical materialism and theorized labour not as the enemy of nature, but as a partner in a common history of capitalist exploitation, claiming that “the more that (human modified) nature is seen as the history of labour, property, exploitation, and social struggle,

8624-408: The total environment, comparable in scale to those associated with significant perturbations of the geological past, is needed in place of minor changes in atmosphere composition. A useful candidate for holding markers in the geologic time record is the pedosphere . Soils retain information about their climatic and geochemical history with features lasting for centuries or millennia. Human activity

8722-579: The twenty-nine members of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) proposed a start date for the Epoch in the mid-20th century, as that period saw "a rapidly rising human population accelerated the pace of industrial production, the use of agricultural chemicals and other human activities. At the same time, the first atomic-bomb blasts littered the globe with radioactive debris that became embedded in sediments and glacial ice, becoming part of

8820-677: The two leads him to overlook important binary antagonisms that underlie society , and to underestimate capitalism's capacity to survive climate crisis even as millions of human beings do not survive it. He further accuses Moore and Haraway of obscurantist prose “that seeks to ruin as much analytical equipment as possible while charging with lowered lances.” Saito, in turn, charges Moore with cherrypicking Marx's œuvre to support his own positions. Moore, on his part, considers much of Malm's study of fossil capital to be compatible with and useful to his own theory, but overly limited in its focus on an ideal type of capitalism. Dipesh Chakrabarty has dismissed

8918-410: The two versions of the Capitalocene idea outlined here share the same basic critique of the Anthropocene, they are marked by substantial theoretical differences. Malm and Kohei Saito, responding to Moore and Haraway, have each defended an analytical—if not ontological —distinction between society and nature, in relation to the metabolic rift theory. According to Malm, Moore's insistence on the identity of

9016-532: The wider public, it attracted the attention of social scientists from this and the related ecofeminist school. The term “Capitalocene” was first coined in 2009 by the Swedish human ecologist Andreas Malm , then a doctoral student at the University of Lund . Through private correspondence it spread to other scholars such as feminist Donna Haraway and geographer Jason W. Moore. Since the first invocation of

9114-490: The world means the rates of sediment deposition in any given place do not always appear to increase in the Anthropocene. For instance, many river deltas around the world are actually currently starved of sediment by such dams, and are subsiding and failing to keep up with sea level rise, rather than growing. Increases in erosion due to farming and other operations will be reflected by changes in sediment composition and increases in deposition rates elsewhere. In land areas with

9212-408: The writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Although anthropogenic global warming was not known to the two men, both were interested in the unintended natural consequences of human activity. The topic was an occasional theme in their later writing, as seen most notably in Marx's exploration of “ social metabolism ” and Engels' passage on the “revenge of nature.” Although this facet of their work

9310-553: The year 1950. The research revealed that since about 1950, humans have doubled the amount of fixed nitrogen on the planet through industrial production for agriculture, created a hole in the ozone layer through the industrial scale release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), released enough greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels to cause planetary level climate change , created tens of thousands of synthetic mineral-like compounds that do not naturally occur on Earth, and caused almost one-fifth of river sediment worldwide to no longer reach

9408-488: The “Capitalocene,” then perhaps we are also obliged to speak of a kind of 'Socialocene,' or, all the more appropriately, of a 'Communistocene.' Curiously, none have been willing to take that step. However vexing it may be to acknowledge the major role in the ecological crisis played not just by Communist regimes, but by the broader socialist left on account of its majoritarian tendencies, this historic responsibility must be fully reckoned with." To this objection, Malm concedes

9506-444: Was long neglected, the rise of the environmental movement in the late twentieth century provoked a new interest in these passages and in environmental questions more generally among Marxist scholars of that time, exemplified by James O'Connor 's theory of the “second contradiction of capitalism” and John Bellamy Foster 's exegesis of Marx's “ metabolic rift .” As Crutzen's framework spread among natural scientists and filtered down to

9604-464: Was not due to inherent drives of the “human enterprise” such as population growth , “limited productive powers of the land,” or the self-evident superiority of steam technology. Fossil Capital argues that steam power's real advantage at the time and place of its adoption was the degree of control over production it gave to British textile mill owners. Adoption of new technology is typically assumed to be driven by its potential to reduce wage expenses; in

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