Introduction
The impervious western production of everyday life provokes and prevents humanity from confronting unprecedented climate change. Despite scientific consensus on anthropogenic forcings that destabilize climatic conditions and the awareness of its potential impacts, the industrialized global North continues to live far from a sustainable reality. How does society continue to produce this everyday reality despite persistent warnings on climate change? What historical factors engender today’s existential crisis? Seeking to uncover the interdeterminancies that underlie the phenomenon of western inaction and nonresponse, this paper presents an interdisciplinary dialogue and etiology of climate denialism. Members of the global North are well-exposed to the perils of climate change, yet they continue to live their lives devoid of significant accommodations and mitigation efforts. In one reality exists a collective construction of habitual everyday life; in the other lies knowledge of climate change. These two landscapes rarely collide, simultaneously incomprehensible yet also common knowledge. As members of a society that has plundered and ravaged the planet, many struggle to collectively comprehend the deeply disturbing reality of our actions and of those who preceded us. Even those who accept science as truth act as if there are no implications for their lives.
I begin with a brief review of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch concomitant with modernity. I then examine conditions of the Anthropocene including the accumulation of capital by dispossession, neoliberalism, individualism, and globalization that together constitute western society today. Finally, I argue that the conditions of the Anthropocene emerge as distinct instantiations of how capitalism, colonialism, and modernity encroach on social spheres and daily life to produce denial.
Conditions and Circumstances of the Anthropocene
In the age of the Anthropocene, humans—generalized here but acknowledging the radical nuance—are said to be a geological force “so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature”.[1] Since the Great Acceleration, the period of rapid industrialization and nuclear testing beginning around 1950, some humans have exerted such considerable influence on the environment as to leave a stratigraphic marker in the form of radionuclides.[2] Even before these perturbations, societies, particularly those in the global North, initiated major colonial projects at the dawn of industrialization that set humanity on its course of climate change through carbon emissions and a global exchange of capital. The irony of the Anthropocene, and of the project of modernity, exists in its Cartesian objective: to free humanity from the strictures of nature. Yet, as a geological force rivaling nature, some humans have now destabilized the very environment in which all humans exist. As inhabitants of the Earth for only a fraction of a percent of its history, some humans have become the primary drivers of Earth systems and climate change that undermine the conditions requisite for survival. The relatively stable climate conditions of the Holocene Epoch, the current geologic classification, which itself constitutes a small part of the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon, enabled homo sapiens to succeed and evolve into today’s dominant species.[3] These stable and beneficent conditions allowed modernity to emerge, and arguably only under similar conditions can our species persist.
Despite prescient warnings and ubiquitous scientific consensus that some humans are destabilizing the climate through greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification, habitat disruption, soil erosion, and other biogeochemical alterations—presented by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—western society largely remains fossil-fuel dependent, resource-intensive, growth minded (based on consumption and accumulation), and globalized. Anthropogenic radiative forcings are disturbing the Earth’s radiative equilibrium, causing a positive feedback loop that is just beginning to be felt.[4] As atmospheric circulation alters the temperature of Earth’s surface, melting glaciers elevate sea levels, increasing the severity of coastal storms and flooding. Yet, forests continue to be ravaged, oil unceasingly spills into aquatic and benthic ecosystems, intensive agricultural practices erode soil and induce eutrophication. Consumption, too, is not abating; many have come to expect and demand cheaper prices and faster options. To understand how the Anthropocene and denialism came to be, the conditions of western civilization including accumulation by dispossession, neoliberalism, individualism, and globalization must first be examined.
Condition 1: Accumulation by Dispossession
As a primary condition of the Anthropocene, western society is built on an endless quest for growth, predicated on relentless extraction of natural resources, dispossession of land, and enslavement of global people of color. Marx points to primitive accumulation as a fundamental purveyor of these processes.
