The Anthropocene and Modern Culture

1) Era where human species play a central role in changing the natural cycle of the Earth
2) Took millions of years for other species but takes only about 200 plus years for humans,
starting from the industrial revolution
3) 1750 - Industrial revolution gives birth to Capitalism
4) Human activities -> Biodiversity climate -> important as it supports life cycle of the Earth
5) Human activities referred to is Modern Culture
6) Modern Culture
Growing population
Urban expansion
Extensive use of fossil fuel
Global mass consumption
7) As a result, Now we are facing a phenomenon that is threatening our existence -> ecological
crisis

Modern Philosophy

1) Secularization of knowledge
2) Dogma, Ideology are clean from
3) What kind of knowledge here: nature
4) Secularization -> use of human reason to understand nature.
5) When secularized knowledge is used to understand nature, there is a separation between
man and nature -> diff from what we learn from traditional knowledge
6) In modern philosophy, nature is just an object and man is the entitity obliged to understand
nature
7) Nature -> passive object to be studied, to be observed, to be explained, to be controlled
8) What happens when we are able to control nature? Nature to be exploited
9) Modern philosophy results in modern science
10) Modern science works together with Capitalism which resulted in industrial technology
11) Inudstrial technology used to enhance production system
12) There are 2 elements in a production system
Labour
Natural Resources
13) There is no modern production system that does not use Labour or Natural Resources, both
of indespensible. Even the production of high tech product requires materials from the
nature despite being transformed and built in the lab.

Capitalism

1) In a capitalist system, you need to start withcapital to start accumulate profits and etc
2) Capital -> put in production
3) Production -> requires labour and natural resources
4) Result of production -> commodities -> things that can be sold -> making profit
5) Commodity -> 2 results
Profit
Waste
6) 1 to 5 : Capital Accumulation
7) What happens to Waste? Goes back to natural resources for re-processing
 8) What is the problem in this? Problem lies in reprocessing. Nature has a limit to reprocess the
waste that we produce.
9) The production of waste exceeds the capacity of nature to reprocess the waste -> ecological
crisis results

Ecological Crisis

1) Ecologocial Crisis resulted due to limited capacity of nature to reprocess capital production

Modern Energy System

1) In modern society, energy is crucial because it increases productivity -> industrial machienes
able to multiply production system compared to manual system
2) Energy is crucial because It also provides comfort
Aircon, heatin
Transportation
Makes things easier
3) Energy is the backbone of social and economic progress
4) Demand for energy will grow 2% for 1 % of Economic growth
5) Rise of energy demand everytime -> everyone wants to leave a comfortable life
6) Rise of energy systems comes with a price

2 Significant inventions of the 19th Century

1) Internal combustion engine

Replaces bigger, inconvenient steam engine
Transforms our economy thru application
2) Fossil Fuel
Increases the speed of many things we require today for production and consumption
3) Significance:
i) 19th century invention shapes 20th century and threatens 21st century
ii) The Car Culture
Intertwined with oil production and the oil industry
iii) Oil Industry
World oil consumption steadily increasing
Political Economy of Oil: Reason for many violent conflicts
iv) Global temperatures increasing due to global production

Other crisis related to production and global mass consumption

1) Rise of deforestation
2) Water crisis -> more areas will be affected in future years -> % of available water falls

Why is Ecological Crisis a Global Problem?

1) Rooted in the global system of capitalist production

2) Everyone is affected
3) What we see here is not a problem subject to class: everyone is affected, regardless
4) Cant be tackled by individual countries -> transnational issues -> regional and global
coordination needed
5) Requires global governance
How to explain the rise of ecological crisis from the Sociological Perspective?

1) Ulrich Beck -> Risk Society

Everyone in the world is living in a risk society
A society in which the social production of wealth comes with social production of risk
and risk here is manufactured by science and technology
Our modern culture and life are not less risky than traditional. Modern society is more
vulnerable to shock, disasters and hazards than the lives of traditional people
According to him, the ecological crisis reflects institutional crisis of global capitalism
i) Idea of nature to be expoited embedded in modern and global capitalism
ii) Global capitalism has failed to understand and anticipate the unintended
consequences of rapid development and growth, while everywhere you go,
youll find corporations talking abt rapid development and growth
iii) Marxist framework, exploitation of nature is akin to exploitation of labour ->
nature will fight back -> limits reach -> ecological crisis

Global Mass consumption comes with the mass production of waste