by Oui
Sun Jan 1st, 2023 at 02:09:32 PM EST
Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050 | Forbes - Feb. 9, 2016 |
Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it's devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale.
How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain?
Human activities are behind the extinction crisis. Commercial agriculture, timber extraction, and infrastructure development are causing habitat loss and our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change.
Public corporations are responding to consumer demand and pressure from Wall Street. Professors Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg published Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations last fall, arguing that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the world's resources in ever more creative ways.
I've seriously tried to believe capitalism and the planet can coexist, but I've lost faith | Feb. 21, 2020 |
As the Productivity Commission confirmed this week, Australia's economy has enjoyed uninterrupted growth for 28 years straight. Specifically, our output of goods and services last financial year grew by 2%.
Economists obviously see the growth of a national economy as good news - but what is it doing to the Earth?
Capitalism demands limitless economic growth, yet research shows that trajectory is incompatible with a finite planet.
If capitalism is still the dominant economic system in 2050, current trends suggest our planetary ecosystems will be, at best, on the brink of collapse.
Is Saving the Planet Under Capitalism Really Possible? | April 20, 2021 |
The theme of the 51st Anniversary of Earth Day is "Restore Our Earth." To be sure, while there has been a growing level of environmental consciousness since the first Earth Day and environmental policies have changed dramatically over the last fifty years, we are really in a race to save the planet.
As things stand, the world now faces two existential crises that threaten organized human life as we know it, and life in general on planet Earth. The first one stems from the continued presence of nuclear weapons. The second one comes from global warming. However, while a nuclear war is actually preventable, we are not sure about global warming.
The Senseless war in Ukraine is once again about fossil fuel supremacy, not about green energy, nor sustainability. Saving the planet requires all nations working together, not the hegemonic policy of divide and conquer. For escaping mass deaths of living beings as we know them today, the doomsday clock is ticking minutes past 12 o'clock (midnight).
Mark Rutte and his "Tory" party of Freedom and Liberalization have been a disaster for any social, progressive development in the Netherlands. Right wing populism cozying up to Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. A sorry state of independent, investigative reporting in the Netherlands where the Public broadcasters are lap dogs of Rutte.
Rutte Conservatie VVD party wasted years to appeal court decisions and ultimately lost ...
Landmark Decision by Dutch Supreme Court
On 20 December 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court, the highest court in the Netherlands, upheld the previous decisions in the Urgenda Climate Case, finding that the Dutch government has obligations to urgently and significantly reduce emissions in line with its human rights obligations. A truly historic outcome!
An English translation of the judgement is available here.
The Urgenda Climate Case against the Dutch Government was the first in the world in which citizens established that their government has a legal duty to prevent dangerous climate change. On 24 June 2015, the District Court of The Hague ruled the government must cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 (compared to 1990 levels). The ruling required the government to immediately take more effective action on climate change.
The District Court's decision was appealed by the State and upheld by the Court of Appeal on 9 October 2018. Following this judgment, the State appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Urgenda on 20 December 2019. Read Urgenda's press release here, the press release of the Supreme Court here and an explanation of the case by the press Justice to the Supreme Court here.
In a reflection of the international significance of the case, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has also published a news release about the decision in which she notes that "the decision confirms that the Government of the Netherlands and, by implication, other governments have binding legal obligations, based on international human rights law, to undertake strong reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases."
A slow pace to preserve biodiversity - RED alert
