Anthropocene

A panel event held on 30 January, 2014 at Dalhousie University. Part of the ESS Lecture Series, Dalhousie University College of Sustainability. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists - Dave Bedford Political Science, UNB, author of *The Tragedy of Progress: Marxism, Modernity and the Aboriginal Question - Andrew Biro CRC in Political Ecology, Acadia University author of* Denaturalizing Ecological Politics: ‘Alienation from Nature’ from Rousseau to the Frankfurt School and Beyond [Read More]

A moderated panel discussion hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society on the interrelation of capital, history and ecology, held at York University on January 15, 2014. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Jordan Briggs, International Bolshevik Tendency Michelle Mawhinney, Political Science, York University Raymond Rogers, Environmental Studies, York University Description The Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen recently characterized the period marked by the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century to the present as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. [Read More]

A moderated panel discussion hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society on the interrelation of capital, history and ecology, held at Goldsmiths on November 20, 2013. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Andy Price (New Compass) Dr Andy Price is Principal Lecturer and Subject Group Leader in Politics at Sheffield Hallam University. He has written articles on both Bookchin and social ecology and on contemporary radical movements for the academic and popular press. [Read More]

A moderated panel discussion hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society on the interrelation of capital, history and ecology, held at Loyola University on November 19, 2013. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Franklin Dmitryev (News and Letters) Author of “Ecosocialism and Marx’s Humanism” Fred Magdoff (University of Vermont) Author of “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism” Steven Vogel (Denison University) Author of “Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory” [Read More]

The Anthropocene as Past/Present/Future THE RECENT COINAGE OF “THE ANTHROPOCENE” as a technical term of art presents an intriguing intellectual and political puzzle.1 Arguments for accepting the Anthropocene as a fundamental change in all hitherto experienced human history appear driven less by the hopes to chronicle accurately natural history, than by designs for redirecting how human beings ought to act now. On the one hand, its proponents present themselves as vigilant scientific sentries of individual freedom, declaring alarm as experts on current ecological crises prompt nation-states “to do something” about the destruction that mankind has wrought in the environment for 250 years. [Read More]