You may have heard the term anthropocene,
to refer to the new geological era that we’re in
We’re told to recognise it in the
geological record, by things like
the trillions of chicken bones that humans
are responsible for creating and eating,
residue from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests,
or the plastic in the sea.
By 2050 there will be more plastic in the
sea
than fish if we carry on on our current trajectory.
But these markers of humans being alive on
earth
oughtn’t really to be called the anthropocene
because the root of the word suggests
that it’s humans, ‘anthropos’, doing
what we do,
that has created this layer of
sediment in the fossil record.
That’s not right and it’s not fair.
It’s not humans being humans that’s responsible
for this scale and this massive kind of transformation.
It’s capitalism. There are plenty of human
civilisations that have toddled along
without ever destroying the planet
in the way that capitalism has.
So it’s not just humans being humans in
the way
that snakes will be snakes or boys will be
boys.
There’s something very particular about
the way
that humans have appropriated, transformed,
and discarded the natural world, that we think
makes much more sense to name as the capitalocene.
And when you name it the capitalocene you
both
are able to point the fingers at who it is
that is responsible for it,
but you’re also able to recognise that if
there’s something
that comes afterwards it will involve a rejection,
not of humanity, and the misanthropy
that that then implies,
but rather a rejection of capitalism
and the hope that that offers.
