Published in 2017 by «Lexington Books», «Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse», by Wendy Lynne Lee, poses a question: what happens when the limit of power ceases to be territory and becomes a finite planet. The climate crisis brings together growth, inequality and geopolitical violence.
Wendy Lynne Lee is a philosopher and professor emerita at «Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania». She holds a PhD from «Marquette University» and works in social and political philosophy, feminist theory and environmental philosophy. One of her works on ecology and aesthetics is included in the «Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy».
The concept of «eco-nihilism» examines the response to the climate crisis, including climate change denial, and the continuation of an economic logic based on growth. Lee argues that conquest capitalism is incompatible with the finiteness of the planet and can generate social injustice and geopolitical violence, incorporating class, sex, gender and species.
The work draws on the «Capitalocene», associated with Jason Moore, to challenge the idea of homogeneous human responsibility for the crisis. The question then becomes who controls resources, who gains the benefits and who bears the harms. Geopolitics expands from powers and territories to the relationships between resources, labour and ecological deterioration.
Among its distinctive aspects are John Dewey’s aesthetics of experience, the precautionary principle and an ecofeminist perspective. Technological responses and the adaptation of capitalism are also questioned. The aim is to consider a socially and environmentally desirable future, without reducing moral, civic and aesthetic values to exchange.
This line of thought continues in «This Is Environmental Ethics: An Introduction» (2022) and «Climate Crisis and the Kleptocene: On the Commodification of Sentience» (2024). «Eco-Nihilism» thus shifts the geopolitical perspective from territorial dispute towards the ecological conditions of life.
Sources
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Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/econihilism-9780739176894/
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PhilPapers. https://philpapers.org/rec/LEEETP-2
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Academia.edu. https://bloomu.academia.edu/WendyLynneLee
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Academia.edu. https://bloomu.academia.edu/WendyLynneLee/CurriculumVitae
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/environmental-aesthetics/
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Wiley. https://www.wiley.com/en-es/Environmental%2BEthics-c-PL24
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Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/climate-crisis-and-the-kleptocene-9781978790322/