Global capitalism is unsustainable, causing extinction.

The global climate is unraveling at rates far beyond the predictions of scientists. The studies are so common by this date, and the scientific evidence so pervasive going back at least half a century, that there is no need to cite sources about this fact. The oceans are dying, the fisheries are becoming exhausted. The forests are dying. They are devastated through human overuse, logging, wildfires, acid rain, and rapidly changing climate conditions.

Agricultural lands are drying up and losing productivity, the land, water, and air are polluted. Artificial human-made chemical compounds are found in the tissues of every living creature on Earth, with unknown synergistic effects. The oceans are rising, displacing millions of coastal dwellers and submerging prime agricultural lands.

The habitats for animals and life in general are disappearing, and many species go extinct daily. The polar caps are melting, irrevocably altering the planet’s climate. Rainfall is irregular, with periodic droughts alternating with devastating floods. ….

At the same time, the global human population unsustainability continues to increase. … …Noam Chomsky declares: “Survival of Organized Human Life Is at Risk Due to Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons.”

UN CHARTER’S UNTOUCHABLE SACRED COW PREVENTS GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

Meanwhile, the nations of the world focus on “sovereignty,” militarism, national independence, trade wars, and unsustainable capitalist development. “Sovereign independence” is written into the UN charter in multiple ways and continues to function as an untouchable sacred cow, preventing the development of global citizenship everywhere on Earth. Each nation inculcates loyalty into its citizens and criminalizes any non-government sponsored relationships with foreign officials, which they label “disloyalty” and “treason.” Trillions of dollars are poured down the toilet of militarism that are needed to protect and restore the planetary environment.

FEW PEOPLE SEEM TO CARE

Nuclear weapons are refined and made “combat ready,” and countries like North Korea correctly understand that without the nuclear deterrent, they would suffer the same destruction as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. For the imperial system led by the U.S. and its NATO allies continues to work for a global hegemony to counter the growing influence of Russia and China, politically and economically, without concern for human rights, dignity, or the welfare and livelihood of many millions who appear of less worthiness to live because they are “not us.” Books such as Nuclear Madness by Helen Caldicott or The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg regularly appear detailing the many times that the near use of these weapons has brought humanity close to extinction, but few seem to care. Our fragmentation, hate, fear, and need for “enemies” is so much greater than our desire for a future for our children or the planet.

SHOCK ALERT: IT’S A WAR SYSTEM, STUPID!

Our planetary system is inherently a war system requiring enemies and producing vast profits for the industries that supply and encourage this system. As climate and military disasters around the world increase so do the profits of the system of “disaster capitalism” described by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Meanwhile the big banks and masters of the global monetary systems continue to dominate unsustainable global economics, running the world as a debt system from which they derive not only vast profits but vast political power, as Ellen Brown showed in detail in her 2007 book The Web of Debt.

IS THE RULING CLASS “INSANE” OR SIMPLY CRIMINAL?

A Google search reveals a number of articles by different authors who have declared that the ruling class is “insane.” Indeed, if bringing the entire planet to ruin in the service of ones personal greed for wealth and power is insane, then this label is appropriate, although I prefer the term “criminal,” since the majority of the ruling class of the world are simply criminals who control the mass media, the politicians, and the UN in the service of their criminal enterprises that are bringing humankind to extinction.

In the US, the majority of both Democrats and Republicans in the Washington, DC, government are criminals in this sense, serving both themselves and the ruling class. Many so-called liberals in the US are working to remove Trump as President, and to “take back our country.” But the truth is they never had “their country.” The ruling class has always had it, and human extinction advanced perhaps just as rapidly under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. The mass media, the war system, and the “sovereign nation” propaganda keep the people of the US asleep no matter who is president. Whomever fills that office can do little because the system itself defeats rationality, recognition of our common planetary humanity, and the changes necessary for survival.

REFUSING TO BECOME WORLD CITIZENS IS A DEATH SENTENCE

Trump is a symptom and not a cause. People refuse to actualize what Karl Marx called our species-being. They refuse to become world citizens in any real sense of this word. They cling to their sovereign borders and delude themselves that somehow extinction can be avoided if the peoples of some 193 different, militarized sovereign nations all care about the environment, recycle, and “dispose” of the trash properly. Rather than living in what I call a “boundary-less world,” they insist on their puerile boundaries and identities, even as this exacerbates the rush to total climate collapse and human extinction. To cling to a tiny, exclusive identity that divides one from others who are “not me” becomes more important than the survival of the human race.

MASS MEDIA A MAIN SOURCE FOR IMMATURE IDEOLOGIES

It has often been pointed out that the mass media keep ordinary people distracted, immature, and unable to think clearly. The mass media are designed for this purpose. For more sophisticated ordinary people, there are sources like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, which frame the immature ideologies in a more erudite manner to satisfy the egoism of the “educated” middle classes. But the entire world system is immature and structurally inculcates immaturity into the peoples of Earth.

MISGUIDED LOYALTIES TO OUTDATED SYSTEMS

The system of sovereign nation-states is nearly four centuries old, often said to have begun formally at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, developed at a time when people were riding horses and fighting with swords. The system of capitalism is just as old, developed at a time when the Earth seemed to have inexhaustible resources, was able to receive unlimited wastes from human industries, and the population of the world was a fraction of what it is today. These systems structurally condition people into loyalty to their puerile national identities and into a capitalism that has no concern for the environment or human dignity, but only for egoistically pursued private profit. “Freedom” becomes promoting egoistic self-interest regardless of the social or environmental consequences.