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December 12, 2019

The Apocalypse happened yesterday

By 2017, the European Union had 10 incidences of oil spills in 40 years.

Nigeria, on the other hand – with Shell Oil pipelines snaking through the Niger Delta since the 70s – had 9343 cases of oil spills…in 10 years.

2030 might be the new well-intentioned deadline for those anxious about climate collapse. The date when the world as we know it, and the conveniences we’ve enjoyed, cease to exist. But the world has ended many times before: in 1526 with the first transatlantic slave expedition; 1607 with the disembarkation of the British colonists on the shores of the ‘New World’; 1945…with the detonation of the atomic bombs in Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; 1995 with the death of Ken Saro Wiwa.

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By framing the Anthropocene entirely as a matter of future apocalypses, by capitulating to the dynamics of repair and rushing to solutions endorsed by the promissory notes of an elusive future, we lose sight of the Anthropocene’s lingering legacies of colonial devastation.