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation.[5]
Western traditions of capitalism, as instantiated by primitive accumulation of capital and overaccumulation, have historically and geographically emanated from imperialism and colonialism whose impacts construct current ideologies that produce inequality and environmental degradation. Extending Marx’s concepts, Harvey asserts that current neoliberal society is far beyond the original or “primitive” accumulation; instead, the phrase “accumulation by dispossession” builds upon past accumulations.[6] Under the capitalist logic of accumulation, formerly common property resources like water, land, air, and other public utilities are commodified and privatized, converted into private exchanges of capital through an enclosure of the commons.[7] In order to access such resources, lands are expropriated through forced resettlement, genocide, destabilization of governing forms, or some combination of these methods. Oftentimes, conveniently, the original inhabitants are enslaved and exploited as the labor source who then mine the intended resource that has been expropriated.
“The wholesale commodification of nature in all its forms” follows this process and is actualized through the institutions that enforce the laws.[8] Rollbacks of regulations designed to protect the environment, in addition to policies that protect the rights of people (healthcare, welfare), signal an egregious period of accumulation by dispossession that benefits key stakeholders, including fossil fuel giants. While this paper focuses largely on the dispossession of environmental resources, the commodification of labor power and bodies (i.e. slavery and neo-slavery), specifically of people of color, is inextricably linked to the ideologies of colonialism and capitalism through which neoliberalism ensued.
Condition 2: Neoliberalism
As an economic policy, modality of governance, and ideological order of reason, neoliberalism is a nexus of historical structures.[9] It serves as a concurrent condition and circumstance of the Anthropocene. Neoliberalism’s diverse and multifarious origins, as well as its primary usage by critics, make it a rather contentious term; for the sake of this paper, neoliberalism will follow theories offered by Harvey (2007) who identifies the years 1978-1980 as the contemporary genesis of neoliberal doctrine, implemented by US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, under the influence of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.[10] Neoliberal doctrine emerged post-WWII after substantial twentieth century colonial dissolutions and accumulations and civil distrust in the US government following the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, and economic stagnation. As a theory of political economic practices, neoliberal doctrine sought to liberate society from the strictures of government though deregulation, privatization, and free trade. Inherent in these policies, as nations like the US seek to continuously grow, is an external, transnational dependence on other nations. Accumulation by dispossession, or growth predicated on the extirpation of others, engenders overaccumulation: the market amasses capital to the extent that more capital becomes meaningless. Nations who reach this periodic apotheosis then infiltrate, often through militaristic methods, the economies of other nations in order to stabilize themselves. Western nations position and codify their foreign interests and activities as global social and economic development, although their ultimate intentions encompass growing their own economies, regardless of the radical inequalities they create.
Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and World Bank fixate on GDP growth rates as the measure of economic health, uphold neoliberal policies and conscript nations into a global economy that is rampant with unchecked power, disproportionate distribution of wealth, and environmental degradation.[11] As global agents of power, these intergovernmental institutions are inordinately accountable to some governments with economic interests and not accountable enough to the world’s inhabitants. In a system where in order for one to be successful, another has to languish, radical inequality between nations and people is deep-rooted.
Condition 3: Individualism
Emerging alongside neoliberalism, the privatization of commons, and the never ending competition to accumulate capital is “rugged individualism”—the belief that individuals are rational beings and self-reliant. The pervasive effects of these conditions have reached the banal organization of daily life as many in western society disproportionately maintain an ‘every person for themselves’ attitude. The myth of self-reliance also indoctrinates individuals to believe that the playing field is fair, especially without government subsidies. Brown discusses the embodiment of these effects, arguing that “Neoliberalism transmogrifies every human domain and endeavor, along with humans themselves, according to a specific image of the economic”.[12] Homo œconomicus, or economic human, approximates humans as rational economic beings, relating to the origins of liberalism.[13] These humans are seen to maximize utility and efficiency as consumer citizens. When every facet of life is seen in economic terms, however, competition is inexorable and ubiquitous. Competition among agents in the marketplace engenders competition in the labor market, in universities, and in all spheres of life, where individuals turn to neoliberal solutions and exchanges to secure advancement. The collective that once existed has vanished and transmuted into a society of individualism that has reached its zenith. This pervasive culture further begets an aggregate of individuals on whom the locus of failure is always imputed.
Corporate advertisements and environmental campaigns exploit cultural notions of individualism to tell individuals that they can and must change their actions to mitigate climate change. For example, the supposed environmental organization Keep America Beautiful propelled the idea of recycling into the American consciousness. Their public service announcements like the 1970 “The Crying Indian,” a collaboration between Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council, popularized the phrase “People Start Pollution. People can stop it,” condemning individuals and shifting the responsibility onto consumers through nonetheless than a weeping Native American.[14] Yet, a quick search reveals that Keep America Beautiful was founded and is still administered by a consortium of industry agents including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, and tobacco companies. Fabricating perhaps the most abhorrent greenwashing project of history, this organization has and continues to protect the interests of industry by shifting the onus away from corporate responsibility and onto the individual. Rather than eliminate disposables, these businesses fabricate campaigns that focus on consumer-citizens as the locus of negligence. While individuals can heedlessly capitulate to these exhortations, vowing to reduce, reuse, and recycle, these interminable appeals to individual action leave consumers impotent to oppose systems and structures of power and capital that perpetuate the inequity and inequality, extraction and ruination that destroy physical environments and eliminate social values in the first place.
Individuals can adopt another route and choose to stop using electricity, flying on airplanes, driving automobiles, and purchasing food from the grocery altogether, eliminating a sense of entrapment and guilt. However, since actions in the Anthropocene are enmeshed in complex systems that force individuals to conform to norms, these radical measures would preclude individuals from the conditions of modernity that are now considered central to a “normal” life. Individualism exacerbates the sense of helplessness; disempowered individuals cannot tackle this complex issue on their own. As long as markets focus on growth and efficiency through the lowest costing production or energy source, rather than on protecting biodiversity and the ecosystems that support life on Earth, and as long as industry holds individuals rather than themselves accountable, society cannot collectively change the norm.
Condition 4: Globalization
A fourth condition of the Anthropocene is globalization, the (often unequal) global exchange of capital—material goods, ideas, culture, people. The disjuncture created by globalization, known as the distanciation of space and time,[15] has created a wider, rather than narrower, divide between the rich and poor, global North and global South. Even such terms further distantiate residents of these subjective categories. The reorganization of space and time privileges those with capital and power; the modern way of life brings the global North closer to the “developing” world. Yet only through dispossession does this relationship manifest. Megapowers forcefully establish capitalist democracies, threatening sanctions if a government does not cooperate. Corporations then extract resources, exploit labor, and leave the environment in ruins. Affluent individuals, too, can hop on an airplane to vacation on an island, ignoring the colonial past that leaves people beyond the resort wall radically unequal and susceptible to sea level rise.
After WWII, isolated nation states shifted to share a globalized social space, one where remote phenomena now entail localized impacts.[16] Nations of the world are now interdependent and interconnected, “leading to a deepening enmeshment of the local and the global.”[17] Decisions of one powerful nation can have implications for the entire world. Spatiotemporal boundaries are both abolished and reestablished as nations like the United States and Britain exert their political and economic supremacy over smaller, less powerful republics extending the colonial axiom that “the sun never sets over the empire.” This asymmetric distribution of power leaves non-agents, or those with less economic capital and no political agency, on the margins of existence, unable to reap benefits or protest the circumstances of their conditions. The irony of globalization lies in its disproportional construction: the more entangled and interdependent nations become (in the guise of transnational unification), the greater the environmental degradation and inequality that emerges.
