Video, Past Event, Environmental Justice
Facing the Anthropocene
This event launched Ian Angus' book, Facing the "Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System" (Monthly Review Press, 2016).
A new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. In Facing the Anthropocene, Ian Angus shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge.
About the Book:
Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis. Cogent and compellingly written, Facing the Anthropocene offers a unique synthesis of natural and social science that illustrates how capitalism’s inexorable drive for growth, powered by the rapid burning of fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, has driven our world to the brink of disaster. Survival in the Anthropocene, Angus argues, requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with a new, ecosocialist civilization.
Speaker Bio
Ian Angus is a long-time activist in socialist and environmental movements in Canada and internationally. He is editor of the online journal Climate & Capitalism and co-author of the Belém Ecosocialist Declaration. His previous books include Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis (with Simon Butler) and The Global Fight for Climate Justice.
Co-Presented by
SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Institute for the Humanities
