{"id":36629,"date":"2013-11-25T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=36629"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:21:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:21:10","slug":"sleepwalking-to-extinction-capitalism-and-the-destruction-of-life-and-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/11\/sleepwalking-to-extinction-capitalism-and-the-destruction-of-life-and-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleepwalking to Extinction: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life and Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Super Typhoon Haiyan has sent a chill through the global nervous system. Thousands dead. Weather scientists in shock. Lives destroyed. The greatest typhoon to touch land in recorded history brings with it more than total destruction. It ups the level of urgency for a new economic paradigm \u2026 one that puts the planet first. Radical economist Richard Smith shows us a way out of the \u201cclimate madness<\/a>\u201d about to descend everywhere.<\/p>\n

. . . <\/b><\/p>\n

When, on May 10th, scientists at Mauna Loa Observatory<\/b> on the big island of Hawaii announced that global CO2 emissions had crossed a threshold at 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in millions of years, a sense of dread spread around the world and not only among climate scientists. CO2 emissions have been relentlessly climbing since Charles David Keeling first set up his tracking station near the summit of Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958 to monitor average daily global CO2 levels. At that time, CO2 concentrations registered 315 ppm. CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have been rising ever since and have recently passed a dangerous tipping point: 400ppm.<\/p>\n

For all the climate summits, promises of \u201cvoluntary restraint,\u201d carbon trading and carbon taxes, the growth of CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have not just been unceasing, they have been accelerating in what scientists have dubbed the \u201cKeeling Curve.\u201d In the early 1960s, CO2 ppm concentrations in the atmosphere grew by 0.7ppm per year. In recent decades, especially as China has industrialized, the growth rate has tripled to 2.1 ppm per year. In just the first 17 weeks of 2013, CO2 levels jumped by 2.74 ppm compared to last year.<\/p>\n

Carbon concentrations have not been this high since the Pliocene period, between 3m and 5m years ago, when global average temperatures were 3\u02daC or 4\u02daC hotter than today, the Arctic was ice-free, sea levels were about 40m higher and jungles covered northern Canada; Florida, meanwhile, was under water along with other coastal locations we now call New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and many others. Crossing this threshold has fuelled fears that we are fast approaching converging \u201ctipping points\u201d \u2014 melting of the subarctic tundra or the thawing and releasing of the vast quantities of methane in the Arctic sea bottom \u2014 that will accelerate global warming beyond any human capacity to stop it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish it weren\u2019t true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,\u201d said Scripps Institute geochemist Ralph Keeling, son of Charles Keeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this pace, we\u2019ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,\u201d said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University.<\/p>\n

Why are we marching toward disaster, \u201csleepwalking to extinction\u201d as the Guardian\u2019s George Monbiot once put it? Why can\u2019t we slam on the brakes before we ride off the cliff to collapse? I\u2019m going to argue here that the problem is rooted in the requirement of capitalist production. Large corporations can\u2019t help themselves; they can\u2019t change or change very much. So long as we live under this corporate capitalist system we have little choice but to go along in this destruction, to keep pouring on the gas instead of slamming on the brakes, and that the only alternative \u2014 impossible as this may seem right now \u2014 is to overthrow this global economic system and all of the governments of the 1% that prop it up and replace them with a global economic democracy, a radical bottom-up political democracy, an eco-socialist civilization.<\/p>\n

Although we are fast approaching the precipice of ecological collapse, the means to derail this train wreck are in the making as, around the world we are witnessing a near simultaneous global mass democratic \u201cawakening\u201d \u2014 as the Brazilians call it \u2014 from Tahir Square to Zucotti Park, from Athens to Istanbul to Beijing and beyond such as the world has never seen. To be sure, like Occupy Wall Street, these movements are still inchoate, are still mainly protesting what\u2019s wrong rather than fighting for an alternative social order. Like Occupy, they have yet to clearly and robustly answer that crucial question: \u201cDon\u2019t like capitalism, what\u2019s your alternative?\u201d Yet they are working on it, and they are for the most part instinctively and radically democratic; in this lies our hope.<\/p>\n

Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse<\/b><\/p>\n

From climate change to natural resource overconsumption to pollution, the engine that has powered three centuries of accelerating economic development, revolutionizing technology, science, culture and human life itself is, today, a roaring out-of-control locomotive mowing down continents of forests, sweeping oceans of life, clawing out mountains of minerals, pumping out lakes of fuels, devouring the planet\u2019s last accessible natural resources to turn them into \u201cproduct,\u201d while destroying fragile global ecologies built up over eons of time. Between 1950 and 2000 the global human population more than doubled from 2.5 to 6 billion. But in these same decades, consumption of major natural resources soared more than sixfold on average, some much more. Natural gas consumption grew nearly twelvefold, bauxite (aluminum ore) fifteenfold. And so on. At current rates, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson says that \u201chalf the world\u2019s great forests have already been leveled and half the world\u2019s plant and animal species may be gone by the end of this century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corporations aren\u2019t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can\u2019t help themselves. They\u2019re just doing what they\u2019re supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil can\u2019t help but loot Nigeria and the Arctic and cook the climate. That\u2019s what shareholders demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other mining giants can\u2019t resist mining Australia\u2019s abundant coal and exporting it to China and India. Mining accounts for 19% of Australia\u2019s GDP and substantial employment even as coal combustion is the single worst driver of global warming. IKEA can\u2019t help but level the forests of Siberia and Malaysia to feed the Chinese mills building their flimsy disposable furniture (IKEA is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world). Apple can\u2019t help it if the cost of extracting the \u201crare earths\u201d it needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction of the eastern Congo \u2014 violence, rape, slavery, forced induction of child soldiers, along with poisoning local waterways. Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science have no choice but to wipe out bees, butterflies, birds, small farmers and extinguish crop diversity to secure their grip on the world\u2019s food supply while drenching the planet in their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids.<\/p>\n

This is how giant corporations are wiping out life on earth in the course of a routine business day. And the bigger the corporations grow, the worse the problems become.<\/p>\n

In Adam Smith\u2019s day, when the first factories and mills produced hat pins and iron tools and rolls of cloth by the thousands, capitalist freedom to make whatever they wanted didn\u2019t much matter because they didn\u2019t have much impact on the global environment. But today, when everything is produced in the millions and billions, then trashed today and reproduced all over again tomorrow, when the planet is looted and polluted to support all this frantic and senseless growth, it matters \u2014 a lot.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s climate scientists tell us we\u2019re facing a planetary emergency. They\u2019ve been telling us since the 1990s that if we don\u2019t cut global fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90% below 1990 levels by 2050 we will cross critical tipping points and global warming will accelerate beyond any human power to contain it. Yet despite all the ringing alarm bells, no corporation and no government can oppose growth and, instead, every capitalist government in the world is putting pedal to the metal to accelerate growth, to drive us full throttle off the cliff to collapse.<\/b><\/p>\n

Marxists have never had a better argument against capitalism than this inescapable and apocalyptic \u201ccontradiction.\u201d Solutions to the ecological crisis are blindingly obvious but we can\u2019t take the necessary steps to prevent ecological collapse because, so long as we live under capitalism, economic growth has to take priority over ecological concerns.<\/p>\n

We all know what we have to do: suppress greenhouse gas emissions. Stop over-consuming natural resources. Stop the senseless pollution of the earth, waters, and atmosphere with toxic chemicals. Stop producing waste that can\u2019t be recycled by nature. Stop the destruction of biological diversity and ensure the rights of other species to flourish. We don\u2019t need any new technological breakthroughs to solve these problems. Mostly, we just stop doing what we\u2019re doing. But we can\u2019t stop because we\u2019re all locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and reward their shareholders and because we all need the jobs.<\/b><\/p>\n

James Hansen, the world\u2019s preeminent climate scientist, has argued that to save the humans:<\/p>\n

