Jason W. Moore: "Holocene, Capitalocene & the Climates of History, or, Class Struggles in the Web of Life" (29.3.2021)

In this lecture, the environmental historian Jason W. Moore explores the history class, civilizational crisis, and climate change in the Holocene. Arguing against the neo-Malthusianism implicit in the Anthropocene narrative, Moore argues for an alternative: not “Man and Nature” but “Climate and Class.” Exploring great climate/class crises from the Bronze Age to the Little Ice Age, Moore shows how climate changes have been entangled with civilizational crises. Viewing civilizations as world-ecologies of power and re/production in the web of life, we can bring into focus of the unity of today’s climate crisis as one of “social formation” entwined with “earth formation.” In this planetary crisis, rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are joined with the climate class divide, climate apartheid, and climate patriarchy.