Climate Change: The Final Crisis of Capital

Walker Daniel Peatross, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

As the body of scientific research on climate change continues to grow it has become undeniable that we live in the midst of an ecological crisis; however, this leaves us with a myriad of secondary questions whose answers are more contentious. In this project, I use a mixture of Marxist and Phenomenological analysis to explore these uncertainties. In chapter one, I will detail Marx’s description of capitalism both to demonstrate the inherent irrationality of the system and also to represent the ecological critique implicit in Marxist Theory. In chapter two, I will examine how the ideology of neoliberal political theory is woefully unprepared to address the climate crisis, and how its deficiencies will exacerbate the fascist and reactionary elements that are already present in liberal democracies. Chapter three will then break from the purely descriptive and instead focus on how to effectively address the crisis at hand by developing a theory of political action, based on a phenomenological analysis of empathy.

Subject Area

Philosophy|Climate Change|Ecology

Recommended Citation

Peatross, Walker Daniel, "Climate Change: The Final Crisis of Capital" (2022). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI29210969.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI29210969

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