Localized actions of individuals, enmeshed in complex global supply chains, also “reverberate far beyond their spatial and temporal locations,” creating conditions that make climate change seem distant, both in space and time.[18] While examining the insidious role of corporations on individuals is certainly important, the effects of individual actions must still be considered in the context of climate change. “The accumulation of such apparently trivial, localized, individually innocuous acts can alter fundamental planetary systems in ways that have global consequences, which in turn are locally actualized”.[19] The most intimate processes of many of our daily lives, from food to clothing, commutes to vacations, directly yet invisibly contributes to climate change, let alone inequality and degradation of social and environmental conditions.[20] However, the processes that supports our lives along with the materiality we don, ingest, and consume are, not through choice, enmeshed in global supply chain systems of extraction and inequality, tied to neoliberal accumulation by dispossession. While individual actions certainly add up, greater structural conditions generally leave us impotent and with few scalable alternatives.
Many have been abstracted from reality through these structural processes. “Out of sight, out of mind” has become a mantra of the West. Unattuned to natural phenomena—the farms that feed us, the landfills that digest our trash, the aquifers that provide fresh water, the pollution that flows out of power plants—many of us remain ignorant, through state and industry design, of the processes that sustain our daily lives. We are unable to extend our minds beyond the boundaries of diurnal life. We have lost our ability to connect each item we buy to the people and processes that make them. We cannot even begin to conceptualize the global scale of the items in our grocery cart, the components of an iPhone, or the fossil fuels required to power the lights. When we can purchase any item we choose on Amazon, delivered in as little as an hour, our sense of the time invested in production or of the locale from which the item came is completely abstracted.
This phenomenon contributes to climate denialism in that we do not connect with the outside world. We cannot perceive what lies thousands of miles away or what takes thousands of years to form or to decay. Cryospheric changes in Greenland, shrinking islands in the South Pacific, droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa, pollution in East Asia—thinking about climate change requires the ability to visualize both absent places and absent times, particularly the future. Additionally, those who experience the negative consequences of our acts are often marginalized groups, such as local communities of color living closer to industrial and municipal waste, power plants, and highways, as well as people in the global South living in polluted environments from toxic industrial waste.
Instillation of Skepticism
The aforementioned conditions of the Anthropocene—accumulation by dispossession, neoliberalism, individualism, and globalization—emerge as distinct instatiations of ways in which capitalism, colonialism, and modernity have created an environment for climate denialism. The confluence of these systems have allowed for the rise of fossil fuel megacorporations with largely unchecked political power. Scholars including Van Den Hove, et al. and Oreskes have identified and exposed the specious campaigns of fossil fuel giants to delegitimize climate science, influence government policy, and distort the media balance of skepticism. Oreskes’s examination of every peer reviewed article published between 1993 and 2003 with the keywords “global climate change,” 928 articles in total, found not one disagreement with the consensus of anthropogenic climate change.[21] Oreskes and Conway later investigated the parallel structure of climate skepticism with the calculated, corporate-funded campaigns repudiating other science, such as campaigns rejecting the harmful effects of DDT, asbestos, acid rain, ozone, and most notably tobacco. The agents posing as credible scientists were often illegitimate caucasian males paid by corporations to instill doubt. Once doubt is established, science becomes a political debate. Oftentimes on television, the authentic scientist and corporate puppet are given the same screen time and space, denoting a 50-50 argument when the reality is closer to 99-1, favoring the corporate mouthpiece.
Oreskes and Conway concluded that these corporate agents of power seek to maintain the neoliberal policies that enable their accumulation of capital. Environmental regulation, for them, is an encroachment on private civil rights and a leftist conspiracy towards socialism. When the government regulates the length of a shower or the consumption of single use plastic, agency is thought to be eliminated and businesses fear loss of capital. However, without these regulations, there may no water for showers and oceans may fill with plastic. The effects of climate skepticism and the installation of doubt remain in society today and have inhibited mitigation efforts for decades.
