How the web of life became Cheap Nature – By Rosaliene Bacchus

Three Worlds One Vision

The Web of Life Reshaped – Painting by Mike Caimbeul
Photo Credit: Bongdoogle.com

Part Two of my series on the book, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Kairos Books, 2016), edited by Jason W. Moore, is a synopsis of Moore’s article on “The Rise of Cheap Nature.” In his article, he refers to two kinds of nature: nature with a common ‘n’ is the web of life; Nature with a capital ‘N’ is environments without humans.

Like Eileen Crist (Part One), Moore argues that we live in the “Age of Capital,” the Capitalocene. Until we understand that “capital and power do not act upon nature, but develop through the web of life,” we cannot formulate solutions for the environmental crises we now face.

Most people (myself included), Moore notes, still think about capitalism in economic terms – markets, prices, money, and the like. He proposes…

View original post 469 more words