Are we all doomed? Is the end is nigh?
The only way that the human race will survive is by cooperation. So there you go, we are all fucked!
It's probably about a minute to midnight on the clock of human existence. We don't have long before the endangered species known as the human race starts to die out. For all we know it might have already started.
Pretty soon there’ll be no more people left on Earth. That, I don’t think we can doubt. I would imagine very little can be done to stop our extinction. But what can be done is to delay our demise for as long as possible. But that won't be easy. It won't happen if we carry on doing business as usual. We can all try and do our bit and some can do it better than others. It's not easy to lower the impact one has on our environment as we are pulled this way and that purely in order to survive. The biggest effect will be if governments take action.
Extreme wealth is killing our environment. Neoliberalist capitalism is the enemy of the people, the enemy of the human race, and until we can eradicate it we are on a downward spiral of death and destruction. There will no doubt be many that won't be able to grasp this concept. They won't see that capitalism is a cancer that's now quite rapidly killing us all.
We need a new form of economics. One not driven by growth. But by sustainability. Not by capital but by need. The market won’t sort the problems with our environment. Competition and the push for growing consumption only quickens the pace of our destruction. It’s not in capitalism’s interest to claw back on it’s continued abuse of our life-support system. Selfishness and greed will kill us all.
When I wrote this post a little while back I knew nothing of Extinction Rebellion. I may have heard a reference or two but hadn't really registered what it was all about. Obviously I’ve heard of them now. Their message is a bold one, and one I mostly agree with.
All the recycling by well meaning bike riders who knit their own jumpers is but a drop in the ocean. There’s no reason not to do it as it all helps but alone the conscientious people can't compensate for the nerdowells . We can also help by not having children, stop owning pets, stop flying and stop eating meat in any great quantity (I will turn to this subject in a subsequent post). But it still wouldn’t be enough. Governments need to change things to make any real impact.But not just our government, all governments. Cooperation is the key to our survival.
I'm not the best example of an environmentally friendly human. I know I could do better, and many others could too. But not all of us. Yes our environment is important but if you’re living in poverty, struggling to make ends meet, waiting in the ever extending queue for NHS healthcare quite frankly the aims and ambitions of Extinction Rebellion are not going to figure on your radar much at all. It’s more of an issue for those a little further up the socio-economic scale. If you’re living in poverty you are going to be more worried about where your next meal is coming from or how to pay the next bill that comes in. You’re not going to be worrying about what’s going to be happening in ten or fifteen years time. And quite understandably so. But in reality the solution to lifting people out of poverty is going to be the same as slowing down the climate catastrophe.
We live on a planet of finite resources which we are squandering at an alarming rate. We obviously need to cut right back on overall consumption. But if those resources are not shared out equitably we are doomed to failure. We can only save our environment if we cooperate, rather than competing with each other. That means we need to change the way we govern ourselves, because if we don’t we can change nothing. It’s all very well shouting about how we are killing our planet but unless we’re all prepared to become less greedy, less selfish and vote for change, our days are numbered. Now you can call the new equitable, co-operative form of government that will be needed to address these issues what you like, as labels really aren’t that important, but what you’ll end up with is socialism. It is the only system that can do the job. Pure democracy. Pure co-operation.
So the first priority for people across the world is to establish true socialist governments. Their priority would be to lift people out of poverty whilst at the same time reducing overall consumption of those elements which are the cause of the climate catastrophe.
We can't adopt a siege mentality either. There is only one world and we can't live in isolation, hoping that the problems will go away because they won't. We are going to see mass migration, and on a scale that we’ve never seen before. If we don’t welcome environmental refugees then that will be our loss, and they will come anyway. We won’t be able to stop them. After all, they will have nothing to lose.
If we don't act soon it will be too late. Technology isn't going to save us. It'll be too late for that.
My own personal view is that we will not be able to slow the speed of our destruction as quite frankly we are too stupid to do such a thing. I'm not a pessimist. I'm not an optimist. I consider myself a realist.