\u201cCoal emissions must be phased out as rapidly as possible or global climate disasters will be a dead certainty … Yes, [coal, oil, gas] most of the fossil fuels must be left in the ground. That is the explicit message that the science provides. [\u2026] Humanity treads today on a slippery slope. As we continue to pump greenhouse gases in the air, we move onto a steeper, even more slippery incline. We seem oblivious to the danger \u2014 unaware of how close we may be to a situation in which a catastrophic slip becomes practically unavoidable, a slip where we suddenly lose all control and are pulled into a torrential stream that hurls us over a precipice to our demise.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

But how can we do this under capitalism? After his climate negotiators stonewalled calls for binding limits on CO2 emissions at Copenhagen, Cancun, Cape Town and Doha, President Obama is now trying to salvage his environmental \u201clegacy\u201d by ordering his EPA to impose \u201ctough\u201d new emissions limits on existing power plants, especially coal-fired plants. But this won\u2019t salvage his legacy or, more importantly, his daughters\u2019 futures because how much difference would it make, really, if every coal-fired power plant in the U.S. shut down tomorrow when U.S. coal producers are free to export their coal to China, which they are doing, and when China is building another coal-fired power plan every week? The atmosphere doesn\u2019t care where the coal is burned. It only cares how much is burned.<\/p>\n

Yet how could Obama tell American mining companies to stop mining coal? This would be tantamount to socialism. But if we do not stop mining and burning coal, capitalist freedom and private property is the least we\u2019ll have to worry about.<\/b> Same with Obama\u2019s \u201ctough\u201d new fuel economy standards. In August 2012 Obama boasted that his new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards would \u201cdouble fuel efficiency\u201d over the next 13 years to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from 28.6 mpg at present \u2014 cutting vehicle CO2 emissions in half, so helping enormously to \u201csave the planet.\u201d But as the Center for Biological Diversity and other critics have noted, Obama was lying, as usual.<\/p>\n

First, his so-called \u201ctough\u201d new CAFE standards were so full of loopholes, negotiated with Detroit, that they actually encourage more gas-guzzling, not less. That\u2019s because the standards are based on a sliding scale according to \u201cvehicle footprints\u201d \u2014 the bigger the car, the less mileage it has to get to meet its \u201cstandard.\u201d So in fact Obama\u2019s \u201ctough\u201d standards are (surprise) custom designed to promote what Detroit does best \u2014 produce giant Sequoias, mountainous Denalis, Sierras, Yukons, Tundras and Ticonderogas, Ram Chargers and Ford F series luxury trucks, grossly obese Cadillac Escalades, soccer-kid Suburbans, even 8,000 (!) pound Ford Excursions \u2014 and let these gross gas hogs meet the \u201cfleet standard.\u201d These cars and \u201clight\u201d trucks are among the biggest selling vehicles in America today (GM\u2019s Sierra is #1) and they get worse gas mileage than American cars and trucks half a century ago. Cadillac\u2019s current Escalade gets worse mileage than its chrome bedecked tail fin-festooned land yachts of the mid-1950s! Little wonder Detroit applauded Obama\u2019s new CAFE standards instead of damning them as usual. Secondly, what would it matter even if Obama\u2019s new CAFE standards actually did double fleet mileage \u2014 when American and global vehicle fleets are growing exponentially?<\/p>\n

In 1950 Americans had one car for every three people. Today we have 1.2 cars for every American. In 1950 when there were about 2.6 billion humans on the planet, there were 53 million cars on the world\u2019s roads \u2014 about one for every 50 persons. Today, there are 7 billion people but more than 1 billion cars and industry forecasters expect there will be 2 to 2.5 billion cars on the world\u2019s roads by mid-century. China alone is expected to have a billion. So, at the end of the day, incremental half measures like CAFE standards can\u2019t stop rising GHG missions. Barring some technical miracle, the only way to cut vehicle emissions is to just stop making them \u2014 drastically suppress vehicle production, especially of the worst gas hogs.<\/p>\n

