User:Isagreen/Draft:Capitalocene

= Capitalocene = The Capitalocene is a term created out of the discussion and controversy around the concept of the Anthropocene, which posits that anthropogenic effects on natural systems mark a new geologic epoch, while the Capitalocene marks the beginning of capitalism as the start of the current epoch. The context and controversial feelings behind the meaning of the terms Anthropocene and Capitalocene are not as new as the words themselves. The branding of more recent terms, like Anthropocene, seems like a discovery of an old narrative for many. For women, indigenous, non-capitalistic, and poorer communities, the blaming of humankind for the epoch surrounding Anthropogenic climate change has not been legitimate. Some historians have suggested that the recent coining of these terms for disaster shows that the people that have historically suffered from the impacts and spoken out against capitalism the most have been left out of the conversation for a very long time.

Origins of the Capitalocene concept
The term Capitalocene emerged as a counter to the Anthropocene, and although the concept appears to have emerged from multiple scholars at a similar time, it is believed that economist David Ruccio first publicized the term in 2011. The Capitalocene concept posits that prior to colonization and the Industrial Revolution, humans in non-capitalistic societies contributed to substantial environmental change, but it was capitalism, not anthropogenic impacts on natural systems in general, that have let to present-day climate change and global change. For example, Native Americans contributed to atmospheric warming, which was shown through a decrease in carbon dioxide parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere after an estimated 55 million Native Americans were killed after the arrival of European colonizers and through the 1500s. Scholars, including Donna Haraway and Wendy Arons, argue that while humans previously impacted global temperature, the rise of global capitalism in the last few hundred years mark significant changes in Earth's natural thermal cycles.

Jason Moore states that the Capitalocene has encompassed the past five centuries as the “Age of Capital”, beginning in colonial times. Scholars such as Moore argue that generalizing the perpetrators of anthropogenic environmental disasters to all of humankind erases much of what needs to be addressed in the current acceleration of global warming. Donna Haraway similarly argues that, for as long as our species has been identified and agriculture has advanced, humans have been changing the planet. However naming the current epoch surrounding the changing climate has more to do with speed, acceleration, balance, scale, and complexity. Her writings seek to find when the largest and most rapid change began in recent history that has brought us to our planet’s current state.

Wendy Arons suggests that the term Anthropocene is problematic because it assumes there is no diversity in thought, practice, and harm among human behaviors globally and blame has been too evenly distributed. She defines the Capitalocene by the global spread of capitalism and the injustices that have derived from the socio-economic-ecological system. She explains that by placing blame on humanity and not the primary perpetrators, we cannot easily agree on how to create solutions. Arons and Moore both also address that through ignoring the effects that capitalists have had on the environment through devaluing nature, we also ignore that capitalists have largely devalued certain groups of people that have experienced the implications of capitalism the most. Many of these groups that have been lumped with nature as “less than human” are devalued or cheapened in the same way by people that have more power than them. To some, lumping the oppressed with their oppressor in blame for the destruction that they were forced to take part of doesn’t seem fair.

Indigenous Peoples and the Anthropocene
The North American land that had been shaped by irrigation, cultivation, and field distribution methods that Native Americans had practiced for centuries was viewed as wilderness by European colonists when they arrived in the 15th and 16th century. Land that had been shared, celebrated and viewed as a gift by the indigenous peoples in North America was viewed as property to own and resources to commodify by the European settlers. As Native Americans were pushed around the United States and forced onto reservations, many of their agricultural techniques were adopted by the Europeans. However at a cultural level, the disregard for native ecological methods, of spiritual importance, and explanations of their practices led to these practices failing as well as environmental backlash such as drought, overgrazing, and decreases in biodiversity. By the 1920s and 30s the methods were largely abandoned by non-Native Americans and many of them were outlawed for Native Americans to practice.

One particular example of the cultural and ecological differences between Native Americans and European settlers can be shown through one of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' earliest policies to outlaw prescribed burns done by Native Americans in the early 1900s. This was done because the United States government saw the practice as destructive to the timber market and wanted any future prescribed burns to be done by rangers or other government officials. Native Americans had been using controlled burns for so long before the 1900s that these practices had sculpted American landscapes and ecosystems, from the trees to the wildlife. These low-burning fires created an environment that was more susceptible to crown fires and perpetuated longevity in all American ecosystems, bringing biodiversity and protection against other natural disasters like disease and naturally occurring wildfires. Controlled burns helped Native Americans in their hunting and agricultural practices by clearing dense undergrowth and invasive species, and neutralizing the soil. Without it, as well as many other cultural practices that the United States government tried to outlaw, Native Americans were forced to assimilate to the new European cultural and capitalistic practices.

Controlled burns are currently being used for many of the same reasons that were ignored by Europeans for hundreds of years. Since Native Americans had been displaced from their territories, forced onto reservations with much more limited access to land due to privatization, and their controlled burns banned, we are now experiencing ecological effects. Ecosystem managers, land owners, and farmers are dealing with more forest fires, more invasive species, and less biodiversity. There are other factors that have led to these outcomes, however if controlled burns had continued at the rate that Native Americans were using the technique, these issues would look far different.

Surrounding ecological concerns in America, there are too often discussions around newly coined terms and topics without the presence or leadership of indigenous peoples or anyone alluding to Native American practices that were solidified in hundreds of years of experimentation to be sustainable. In the last 100 years many government officials, scholars, and environmentalists have created rolls for Native Americans to fill or asked for them to show up, often without giving them leadership positions. These new conversations and initiatives are often centered around the idea of the Anthropocene and how America’s lands and people need help reversing the environmental negligence and consequences that they are facing. This often happens without addressing that these problems were created out of colonialism and capitalism and without the mentioning of cultural, systemic, and direct violence against Native Americans in particular.

American environmentalists have more recently been pushing preservation, or roping off land to “heal” and be separate from human interaction. In comparison with the history of indigenous ecological practices, the push for preservation seems to miss the point. The recent arguments for preservation imply that humans are separate from nature, that the natural world is somewhere that is untouched by humans, or that humans' natural born tendencies negatively impact the environment; not taking cultural aspects into consideration. If millions of Native American cultures were surviving and thriving with sustainable practices and didn’t exhaust the land before Europeans arrived, then this push for preservation seems colonized in itself to many indigenous groups. Non-natives taking knowledge from Native American’s ecological practices, demanding access to this knowledge, and expecting them in any sense to work with our government without providing leadership roles is an old story to many indigenous peoples. That knowledge was developed and passed on over hundreds of years and it was meant to be erased by the same government and culture that now wants to use it.