We can change climate change

The Jacobin website have published an article that once again draws attention to the need for system change to halt climate change. 

“...all of humanity isn’t responsible for this ecological collapse. In fact, the very activity that fuels it has been disastrous for billions of people. This mass extinction crisis, the report shows, is fueled by an economic system that prioritizes the growth of profits above all else. In an effort to outcompete their rivals and maximize profits, corporations exploit human and nonhuman life by suppressing wages and externalizing social and environmental costs, depleting the ecosystems and societies on which life depends...”

“...Global crop yields have increased in recent decades, but its gains have come at a cost to many people, and globally, nearly one in nine people are still undernourished. This is felt most harshly in poor nations in the Global South. Two-thirds of people in Asia are hungry, and in “developing countries,” one in six children are underweight, according to the World Food Programme. Meanwhile, farm subsidies for commodity crops like corn and soybeans have created an enormous market for cheap, processed junk foods that can raise cholesterol and increase risk of diabetes...”

“Agricultural corporations claim to maximize efficiency. But more than a third of the world’s crops go to livestock, even though prioritizing growing crops for human consumption could feed billions of hungry people. Industrial livestock farming is the world’s biggest user of land resources. It produces vast quantities of manure — some 500 million tons from the US alone — that pollutes the air with chemicals like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, and runs off into nearby waterways, contributing to algae blooms which can make drinking water toxic for animals and people...”

the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity on Ecosystem Services (IPBES) concludes, global society must stop prioritizing growth for profit, and instead construct an economy that serves the needs of people and the planet.

“By fecklessly consuming the environment, capital is figuratively sawing off the tree branch it is sitting on,” wrote author Ashley Dawson. “Capital’s logic is therefore that of a cancer cell, growing uncontrollably until it destroys the body that hosts it.”

The IPBES chair, Sir Robert Watson, said, “fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.” This transformation won’t be easy, but Watson is optimistic. “By its very nature, transformative change can expect opposition from those with interests vested in the status quo, but also that such opposition can be overcome for the broader public good.”

The SOYMB blog would only add that we must also hold a clear vision on what our alternative system must be like and we should also have a strategy on how to achieve it.