China

By any rational measure you might assume that a dominant sentient species when faced with global threats would pull together, pool resources and information and search for a mutual solution to the problem. But the coronavirus pandemic has confirmed what the climate change crisis already told us: that capitalism, even in its “globalised” form, is fundamentally unsuited to producing a coordinated response to tackle anything.

American Factory is a 2019 documentary, distributed by Netflix and produced by Higher Ground (production company owned by Barack and Michelle Obama).

Climate change is not the only threat to humanity. A stagnant capitalist economy that survives on an increasing mountain of debt is intensifying imperialist rivalries. The slow death agony of the system is now manifest in so many ways. The post World War Two order that was imposed by the US in 1945 has been breaking down since the dollar ceased to be the world’s gold standard in 1971. Today the increasing rivalry between China and the US stretches from South America via the Middle East to the South China Sea.

We live, and have been living, in an epoch of capitalist decadence. Notwithstanding longer life expectancy, technological advance, and the claims of its defenders, the capitalist system is incapable of addressing existential questions such as the destruction of the environment via man-made climate change. After all, to do so would get in the way of making profits. Short-term expediency portends long term disaster.