'Sleepwalking to Extinction': Capitalism and the Destruction of Life and Earth

[Jessy169]

Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse

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’s last accessible natural resources to turn them into “product,” 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 “half the world’s great forests have already been leveled and half the world’s plant and animal species may be gone by the end of this century.”

Corporations aren’t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can’t help themselves. They’re just doing what they’re supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil can’t help but loot Nigeria and the Arctic and cook the climate. That’s what shareholders demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other mining giants can’t resist mining Australia’s abundant coal and exporting it to China and India. Mining accounts for 19% of Australia’s GDP and substantial employment even as coal combustion is the single worst driver of global warming. IKEA can’t 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’t help it if the cost of extracting the “rare earths” it needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction of the eastern Congo — 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’s food supply while drenching the planet in their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids.

...

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?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/15-3

[4dsc]

1. Yes because most are sheep

Lets face it. Its taken more than 30 years to turn the average American into a consumer machine and nothing short of a catastrophe will change that. The sooner we start running low on oil the better for all the other earth's creatures.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. ,

,

[AdHocSolver]

3. Bank robbers can't help themselves. They are just doing what bank robbers do...

...to benefit their gang members.

Pillaging the environment to raise next quarter's profits does not benefit the average stockholder.

Corporations are operated as private fiefdoms to benefit the principal stock holders and executives.

Company "X" makes a bad decision that increases costs and reduces next quarter's profits. To cover up this "mistake" they layoff a bunch of people which devastates ongoing projects. However, this improves the following quarter's profits at which time management celebrates their "success" by exercising stock options, and giving themselves bonuses and raises.

It is unlikely any current capitalist governments will willingly put a break on corporations in capitalist zeal to increase profits at any cost to the rest of us. We had such a government under President Roosevelt. However, the USA is now stuck with a government that promotes a giveaway of American sovereignty to the corporations that it euphemistically labels as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

It is also unlikely that consumer addicts will give up their "right" to buy the most wasteful consumer products even if it becomes necessary to save the planet.

The Federal Reserve, partner in crime with Wall Street, "prints" more and more money that is "backed" buy money "borrowed" from our biggest creditors.

This is NOT economics. This is pure madness, and it is going to lead to economic collapse.

Then there is the infestation of our country by the parasites known facetiously as the Tea Party.

[Locrian]

4. good article - but it's deeper than that

1000's of years of 'dominator' culture over the earth vs a partnership / balance with nature and life.

To varying degrees of course, with capitalism turbo charging the whole thing.

[pscot]

5. Stop the Keystone pipeline and the coal ports

in Washington state. Together they'll add a half trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year. That can't be allowed to happen.

[AverageJoe90]

6. Didn't you mean, half a *billion* a year? That *might* be somewhat more accurate.

To be honest, half a trillion tons Co2 per single year is simply impossible(for obvious reasons), even with that. Half a billion per year is possible but that would assume (highly) minimal consumption.....so half a trillion per century is more likely than the former.

Of course, I'm no fan of Keystone or the Washington coalports; just thought I'd point your mistake, that's all.

[pscot]

7. You're right

I got carried away there.

[yurbud]

8. where is the rebuttal of our centrist, DLC friends?

[polynomial]

9. The economic collapse is already in progress.

It’s inevitable and likely being covered up by the one percent with every media rant to refute any reasonable argument to support what will happen as an eventual new type of economic flash crash that will take place. After hearing that Bloomberg is the corporate owner of a unique data distribution system for the stock exchange in New York it is apparent from my view the whole system is a racket, fixed, and nothing more than a black box money generator.

A typical correlational association exists in the academic world. Legions of college educated marauders tile our culture and bend the economics for profiteering rather than the ubiquitous good. The greed at this level of the educational artery is staggering in that the temptation to turn away from lining economics up to a fair system was lost centuries ago.

Reflecting back several years, actually several decades working for a corporate training school teaching Computer Technology and Programming positioned me to absorb in and understand the system we are in. The director of the school was very prominent with a PHD in economics. In a particular conversation my thinking was shattered to hear this PHD in economics never took a calculus course.

That to me was a huge gap in mathematical applications. And reason now to understand that the corporate school finally went bust. Calculus teaches any student fundamentals of the central value theorem that view the building blocks of the Gaussian curve commonly called the Bell curve used in means testing. According to Wiki Carl Friedrich Gauss made his findings in 1835, but was not published until 1867. America brewing the civil war about that time, however, according to Wiki Gauss laid the foundation of the very first telegraph built in Europe. Many of the America history books lead many to believe the telegraph was first invented in America.

So my focus on Gauss for the very same mathematics was used to measure elements of hydrogen in distant space. This tool of the calculus was also being questioned in contemporary applications as breaking down in the quantum mathematics. There are several published articles that can be judged with that simple relation in mind that a new mathematics had to be invented for the quantum to relate.

Gauss is considered by many to be the father of economic mathematics. With that said many can view that today’s secret derivative markets now being traded at levels of numbers so huge they correlate with those used in distant space analysis of hydrogen gas, in parts per billion, trillions of units.

Worse the tax payer is made responsible to pay for mistakes of the one percent that the banking business and Congress lather about when they screw up. So money is the "new gas America" according the free speech theorem of the Supreme Court. American citizens are as the new generation fall guys for the elite rich to bailout and give away the tax money, or Hollywood are generators for the new world order or should we say new world theater of media misinformation because it is so tightly connected big contract payrolls ? The real screw up is that corporations risk extinction by cutting its very important source of energy called education.

Listening to Rush Limbaugh just the other day, he was saying something that did ring true for the first time in a long time for me. And believe me that my views are not of his. But he stunned me the other day saying one of the only ways to change things in America would be to get rid of every news person that is embedded in the system today. I very extraordinary and honest statement that includes long time political people.