Greta Thunberg

Capitalism as currently practised has imperilled the existence of millions of planetary species, as well as the health and well-being of billions of humans. It also threatens the prosperity that it was intended to create.

The cheap and convenient packaging omnipresent in our daily lives is plastered with claims of recyclability or compostability, encouraging us to buy more and feel good about it. But worldwide, our waste management systems remain both leaky and incapable of recycling many of the products on the market. The lack of regulation of package labelling encourages the phenomenon of ‘aspirational recycling’, which contaminates the waste stream and results in plastics that might otherwise be recycled ending up in landfill or worse. Meanwhile, a lack of accountability in multinational waste export systems results in a global flow of post-consumer plastics to countries where regulation and law enforcement are insufficient to prevent mismanaged waste entering the environment.

The cheap and convenient packaging omnipresent in our daily lives is plastered with claims of recyclability or compostability, encouraging us to buy more and feel good about it. But worldwide, our waste management systems remain both leaky and incapable of recycling many of the products on the market. The lack of regulation of package labelling encourages the phenomenon of ‘aspirational recycling’, which contaminates the waste stream and results in plastics that might otherwise be recycled ending up in landfill or worse. Meanwhile, a lack of accountability in multinational waste export systems results in a global flow of post-consumer plastics to countries where regulation and law enforcement are insufficient to prevent mismanaged waste entering the environment.

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 benefitted them.

The fact that 3 billion people use less energy, on an annual per capita basis, than a standard American refrigerator gives you an idea of how far away from global equity and climate justice we currently are

By using up the remains of our carbon budgets, the Global North is stealing the future as well as the present – not only from their own children but above all from those people who live in the most affected parts of the

world, many of whom are yet to build much of the most basic modern infrastructure that others take for granted – roads, hospitals, electricity, schools, clean drinking water and waste management. And still, this deeply immoral theft does not even exist in the discourse of the so-called ‘developed’ world.

Continued growth in the Global North relies upon processes of atmospheric colonization and the appropriation of southern ecosystems. If we are not attentive to the colonial dimensions of the ecological crisis, we are missing the point.

If we do not see anyone else behaving as if we are in a crisis, then very few will understand that we actually are in a crisis.

There is still time to undo our mistakes, to step back from the edge of the cliff and choose a new path, a sustainable path, a just path. A path which leads to a future for everyone. Not just for those who think their money can buy them a way of adapting to dying ecosystems and mass extinctions.