(Re)Production of Denial
While this deliberate creation of skepticism by corporations is undoubtedly a major component of the greater story of denial, it implies that if we only knew the truth, we would be able to act.[22] This ‘information deficit model’[23] suggests that society lacks proper understanding of Earth systems science; there is a paucity of straightforward information, and if only the truth was more accessible would society be more inclined to act. While the model holds valid claims that misconceptions of enigmatical and esoteric climate dynamics exist, society arguably knows enough or is exposed to enough information to understand the significance of climate change.[24] The information deficit model does not account for the actions of those who know about climate change or the subsequent diminishing rate of interest in the issue; widespread belief in climate change contradicts the very supposition that information deficit is the limiting factor behind nonresponse, inaction, and denial.
The information deficit model also reinforces a sense of innocence for those deluded by the campaigns of climate skeptics. It may be easy to affix blame on fossil fuel giants, to locate power in central figures and give ourselves a pass. While these political and economic players are undoubtedly largely to blame, as individuals we legitimize the status quo through our complicity, nonresponse, and inaction. The lingering effects of climate skepticism on society must surely be considered, but we must be careful so as not to magnify the perception of uncertainty. “The focus on this dwindling group may serve as a distraction from a far larger form of denial”.[25] Furthermore, conspicuous forms of skepticism overshadow a “more insidious phenomenon”—the double reality of modern western life. Denial has been normalized. And denial serves not only power; it preserves our sense of self-identity and continuity of life and the global economic interests on which the West grows.
Denial does not wholly signify skepticism—the disavowal of climate change can indicate a more insidious and implicatory refusal to act, whereby one knows the facts and ignores the implications. Norgaard’s ethnography, Living in Denial, presentes Norway as a microcosm of western society to explore the “double-reality” of life in the Anthropocene: the oscillations between recognition and disavowal of climate change. In 2000-2001, she resided in the small, affluent Norwegian town pseudonymed Bygdaby to observe and interview locals for her study, keeping in mind Norway’s history of fossil fuel extraction. A majority of the locals she interviewed recognized climate change as a significant force yet simultaneously disavowed the implications to their ways of life. Painting a picture of this oscillation, Norgaard wrote,
Despite the fact that people were clearly aware of global warming as a phenomenon, everyday life in Bygdaby went on as though it did not exist. Mothers listened to news of unusual flooding as they drove their children to school. Families watched evening news coverage of the failing climate talks in the Hague, then just tuned into American sitcoms.[26]
Despite their supposed apathy, locals presented discursive patterns like uncomfortable pauses, troubled body language, and anxiety. After speaking with dozens of individuals, Norgaard quickly realized that conversations involving climate change must be managed carefully since feelings of helplessness and despair often arise. Although often met by initial reactions of concern like the nodding of heads to seemingly suggest understanding or agreement, Norgaard’s questions on climate change thwarted further conversation, creating awkward silences and dead zones. “They [locals that were interviewed] seemed to run into brick walls, characterized by lack of clear knowledge, seemingly irreversible causes, and a problem with no real solution.”[27]
Climate change is no simple talking point; the enlarged spatiotemporal reach and complexity of its causal mechanisms, the inability to singularly impute specific events to an individual, and the incapacity to empathize with and care for spatiotemporally distant people make it an inordinately portentous phenomenon.[28] Schoolteachers interviewed by Norgaard negotiated climate change carefully in their classrooms, pressured to be optimistic yet ultimately minimizing the potency and significance of the problem through their neutral tone.[29] Parents, too, sought to protect their children from the macabre series of catastrophes they will soon face. Norgaard concluded that individuals manage to produce everyday realities through emotional coping mechanisms and that nonresponse and denial do not occur in isolation—they are organized social processes. She contends, ”it takes work to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room”.[30]
In addition to the aforementioned factors, today’s exhortations to individual action remain nascent and untenable, allowing individuals to continue living devoid of accomodation to climate change. Incredulous public paralysis may also stem from climate change’s attack on the ontological security, or continuity of self-identity, of individuals.[31] Implicatory denial, knowing but not acting, plays right into the interests of individuals who seek to maintain their comfortable lifestyles. However, hegemonic western lifestyles are unsustainable.
