Climate, Capitalism, Existentialism: Emergent Dimensions of Social Movements

Svante Arrhenius and earth scientists to follow, argued that the radiative effects of increasing carbon dioxide would push delicate ecosystems past historical boundaries and into zones that were dangerous to human life and delicate ecological equilibriums. At some point, cumulative anthropogenic contributions would force and trigger amplified positive feedbacks to activate independently within atmospheric and oceanic systems themselves, causing exponential transformations and consequent "runaway" and irreversible climate crisis.

Building on classical economic and social theory, Marx and Engels developed a theoretical foundation that also presaged crisis. The logic of capitalist accumulation creates material estrangement of human beings from each other, and the natural conditions of their existence. Society/nature "metabolic rift" extends into the connection between anthropogenic influences on the carbon cycle. Capital accumulation on never-ending and expanding scales within closed systems systematically undermines natural thermodynamic equilibrium, and will ultimately cause crisis of catastrophic proportions.

Little more than a century later, climate scientists monitor dangerous accelerations of climate crisis in real time. Climate modelling of gradual and linear changes to earth systems are being eclipsed by warnings of abrupt and irreversible climate change and the passing climate "tipping points." The world is witnessing multiple dire climate impacts. Scientists are identifying systemic breakdown of entire earth systems, and many are warning of entire civilizational collapse as a result of the corruption of Holocene era ecologies

Two converging and potentially intractable factors force planetary ecological crisis – the destructive trajectory of bio-physical processes, and the persistence of underlying and large causal socio-economic forces. The prescience of both earth and social scientists concerning existential threats have thus come to fruition, adding a new and emergent dimension confronting the incipient "climate movement" that has coalesced in response. Together, these two trajectories represent classic definitions of existential crisis and nihilist threat/opportunity for people, culture and movements.