Too Many Problems, Too Little Time, Too Much Greed, Too Much Ignorance and Arrogance.

I find it incredible that people actually use the word sustainability. The word, even the concept today, is irrational. Based on who is providing the measurements, or misrepresenting the facts, this planet passed the signposts of sustainability somewhere between 1902, when the world’s population was at 2.1 Billion people, and yesterday.

And while estimates of what the earth can support and sustain vary wildly, estimates make assumptions that in reality do not exist. The first such problem, and fallacy relates to the concept of equity in sharing resources on a global basis. Obviously, that assumption or assertion is farcical.

Even in the most prosperous economies, ownership of assets and wealth is beyond disproportionate. For example, Oxfam stated on September 24th of this year that the richest 1% of the world’s global population have more wealth than 95% of the world’s population.

Plutocrats now control the world’s economies.

Oxfam’s briefing paper states,

“Multilateralism in an Era of Global Oligarchy” warns that multilateral efforts to respond to critical global challenges, including the climate crisis and persistent poverty and inequality, are being undermined by the ultra-wealthy and mega corporations fueling inequality within and between countries.”

Despite being home to 79 percent of the word’s population, Global South countries own just 31 percent of global wealth.”

The reality is that government’s are no longer representative of the people, they represent the interests of the world’s richest men and the world’s richest corporations. The rich control the taxation levels of countries, ensuring the rich do not pay their fair share based on assets and earnings.

The health technologies owned by big pharmaceutical companies are monopolies that control vaccine production and limit who has access. In 2021 alone, the seven largest manufacturers generated an estimated $50 Billion in net profits just from the sale of Covid 19 vaccines. Payouts to rich shareholders brought about 40 new vaccine billionaires, while it’s estimated that 1.3 million people globally died due to not having access to those same vaccines.

Meanwhile low income countries spend nearly 40% of their annual budgets on debt servicing, owned by private creditors, milking nation’s resources and depriving the poorest access to food, water, medical care, education and the rest of life’s necessities.

According to the United Nations, as of Dec. 17th of this year, the world’s population stood at 8.2 Billion people. The ultra-rich control every facet of what governments do and don’t do. Oxfam’s recent analysis of more than 180 of the largest US public corporations show they collectively spent $746 million on lobbying in 2022, an average of $4.1 million each.

Corporations and their oligarchs essentially have the ability not just to influence, but totally control where governments spend their resources. Is it any surprise that the rich continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the other 99%?

Climate change, resource depletion, defaunation, species eradication, are all to the greatest extent, under the control of the 1% who choose to create and disseminate mass amounts of disinformation designed to hide corporate mass consumption of resources while destroying nature’s ecosystems.

Natural ecosystems are being destroyed, the earth’s air polluted, water acidified and polluted, mineral resources depleted, fossil fuels over-consumed, groundwater polluted and depleted, forests destroyed and oceans both overheated, polluted and acidified, all to service the greed of corporations and plutocrats.

It is estimated that the world’s resources are being consumed at a rate 1.7 times greater than they can be replaced, and many scientists believe that number is actually as high as two times greater than that.

Meanwhile the rich through their bought and paid for politicians, media outlets including the internet, obfuscate and lie to hide that reality. However, the most incredibly asinine fact is that all of those 1% cannot take their stolen wealth and escape. They are tethered to the planet they are in the process of destroying out of greed and the want of power.

They forget that they too will suffer the same fate, and that wealth in no way guarantees their safety, either financially or for that matter, their physical lives.

When the AMOC stops, when the poles melt, when the earth heats to a point where wildfires consume our boreal forest, melts the permafrost, generates so much CO2 and methane that the earth’s temperature runs amok, and the plankton in the oceans begins to die from both acidification and overheating, — all the money in the world will mean exactly nothing.

And when climate change results in mass scarcity and mass migration of populations, is it rational to believe that people will willfully starve while the ultra-rich ignore their plight and hoard food and water?

Peppers and survivalists, irrespective of their hoarded resources will be found and likely, eradicated.

Will the starving, the diseased, be understanding, rational or empathic towards those who stole their birthright? I think not. Scarcity will lead to warfare, and nations will dissolve as those necessary to maintain the infrastructure cease to provide their services, arm themselves, and bring about insurrection. Corporations and the rich will find that there is no place to hide. Survival will depend on might, not wealth.

In the end, – and there will be an end, life will return to what Hobbes described in Leviathan. “No arts; no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

This is what will occur when the earth fails due to the greed of men and the failure of civilized society. The rich were the only ones who could have changed this outcome, but like today’s richest man in the world, they are consumed by greed, narcissism, hate and arrogance. I have no doubt that he too will be dragged kicking and screaming into the abyss when that time comes.

And the disadvantaged, abused and starved, will celebrate.