The everyday reality that many perceive as normal is in fact problematic.[32] It is structured through actions and practices that encounter and reproduce the social, political, and economic structures and norms that influence our speech, thoughts, and emotions.[33] Dean writes of ‘Anthropocenic enjoyment’, which she defines as “a certain jouissance at being in the know—to find satisfaction in evidence of catastrophic climate change while doing nothing to stop it (or actively perpetuating it).”[34] Accompanying such a statement is the shift and displacement of personal responsibility—the more knowledge about climate change is accumulated, the less inclined one is to take responsibility. Individuals, organizations, and even nations use self-righteous comparisons to blame others who behave more negatively, unwilling to acknowledge their own intransigence.[35] Information is known in an abstract sense—fossil fuels, for example, are regarded as harmful. Yet, this information is not integrated into immediate reality—people do not often recognize fossil fuels as the source of electricity when they flip a light switch, use their cellphone, or drive a car, and they value this way of life. Even those who recognize that these actions are tied to fossil fuels have limited options; national infrastructures are difficult to part from without significant funds and know-how.
Oscillations between reality (daily life) and knowledge (understanding of climate change) fail to relate the banal minutiae of everyday life to the pernicious structures and processes that shape them. Given our enmeshment in a destructive, unknowable supply chain, and the consequent convenience of denial, how do we move forward? How do we integrate knowledge of climate change into the lived reality of the present? Will this even make a difference?
Conclusion
Living in the Anthropocene and recognizing the structures that amalgamate to form its conditions is no simple task. Colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism are deep-rooted in the world that many perceive as normal. We must acknowledge, through interdisciplinary approaches, that our actions are directly and inextricably linked to dispossession, extirpation, and climate change. We must also accept that climate denialism is a form of privilege, and that privilege is precarious, at least in the long run. Nicholsen writes,
In the current situation of ongoing environmental destruction, those of us who live in the West (and certainly some who live elsewhere) are all in some degree both perpetrators and victims. . . . We know we are caught up in a system that causes damage and must cause further damage simply in order to continue operating. At the same time, we know that we and others are suffering from that damage, to whatever degree, and that we are all likely to suffer still more directly and more painfully in the future. On both counts, we feel guilty. How can we do more? cHow could we have participated in doing what we have already done? How can we live knowing that we are part of this impossible situation?[36]
Indeed, we are living in an impossible situation, oscillating between recognition and disavowal on a daily basis. We are suffocating in a system we cannot escape. Negotiating climate change will not be easy. There is no assurance that our efforts will even work. Just as there are no singular agents or causes of the environmental crisis, there are no single-bullet solutions. Perhaps we must give up and learn to die in the Anthropocene. Or, perhaps, variegated approaches must concurrently transpire: government must regulate natural resource exploitation and pollution; individuals must consume and waste less; corporate power and influence must be diminished. On the individual scale we can form cooperatives or communes that source foods and goods locally. On the national scale governments can transition energy infrastructure to renewables and incentivize corporations to implement more sustainable practices. On the global scale transnational organizations and frameworks like the United Nations can hold countries accountable under international law. The first step, however, is recognizing denial. While there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about a global consciousness that recognizes climate change, recent studies show growing avowal of the environmental crisis.[37] Translating this recognition into action will determine the trajectory of this planet and our species.
Note: As a member of western society, I am unable to remove myself from the narrative of this paper. I am inextricably part of the collective “we,” reliant on fossil fuels, abstracted from nature in my urban home, and reproducing the very systems I critique. As an individual with privilege—geographic, economic, racial, gender—I must also acknowledge my positionality in society and my ability to have the time and resources to think about such concepts. Generalized claims used in this paper—the collective “we,” “Americans,” “global North and global South”—do not intend to universalize the lived experiences of those to whom I collectively refer. The nuance and radical inequalities between people within and among these categories cannot be ignored. In using collective terms, I seek to explore the dialectic between the “have” and “have nots,” the rich and poor, the hegemonic white male agents and the people that remain dispossessed.
