Capitalocene: Climate Change In The Age of Capital

There are these terms to define the times that we live in. Anthropocene was bad enough. But we have gone through that, and now there is no term that can contain the sadness and despair of the crisis that’s our doing.

I chose to go with Capitalocene. Accumulation, consumption, ambition, individualism, development, etc.

In recent times, climate disasters have served as social unveilings and much of the brunt of it all has been borne by those who are poor and this burden has only intensified the pre-existing inequalities in society. Climate change remains a social issue and rising consumerism and corrupted capitalism lets many of us—who are not categorised as poor—go into oblivia on a plane to escape heat or cold or just about anything else, because we believe climate change isn’t as serious as a terror attack and it is natural. There isn’t much that we can do to stop temperatures from rising or falling.

Our lives are now all about productivity and development and status and as we normalise everything to fit all our wrongdoings by calling them “natural”, we are now increasingly being reminded that the world of Dune, the film, isn’t an imagined dystopia but something that’s not too far into the future.

An intersectional response is the need of the hour and climate justice can be best served with multitasking and overlapping solutions. The internationalist approach to climate justice needs to be rethought and realigned and we must learn from the indigenous communities about balancing needs and aspirations and life itself.

This issue of Outlook is a response and an intervention. A step towards accepting that the poor can’t sleep at night because the city is like a furnace or why they are dying slowly and sometimes, quickly, because we have chosen to look away and switched on air conditioners or heaters or air purifiers and pretend it is all fine. It is not.

(This appeared in the print as 'Capitalocene (The Age Of Capital)')