Extinction by Litany? Identifying Capitalism's Transformative Effects on Planetary Complex Systems

Abstract

The machine itself is forged by movements back and forth between the entrenched priorities of extractive capitalism, the growing lead times between drilling and production in a world where oil drilling and frack-ing require more extreme technologies, white ressentiment against other regions and peoples of color, neoliberal hubris, race and class exploitation, imperial drives, hungry dispossessed peoples, impositions of selective austerity, growing fossil fuel emissions, agricultural deforestation, refu-gee pressures, sea- level rise, spiraling glacier melts, expanding drought zones, changes in the ocean conveyor, loss of fisheries, and ocean acidi fication . . . no single factor, agency, or force is entirely in charge. (69)