This chapter contests Latour's presumption that attachment and emancipation are irreconcilable. Ultimately, Burke et al. seem to have a suprising faith in the mechanisms of global governance that borders on an endorsement for authoritarianism, and a continued belief in universalism. The greatest challenge the Anthropocene poses isn't that the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, whether one should put up sea walls to protect Manhattan or whether should abandon Miami. The chapter sets out the version of a 'posthumanist manifesto' which argues for a creaturely politics and promotes a strategy of terraism in which the flourishing of posthuman community might secure political change from the bottom up. This rejects a position of liberalism in which grand calls are made and demands placed on existing international institutions. Terminology such as the Capitalocene, Gynocene or Plantationocene …

It is now widely recognized that members of other animal species and the rest of non-human nature urgently need to be protected from destructive human activities. This article evaluates the case for extending the moral and legal scope of rights as a strategy for achieving these aims. It suggests that we require a more pluralistic approach to the moral standing of non-human beings—i.e. one which does not depend entirely on the discourse of rights and its cognates—and that moral argument and legal reform need to be pursued in the context of a wider movement for far-reaching structural changes in social and economic life.

Alongside, and to some extent intertwined with, the rise of environmental politics has emerged a new and increasingly politicized concern about human mistreatment of other animals. In both cases there is an evident concern to extend – or, properly, restore – the scope of moral responsibility to include the non-human world. However, there are also interesting points of tension between the moral discourses of environmental concern and the most influential voices in the debate about the moral status of (non-human) animals. For example, radical environmentalism ('deep ecology') claims to reject anthro-pocentric approaches to morality, whilst the advocates of animal rights argue for an extension of moral concepts to non-human animals only on the basis, and to the extent that, the latter share certain favoured psychological abilities with humans. Also, the discourse of animal rights preserves the abstract individualism of liberal moral thinking, in sharp contrast to the 'holistic' thinking of deep ecology. In general, radical environmentalists have seen a need for profound changes in human ways of social living and have tended therefore to be sceptical about the prevailing (liberalist-individualist) moral vocabulary. By contrast, the most influential advocates of an improved moral status for animals have taken their stand with the prevailing moral discourses, and attempted to show that they cannot consistently be confined within the species boundary.

This chapter sets out the ‘Red-Green’ alternatives which combine environmental and socialist perspectives and policies irreconcilable with the logic of market capitalism. ‘Red’ is taken to stand for the struggle for social justice and ‘Green’ for defence of the environment, including, of course, the effects of climate change. The chapter discusses these issues in the international as well as the British context. It contends that the green movement’s more radical wings offer the most complete, alternative to neoliberalism’s ‘full spectrum dominance’ and the chimera of ‘sustainable capitalism’. ‘Social greens’ advocate a profound shift in values, decentralised decision making, more participative democracy, and localised instead of corporate and international market economies. Further, the chapter argues for the development of a positive, non-exploitative relationship between people and non-human nature and, similar to Coote in chapter 2, for convivial interactions reflecting an ‘alternative hedonism’ to inflated commercially-based consumerism. Such a mutually beneficial and pleasurable social relationship offers the positive psychological and cultural dimension to the ‘Red-Green’ project that the stark demand to take less of the earth’s resources lacks.

Environmental Values 23.2 Greer, J. M. 2009. The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World. Tamworth, Ontario: Aztext Press. Heinberg, R. 2009. Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Kunstler, J. H. 2006. The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Grove/Atlantic. Lovelace, R. 2011. ‘The ecotechnic future’. Now Then, 37: April http://nowthenmagazine.com/issue-37/the-ecotechnic-future/

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: climate changecritical realisminterdisciplinarity

This paperl is intended to fonn part of a more extended exploration of some key texts ofMarx from the standpoint of the so-called 'new' social movements (though some of these pre-date the Marxist tradition itself!). Here, I shall be focussing on the early work of Marx especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and with the concerns of two closely related recent radical movements in mind. These movements are modem environmentalism and a spectrum of groupings which share concern about human mistreatment of (other) animals animal welfare, rights and liberation groups, as well as the more specialist campaigns against vivisection, factory farming, the fur trade and so on. The value-orientation which underlies both movements, and which informs their critique of modem industrial societies, is radically at odds with a merely utilitarian, or instrumental relation to the rest of nature. Other animals may be sufficiently like human beings to be properly considered as moral subjects, and as the bearers of biographies. Ethical considerations must therefore enter into our dealings with them. It is evil to continue to treat them merely as instruments or resources to be exploited for specifically human purposes. In the perspective of 'deep' ecology,2 this argument can be extended to the whole of nature, which is regarded as having an intrinsic value, independent of human purposes and requirements. Concern for the environment, on this view, is properly rooted not in a 'speciesist' enlightened self-interest (i.e. the recognition that short-tenn benefits from ruthless exploitation of the environment will be paid for in the longer tenn by the destruction of our own 'life-support systems') but rather in a respect for the independent value of the other species with which we share our planet, and, indeed, for the whole complex of physical and chemical conditions for their existence and wellbeing. At first thought, it seems that there is much in common between this view of our relationship to the rest of nature and that of the early Marx. Both perspectives share a vision of humans as part of nature, and as dependent for their well-being on unceasing interaction with nature. Consider, for example, Marx's striking metaphor for nature as man's 'inorganic body':

The thoughts of Darwin and Wallace on human evolution and the relations between humans and the rest of nature are compared. Despite significant differences, it is suggested both great evolutionists have much to offer in addressing our current socio-ecological predicament.