Reply To: Mon 17 Feb: World Systems, History and Ecology

I was not able to submit this in time since I did not have login access for some reasons. It is now sorted so here is my reflection.
Hopefully my late submission does not cause any problem for you who are to comment it!

Reflection on Seminar: World Systems, History and Ecology

What I found interesting, or rather perplexing, in our discussion with Moore was that I did not seem to get a straight answer on solutons to the envrionmental and financial problems which capitalism has lead us to today. We spoke of the Anthropocene and how climate change has accelerated by the Industrial Revolution. This was due to an efficiency in production of foods, clothing and such, leading up to an overproduction and overconsumption of natural resources. As far as we all can agree on the latter, Moore did not consider the Antrophocene to be a concept that would make us more alert to deal with the current climate change than using a vocabulary such as world-ecology and oikeios. His answer then is to understand capitalism in a historical perspective with the ecological touch. I do think he has a point in this, but still believe the explanation of the Antrophocene could make a lot of people more aware of the actual acute environmental problems we are in today. According to Moore, speakers of the Anthropocene are usually people who speak much but act little. What I would have liked to hear was in what way Moore acted on the climate change, and not only spoke of it? It seemed he mostly focused on a new way of defining capitalism and not how this in practice can change climate change, which I consider people speaking of the Antrhopocene give suggestions to (less carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere for example). I refrained from asking him this since I did not think I could ask it in a good way just then. Why I consider this to be important, is that all of us in the class discussed the different concepts without getting to a solution. Perhaps I was to focused on how this might help in the environmental issues, like a quick answer, than really understand how Moore tried to explain the role of captalism in envrionmental problems.
As I liked the discussion both with the class and with James Moore, it was especially how we dwelled into the different concepts from Moores articles, all of us having different angles of looking at it, bringing our different disciplines of former studies to the conversation. I also think that Moore was trans-disciplinary in his approach of his articles and in his discussion. This is definitely something I bring with me to my future job or career. To have a broad understanding of how things works together in the bigger picture. How one discipline easily taps into another and necessarily so in order to solve many problems, not at least as it comes to environmental issues. Another thing I take with me is a yearning to understand capitalism in more depth, and how this affect all levels of society, also in light of how Moore describes it.