In theory, Obama could simply order GM to stop building its humongous gas guzzlers and switch to producing small economy cars. After all, the federal government owns the company! But of course, how could he do any such thing? Detroit lives by the mantra \u201cbig car big profit, small car small profit.\u201d Since Detroit has never been able to compete against the Japanese and Germans in the small car market, which is already glutted and nearly profitless everywhere, such an order would only doom GM to failure, if not bankruptcy (again) and throw masses of workers onto the unemployment lines. So given capitalism, Obama is, in fact, powerless. He\u2019s locked in to promoting the endless growth of vehicle production, even of the worst polluters \u2014 and lying about it all to the public to try to patch up his pathetic \u201clegacy.\u201d And yet, if we don\u2019t suppress vehicle production, how can we stop rising CO2 emissions?<\/p>\n

In the wake of the failure of climate negotiators from Kyoto to Doha to agree on binding limits on GHG emissions, exasperated British climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows at the Tyndall Centre, Britain\u2019s leading climate change research center, wrote in September 2012 that we need an entirely new paradigm:<\/p>\n

Government policies must \u201cradically change\u201d if \u201cdangerous\u201d climate change is to be avoided \u201cWe urgently need to acknowledge that the development needs of many countries leave the rich western nations with little choice but to immediately and severely curb their greenhouse gas emissions… [The] misguided belief that commitments to avoid warming of 2\u02daC can still be realized with incremental adjustments to economic incentives. A carbon tax here, a little emissions trading there and the odd voluntary agreement thrown in for good measure will not be sufficient … long-term end-point targets (for example, 80% by 2050) have no scientific basis. What governs future global temperatures and other adverse climate impacts are the emissions from yesterday, today and those released in the next few years.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

And not just scientists. In its latest world energy forecast released on November 12, 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that despite the bonanza of fossil fuels now made possible by fracking, horizontal and deepwater drilling, we can\u2019t consume them if we want to save the humans: \u201cThe climate goal of limiting global warming to 2\u02daC is becoming more difficult and costly with each year that passes… no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2\u02daC goal…\u201d Of course the science could be wrong about this. But so far climate scientists have consistently underestimated the speed and ferocity of global warming, and even prominent climate change deniers have folded their cards.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s one thing for James Hansen or Bill McKibben to say we need to \u201cleave the coal in the hole, the oil in the soil, the gas under the grass,\u201d to call for \u201csevere curbs\u201d in GHG emissions \u2014 in the abstract. But think about what this means in our capitalist economy. Most of us, even passionate environmental activists, don\u2019t really want to face up to the economic implications of the science we defend. <\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, if you listen to environmentalists like Bill McKibben for example, you will get the impression that global warming is mainly driven by fossi- fuel-powered electric power plants, so if we just \u201cswitch to renewables\u201d this will solve the main problem and we can carry on with life more or less as we do now. Indeed, \u201cgreen capitalism\u201d enthusiasts like Thomas Friedman and the union-backed \u201cgreen jobs\u201d lobby look to renewable energy, electric cars and such as \u201cthe next great engine of industrial growth\u201d \u2014 the perfect win-win solution. This is a not a solution. This is a delusion: greenhouse gasses are produced across the economy not just by power plants. Globally, fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation accounts for 17% of GHG emissions, heating accounts for 5%, miscellaneous \u201cother\u201d fuel combustion 8.6%, industry 14.7%, industrial processes another 4.3%, transportation 14.3%, agriculture 13.6%, land use changes (mainly deforestation) 12.2%. This means, for a start, that even if we immediately replaced every fossil-fuel-powered electric generating plant on the planet with 100% renewable solar, wind and water power, this would only reduce global GHG emissions by around 17%.<\/p>\n

What this means is that, far from launching a new green-energy-powered \u201cindustrial growth\u201d boom, barring some tech-fix miracle, the only way to impose \u201cimmediate and severe curbs\u201d on fossil fuel production\/consumption would be to impose an EMERGENCY CONTRACTION in the industrialized countries: drastically retrench and in some cases shut down industries, even entire sectors, across the economy and around the planet \u2014 not just fossil fuel producers but all the industries that consume them and produce GHG emissions \u2014 autos, trucking, aircraft, airlines, shipping and cruise lines, construction, chemicals, plastics, synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, synthetic fiber and fabrics, synthetic fertilizer and agribusiness CAFO operations.<\/p>\n

