Moore defends the world-ecology perspective as a historical method for understanding capitalism through the web of life rather than as a social system acting upon an external nature. His central proposition is relational and dialectical: human social relations acquire their specific forms through metabolic relations with extra-human natures, while those relations simultaneously transform the environments in which they develop. The article insists that this is not simply an abstract theory of interconnectedness. World-ecology must be reconstructed through concrete historical turning points, commodity frontiers, labour regimes and transformations in the organisation of nature. Methodologically, Moore privileges world-historical explanation over conceptual dualisms such as society/nature or humanity/environment. His intervention also clarifies the differences between world-ecology, metabolic-rift approaches and competing Marxist ecological theories. The work bridges historical materialism, environmental history and world-systems analysis, providing a conceptual apparatus for tracing how capital accumulation, unpaid work, energy and ecological change co-produce one another over the longue durée.
