Accumulating Extinction
Planetary Catastrophism in the Necrocene
"Capital was born from extinction, and from capital, extinction has owed.
Capital ... necrotizes the entire planet ... producing overlapping historical, biological, and geological temporalities.
Capital is the Sixth Extinction personified: it feasts on the dead, and in doing so, devours all life.
The deep time of past cataclysm becomes the deep time of future catastrophe; the residue of life in hydrocarbons becomes the residue of capital in petrochemical plastics...
What I wish to propose is that we recognize the Necrocene -or “New Death” - as a fundamental biogeological moment of our era the Capitalocene."
— Justin McBrien 2017
"We live on a placid island in the midst of the black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
— H. L. Lovecraft 1928
“The veneer of civilization is always very thin, while the innate barbarity of humankind is forever very deep,”
— Victor Davis Hanson 2022
