Social Closure in the Anthropocene: The Environment as a Medium for Monopolization and Exclusion

Murphy, Raymond

The concept of social closure focusses on processes of monopolization and exclusion, and reactions to them. The chapter first analyses market dynamics which have resulted in wealth and power being more concentrated since the 1980s. Then the appropriation of the benefits of fossil fuels and of the atmospheric commons as a carbon dioxide dump by affluent groups and countries are investigated. Adverse consequences of the resulting global warming are carried by the medium of the environment to victims in distant locations excluded from benefits. Fossil-fuelled practices of the present generation, disproportionately by some, resulting in climate change also threaten to exclude future generations and other species from nature’s services, resources, and opportunities. The purposeful response from impact scientists and social movements, and the forceful reaction by nature’s dynamics, are studied. All this constitutes environmental social closure. Deregulation, particularly environmental deregulation, is examined as a process of monopolization, and regulation as usurpation of privilege and power.