Climate change is a product of a ‘profit first, look after number one’ system headed mostly by a patriarchy of men.
Climate change will result in a massive reduction in land mass, destructive weather and climatic change, panic, refugees, poverty and death–this scenario cannot be prevented unless the whole world STOPS burning fossil fuels NOW (‘60% cuts now, 90% cuts pretty damn soon’).
HOWEVER that is a future, an abstract picture of chaos which most people in the West cannot truly imagine. Sadly, that future is an everyday reality right now and has been so for many years. The very system which has created this future of climate chaos has been practicing destruction of the environment, livelihoods, homes and lives of millions, to produce a global market of cheap labour and maximum profits for the corporations, their owners and shareholders.
Multinational corporations and private corruption each establish themselves in positions of power and wealth through violence and oppression, condoned by governments through multilateral and bilateral trade agreements allowing profit and production to be valued well above life.
We have been witnessing an overwhelmingly corporate influence on policies to implement carbon dioxide reduction. The consequences of real effective legislation on economic growth is not in the corporate interest (profit), but in the private interest (i.e. to really slow climate change would radically change the current system).
Around the world, industrial infrastructure continues to be constructed in the name of growth despite scientific evidence and advice that such things are seriously detrimental to the future of the planet as well as the present inhabitants.
A prerequisite for capitalism is market expansion which requires the constant turnout of more goods and services whether needed or not. Even if produce is made in a more environmentally friendly way, the sheer level of consumption and transportation negates all efforts to curb negative effects. It’s not just about emissions it’s also about over-consumption!
There is no doubting that industrialization is the cause of climate change (along with the many other abuses it has created and furthered).
Capitalism is the cause of climate change and must be dismantled if we have any hopes of slowing the environmental meltdown.
Only when there is a return to small scale communities living with the land rather than abusing it can these issues be rectified. With a global peak in fossil fuels upon us and the means to fuel mass industry lessening with every coming year, eventually there will undoubtedly be very little choice. Why wait until we are forced into living in way we have not prepared for.
The world leaders wish to continue economic growth (the kind that grows into the pockets of a comparatively tiny elite with enormous power) regardless of its effects on our present and future ability to survive.
Government and corporate structures cannot be trusted (as the record shows) to find or implement solutions to the escalating destruction and “climate apartheid” facing everyday people and the natural world.
