Facing the Anthropocene - Ian Angus

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I saw a house. It was burning. The flame

      Licked at its roof. I went up close and observed

      That there were people still inside. I entered the doorway and called

      Out to them that the roof was ablaze, so exhorting them

      To leave at once. But those people

      Seemed in no hurry. One of them,

      While the heat was already scorching his eyebrows,

      Asked me what it was like outside, whether it wasn’t raining,

      Whether the wind wasn’t blowing, perhaps, whether there was

      Another house for them, and more of this kind. Without answering

      I went out again. These people here, I thought,

      Must burn to death before they stop asking questions.

      And truly, friends,

      Whoever does not yet feel such heat in the floor that he’ll gladly

      Exchange it for any other, rather than stay, to that man

      I have nothing to say.” So Gautama the Buddha.21

      It is capitalism and the alienated global environment it has produced that constitutes our “burning house” today. Mainstream environmentalists, faced with this monstrous dilemma, have generally chosen to do little more than contemplate it, watching and making minor adjustments to their interior surroundings while flames lick the roof and the entire structure threatens to collapse around them. The point, rather, is to change it, to rebuild the house of civilization under different architectural principles, creating a more sustainable metabolism of humanity and the earth. The name of the movement to achieve this, rising out of the socialist and radical environmental movements, is ecosocialism, and the book before you is its most up-to-date and eloquent manifesto.

      —EUGENE, OREGON

      JANUARY 9, 2016

      ABBREVIATIONS

AWG Anthropocene Working Group
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa
°C Celsius degrees
CFC Chlorofluorocarbon
CH4 Methane
CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations
CO2 Carbon Dioxide
COP Conference of the Parties (to the UNFCCC)
G20 Group of 20
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GCF Green Climate Fund
GM General Motors
GNP Gross National Product
ICS International Commission on Stratigraphy
ICSU International Council of Scientific Unions
IGBP International Geosphere-Biosphere Program
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IUGS International Union of Geological Sciences
MEA Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
MECW Marx-Engels Collected Works
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NOx Nitrogen Dioxide and Nitrous Oxide
O2 Oxygen
O3 Ozone
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
PAGES Past Global Changes project
PIK Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
ppm Parts per million
RCP Representative Concentration Pathway
UN United Nations
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
UV Ultraviolet
WBGT Wet Bulb Globe Temperature

      Preface

      The earth is polluted neither because man is some kind of especially dirty animal nor because there are too many of us. The fault lies with human society—with the ways in which society has elected to win, distribute, and use the wealth that has been extracted by human labor from the planet’s resources. Once the social origins of the crisis become clear, we can begin to design appropriate social actions to resolve it.

      —BARRY COMMONER1

      In the past twenty years, earth science has taken a giant leap forward, combining new research in multiple disciplines to expand our understanding of the Earth System as a whole. A central result of that work has been realization that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene. At the same time, ecosocialists have made huge strides in rediscovering and extending Marx’s view that capitalism creates an “irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism,” leading inevitably to ecological crises. These two developments have for the most part occurred separately, and despite their mutual relevance, there has been little interchange between them.

      Facing the Anthropocene is a contribution toward bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecosocialism. I hope to show socialists that responding to the Anthropocene must be a central part of our program, theory, and activity in the twenty-first century, and to show Earth System scientists and environmentalists that ecological Marxism provides essential economic and social understanding that is missing in most discussions of the new epoch.

      The book’s title has two meanings. It refers, first, to the fact that humanity in the twenty-first century faces radical changes in its physical environment—not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System, caused by human activity. And it is a challenge to everyone who cares about humanity’s future to face up to the fact that survival in the Anthropocene requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with an ecological civilization, ecosocialism.

      The global environmental crisis is the most important issue of our time. Fighting to limit the damage caused by capitalism today will help lay the basis for socialism tomorrow, and even then, building socialism in Anthropocene conditions will involve challenges

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