Of course, no one wants to hear this because, given capitalism, this would unavoidably mean mass bankruptcies, global economic collapse, depression and mass unemployment around the world. That\u2019s why in April 2013, in laying the political groundwork for his approval of the XL pipeline in some form, President Obama said \u201cthe politics of this are tough.\u201d The earth\u2019s temperature probably isn\u2019t the \u201cnumber one concern\u201d for workers who haven\u2019t seen a raise in a decade; have an underwater mortgage; are spending $40 to fill their gas tank, can\u2019t afford a hybrid car; and face other challenges.\u201d Obama wants to save the planet but given capitalism his \u201cnumber one concern\u201d has to be growing the economy, growing jobs. Given capitalism \u2014 today, tomorrow, next year and every year \u2014 economic growth will always be the overriding priority … till we barrel right off the cliff to collapse.<\/p>\n

The necessity of denial and delusion<\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no technical solution to this problem and no market solution either. In a very few cases \u2014 electricity generation is the main one \u2014 a broad shift to renewables could indeed sharply reduce fossil fuel emissions in that sector. But if we just use \u201cclean\u201d \u201cgreen\u201d energy to power more growth, consume ever more natural resources, then we solve nothing and would still be headed to collapse. Producing millions of electric cars instead of millions of gasoline-powered cars, as I explained elsewhere, would be just as ecologically destructive and polluting, if in somewhat different ways, even if they were all run on solar power.<\/p>\n

Substituting biofuels for fossil fuels in transportation just creates different but no less environmentally-destructive problems: converting farm land to raise biofuel feedstock pits food production against fuels. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands to produce biofuels releases more CO2 into the atmosphere than the fossil fuels they replace and accelerates species extinction. More industrial farming means more demand for water, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. And so on. Cap and trade schemes can\u2019t cut fossil fuel emissions because business understands, even if some environmentalists do not, that \u201cdematerialization\u201d is a fantasy, that there\u2019s no win-win tech solution, that capping emissions means cutting growth. Since cutting growth is unacceptable to business, labor and governments, cap and trade has been abandoned everywhere.<\/p>\n

Carbon taxes can\u2019t stop global warming either because they do not cap emissions. That\u2019s why fossil fuel execs like Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil (the largest private oil company in the world) and Paul Anderson, CEO of Duke Energy (the largest electric utility in the U.S.) support carbon taxes. They understand that carbon taxes would add something to the cost of doing business, like other taxes, but they pose no limit, no \u201ccap\u201d on growth. ExxonMobil predicts that, carbon tax or no carbon tax, by 2040 global demand for energy is going to grow by 35%, 65% in the developing world and nearly all of this is going to be supplied by fossil fuels. ExxonMobil is not looking to \u201cleave the oil in the soil\u201d as a favor to Bill McKibben and the humans. ExxonMobil is looking to pump it and burn it all as fast as possible to enrich its shareholders.<\/p>\n

Hansen, McKibben, Obama \u2014 and most of us really \u2014 don\u2019t want to face up to the economic implications of the need to put the brakes on growth and fossil fuel-based overconsumption. We all \u201cneed\u201d to live in denial, and believe in delusions that carbon taxes or some tech fix will save us because we all know that capitalism has to grow or we\u2019ll all be out of work. And the thought of replacing capitalism seems so impossible, especially given the powers arrayed against change. But what\u2019s the alternative? In the not-so-distant future, this is all going to come to a screeching halt one way or another \u2014 either we seize hold of this out-of-control locomotive, or we ride this train right off the cliff to collapse.<\/p>\n

