But as Brecht explained in his ‘Buddha’s Parable of the Burning House,’ it is irrational to cling hopelessly to a burning house, as the flames lick its walls and singe our brows, in sheer terror of stepping into the world beyond. Capitalism is such a burning house. -- John Bellamy Foster1
“Communism and Science Inseparable!” -- 1962 Soviet postcard, commemorating the Sputnik 1 launch of 1957
Introduction
Kevin Anderson is Professor of Energy and Climate Change in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester (UK). He is also Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. // Joseph Nevins teaches geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Among his books is Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (2010). jonevins@vassar.edu
This year, New Scientist reports, will emulate the last (2015) by becoming the warmest yet recorded.1 This fact represents another addition to an increasingly familiar list of dangerous thresholds that we are burning through. These record temperatures not only signal future jeopardy, but they also index a vast range of silent tragedies, both human and non-human. Their scale is best captured in the new terminology that filters out of the sciences and into popular currency. We now reference our time with a geologic frame, the Anthropocene epoch.