"The race to save the planet is being impeded by a global economy that is contingent on the exploitation of people and nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and #HumanRights expert."
The world has a fever. And a fever is usually a symptom of something else, like an infection, a disease, or a virus. The climate crisis is also a symptom or a result, if you will, of a much deeper sustainability crisis. In other words, it is not the increasing average temperature that is the root cause of the problem. Rather it is the fact that we are living way above our means, exploiting people and the planet. Or, more accurately, a small number of us are doing this.
Absurd inequalities divide the world. The richest 10% cause 50% of our CO2 emissions. The wealthiest 1% are responsible for more than twice as many emissions is the entire poorer half of the world, according to a 2020 report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Humankind has not created this crisis — it was created by those in power, and they knew exactly what priceless values they were sacrificing in order to make unimaginable amounts of money and to maintain a system that benefited them. It is — among other things — the social and economic structures which generate such perverse inequalities that are driving us towards the ecological precipice. It is the idea of infinite growth on a finite planet.