Oil companies knew 50 years ago the huge damage they were doing. Their motive to ignore it is the same now as it was then
Capitalism is on a collision course with human life and the future of our planet. Each year, air pollution takes more lives than smoking: the last estimate suggests 8.8m deaths across the world, compared with 7m from cigarettes.
An initial snapshot of countries’ latest carbon reduction promises, released Friday by the United Nations climate secretariat, shows global greenhouse gas emissions on track to fall just 0.5% between 2010 and 2030, prompting Secretary-General António Guterres to declare a “red alert” in a year that was supposed to be a make-or-break moment for climate action.
A lengthy read, indeed, but we need big-picture summaries like this to appreciate the scope of what lies before us. This is not to say that I take everything in this essay as gospel. But U.S. imperialism is definitely a thick strand in the weave of difficult problems we're going to have to overcome (or in this case, overthrow).
