War and the Anthropocene Workshop
Friday, May 30, 2025
3:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
3 AM New York l 9 AM Vienna
The Open Society Hub for the Anthropocene presents a workshop on an OHPA project volume entitled "War and The Anthropocene" by Alexander Etkind and A. Dirk Moses.
This volume argues that the new wars of our time result from the global environmental crisis and contribute to it. Local wars of the late Anthropocene reveal their intimate connections with the global crisis as the contribute to the deterioration of the natural and social environment. Decarbonization, famines, migration flows, ecological catastrophes, booming authoritarianism, growing inequalities, and the overwhelming sense of permanent insecurity are the causal factors of the crisis as well as its resulting outcomes. Interconnected with the climate crisis, these circular developments disable international organizations, weaken climate commitments, bring new forms of military escalation, and launch waves of misinformation, manipulation and violence.
The authors construe these crises as securitized responses to the perceived deprivation that comes from the realities of the climate crisis, the perspectives of decarbonization, and the resulting explosion of inequality. Drawing on the concepts of permanent security, the petrostate and ecocide, this volume integrates a large amount of interdisciplinary material into a coherent narrative that combines theoretical, comparative and regional studies.