Emergency Contraction or Global Ecological Collapse?<\/b><\/p>\n

If there\u2019s no market mechanism to stop plundering the planet then, again, what alternative is there but to impose an emergency contraction on resource consumption?<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean we would have to de-industrialize and go back to riding horses and living in log cabins. But it does mean that we would have to abandon the \u201cconsumer economy\u201d \u2014 shut down all kinds of unnecessary, wasteful and polluting industries from junkfood to cruise ships, disposable Pampers to disposable H&M clothes, disposable IKEA furniture, endless new model cars, phones, electronic games, the lot. Plus all the banking, advertising, junk mail, most retail, etc. We would have completely redesign production to replace \u201cfast junk food\u201d with healthy, nutritious, fresh \u201cslow food,\u201d replace \u201cfast fashion\u201d with \u201cslow fashion,\u201d bring back mending, alterations and local tailors and shoe repairmen. We would have to completely redesign production of appliances, electronics, housewares, furniture and so on to be as durable and long-lived as possible. Bring back appliance repairmen and such. We would have to abolish the throwaway disposables industries, the packaging and plastic bag industrial complex, bring back refillable bottles and the like. We would have to design and build housing to last for centuries, to be as energy efficient as possible, to be reconfigurable, and shareable. We would have to vastly expand public transportation to curb vehicle use but also build those we do need to last and be shareable like Zipcar or Paris\u2019 municipally-owned \u201cAutolib\u201d shared electric cars.<\/p>\n

These are the sorts of things we would have to do if we really want to stop overconsumption and save the world. All these changes are simple, self-evident, no great technical challenge. They just require a completely different kind of economy, an economy geared to producing what we need while conserving resources for future generations of humans and for other species with which we share this planet.<\/p>\n

The spectre of eco-democratic revolution<\/b><\/p>\n

Economic systems come and go. Capitalism has had a 300 year run. The question is: will humanity stand by and let the world be destroyed to save the profit system?<\/i><\/p>\n

That outcome depends to a great extent on whether we on the left can answer that question \u201cwhat\u2019s your alternative?\u201d with a compelling and plausible vision of an eco-socialist civilization. We have our work cut out for us. But what gives the growing global eco-socialist movement an edge in this ideological struggle is that capitalism has no solution to the ecological crisis, no way to put the brakes on collapse, because its only answer to every problem is more of the same growth that\u2019s killing us.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory\u201d was supposed to have \u201cended\u201d with the fall of communism and the triumph of capitalism two decades ago. Yet today, history is very much alive and it is, ironically, capitalism itself which is being challenged more broadly than ever and found wanting for solutions.<\/p>\n

Today, we are very much living in one of those pivotal world-changing moments in history. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that this is the most critical moment in human history. <\/i><\/p>\n

We may be fast approaching the precipice of ecological collapse, but the means to derail this train wreck are in the making as, around the world, struggles against the destruction of nature, against dams, against pollution, against overdevelopment, against the siting of chemical plants and power plants, against predatory resource extraction, against the imposition of GMOs, against privatization of remaining common lands, water and public services, against capitalist unemployment and precarit\u00e9 are growing and building momentum.<\/p>\n

Today we are riding a swelling wave of near simultaneous global mass democratic \u201cawakening,\u201d an almost global mass uprising. This global insurrection is still in its infancy, still unsure of its future, but its radical democratic instincts are, I believe, humanity\u2019s last best hope. <\/i><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s make history!<\/b><\/p>\n

How many wake up calls does the world need? One hundred? Two hundred. One thousand? A million? If we miss the mark, the next great global movement will be the funeral pier of our collective demise. Join our Global Warning<\/a> campaign, and let’s rewire the doomsday machine.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Richard Smith is an economic historian. He has written extensively for the <\/i>New Left Review, Monthly Review and <\/i>The Ecologist. This is an excerpt from his essay, “Capitalism and the destruction of life on Earth,” published in the <\/i>Real-World Economics Review. His new book <\/i>To Save the Planet, Turn the World Upside Down will be published in 2014.<\/i><\/p>\n

Ed. note<\/i><\/b>: A previous version of this article erroneously stated in the first paragraph that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 had passed 440 ppm.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 adbusters.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse. Economic systems come and go. Capitalism has had a 300 year run. The question is: will humanity stand by and let the world be destroyed to save the profit system?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}