***
[1] Crutzen, Paul, Will Steffen, and John R. McNeill. “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?” Ambio 36, no. 8 (2008), 614.
[2] Zalasiewicz, Jan, Colin N. Waters, Mark Williams, Anthony D. Barnosky, Alejandro Cearreta, Paul Crutzen, Erle Ellis, Michael A. Ellis, Ian J. Fairchild, Jacques Grinevald, Peter K. Haff, Irka Hajdas, Reinhold Leinfelder, John McNeill, Eric O. Odada, Clément Poirier, Daniel Richter, Will Steffen, Colin Summerhayes, James P.M. Syvitski, Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Scott L. Wing, Alexander P. Wolfe, Zhisheng An, and Naomi Oreskes. “When Did the Anthropocene Begin? A Mid-Twentieth Century Boundary Level is Stratigraphically Optimal.” Quaternary International 383 (2015): 196-203, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045.
[3] Jamieson, Dale, and Marcello Di Paola. “Political Theory for the Anthropocene.” Global Political Theory, ed. David Held and Pietro Maffetton (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), 260.
[4] Myhre, G., D. Shindell, F.-M. Bréon, W. Collins, J. Fuglestvedt, J. Huang, D. Koch, J.-F. Lamarque, D. Lee, B. Mendoza, T. Nakajima, A. Robock, G. Stephens, T. Takemura and H. Zhang. “Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing.” In Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, A Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 661.
[5] Marx, Karl. Capital: Critique of Political Economy (Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, 1867), 31.
[6] Harvey, David. The New Imperialism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 122.
[7] Ibid., 124.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and Zone Books, 2015), 20.
[10] Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1.
[11] Hanieh, Adam. Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2013), 145.
[12] Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and Zone Books, 2015), 10.
[13] Ibid., 80.
[14] Ad Council. “Pollution: Keep America Beautiful—Iron Eyes Cody,” accessed November 20, 2018, https://adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns/The-Classics/Pollution-Keep-America-Beautiful-Iron-Eyes-Cody.
[15] Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 14.
[16] Jamieson, Dale, and Marcello Di Paola. “Political Theory for the Anthropocene.” In Global Political Theory, ed. David Held and Pietro Maffetton (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016): 260.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid., 258.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Norgaard, Kari. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 195.
[21] Oreskes, Naomi. “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science 306, no. 5702 (December, 2004): 1686, DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618.
[22] Norgaard, Kari. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 71.
[23] Bulkeley, Harriet. “Common Knowledge? Public Understanding of Climate Change in Newcastle, Australia,” Public Understanding of Science: 9 (2000): 313-333.
[24] Howe, Peter, Matto Mildenberger, Jennifer Marlon, and Anthony Leiserowitz. “Geographic Variation in Opinions on Climate Change at State and Local Scales in the USA,” Nature Climate Change 5 (2015): 596-603. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2583.
[25] Kingsnorth, Paul and Dougald Hine. Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto. (Oxford, UK: Dark Mountain Books, 2009), 9.
[26] Norgaard, Kari. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), xvii.
[27] Ibid., 55.
[28] Jamieson, Dale, and Marcello Di Paola. “Political Theory for the Anthropocene.” In Global Political Theory, ed. David Held and Pietro Maffetton (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016): 264.
[29] Ibid., 101.
[30] Ibid., 93.
[31] Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 92.
[32] Smith, Dorothy. The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 89.
[33] Norgaard, Kari. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 132.
[34] Dean, Jodi. “The Anamorphic Politics of Climate Change.” e-flux Journal 69 (2016).
[35] Ibid.
[36] Nicholsen, Shierry Weber. The Love of Nature and the End of the World: The Unspoken Dimensions of Environmental Concern (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 141-2.
[37] Leiserowitz, Anthony, Edward Maibach, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Matthew Ballew, Matthew Goldberg, and Abel Gustafson. “Climate Change in the American Mind: December 2018,” Yale University and George Mason University (New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2018).