Eve of Extinction

Eve of Extinction

Manfred Max-Neef writes “We still favor the economic efficiency of greed and political dynamics of paranoia in a global system in which poverty keeps increasing and major scientific and technological effort is directly or indirectly aimed at destroying the human species.” Enthusiasm for unlimited economic growth and expansion faces real social and ecological collapse. [Our goals are dangerously] “incoherent with our historical reality.”
Before the Great Crash of 2008, people who warned about the injection of huge destabilizing risk into our financial system seemed like arcane, anal bores. Now we all sit in the rubble and wish we had listened. The great ecological crash will be far worse, because nature doesn’t do bailouts.
The scientific debate is not between deniers and affirmers. Every major scientific academy in the world, and all the peer-reviewed literature, says global warming denialism is a pseudo-science, on a par with Intelligent Design, homeopathy, or the claim that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. The scientific debate now is between those who say the damage is a disaster, and those who say it is a catastrophe.
the real question will be carefully ignored to preserve big business as usual. Do we want to ramp up global warming with filthy fossil fuels, or make the leap to a clean planet fuelled by the sun, the wind and the waves? Right now we are making the wrong choice. But we could change the end of this story, if we act decisively. Long after our own little stories are forgotten, this choice we make now will still be visible – in the composition of the atmosphere, the swelling of the seas, and the crack and creak of the great Antarctic ice. Do we want to be Gaia, or Medea? – Johann Hari is a columnist for the London Independent. His journalism has appeared in publications all over the world. READ MORE: