ABSTRACT
The world confronts an interlinked ecological, economic, social and political crisis crystallised in the issue of climate change. Capitalism is a system whose purpose it is to maximise profits for the owners of capital, and the ecological damage it causes in the process has been so great that some Earth Scientists argue that we have now entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. This chapter provides an overview of the accelerated spread of capitalist relations of production at the end of the Second World War, and the effects that this has had on the Earth’s natural systems. The most important effect when one considers the issue of climate change is the dramatic increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are the by-products of the current industrial, agricultural, and global trade systems, and they have led to the climate crisis that now confronts us. The climate change that results from anthropogenic global warming exacerbates natural disasters such as droughts and floods, and the unprecedented extent and intensity of the 2019/20 Australian ‘megafires’ occurred in the midst of an unprecedented drought. To minimise the harm that catastrophic events that such as ‘megafires’ cause, we need new ways of thinking: a ‘paradigm shift’ in how we analyse and live in this new world that capital has created, the ‘Anthropocene.’
