Self-preservation is one of the fundamental instincts of all living organisms, including humans, whose survival instinct influences their daily decisions. Nevertheless, when it comes to facing an imminent threat that might cause our extinction, such as climate change, greed seems to take over survival as the main influencer on our thoughts. In the global fight against climate change, there appears to be a focus solely on the smallest part of the problem, intending to remove the speck of sawdust from one eye while leaving the plank in the other. During the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2022, Colombian president Gustavo Petro announced that Capital is the reason behind climate change. Which begs the question, how valid is this statement?
Corporations supported by major media outlets have shifted public attention towards minor issues that contribute to environmental problems, such as litter, in order to prevent public outrage, and preserve and accumulate their capital by exploiting nature. While it’s true that these issues require solutions, and that individual efforts, like recycling and using biodegradable and reusable products, are important, they will never create significant change if the primary issue is ignored. Rather than concentrating on and diverting the entire fight toward insignificant problems, we should confront the destructive pursuit of wealth and its harmful exploitation of nature. The industrial revolution and its consequences have led to capitalism’s demand for constant growth, which is destroying nature and its cycles.
This system has turned people into consumers who are transforming Earth into a garbage dump for industrial, agricultural, and household waste to satisfy their needs. Capitalism couldn’t care less about exploiting and destroying the planet’s natural richness as long as it maximizes profit and accumulates capital. To prevent even more global heating, the average yearly CO2 emission per person should be less than two tons. Meanwhile, the richest one percent of the global population averagely produce more than seventy tons, such as Bill Gates, who is estimated to emit more than seven thousand tons per year. According to Oxfam International, the same one percent were responsible for more than twice as much as the world’s poorest fifty percent, who, in turn, according to the Stockholm Environment Institute, in 2015, were responsible for just seven percent of global CO2 emissions. In fact, as stated by Oxfam International, the richest one percent had already burned through their share of the annual global carbon budget within the first 10 days of 2025. As reported by the CGD, developed countries are responsible for seventy-nine percent of CO2 emissions from 1850 to 2011.
Climate disasters are increasing at frightening rates each year. Instead of addressing the main problem, people are still getting deceived into denying climate change, or thinking the problem is their personal waste and how to manage it. It’s not hard to perceive the reason behind the former herding as individual consumers are much less threatening to the system than a unified body of citizens demanding political change. The only steps taken to face this deadly threat are to raise awareness through social media and political speeches in which the environmental issue was prominent in the UNGA77 speeches. “The effects of climate change are uneven and reflect a historical injustice: those who are least responsible suffer the most,” stated Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in his speech. The wealthiest individuals in the world have endangered the poorest. Additionally, Marshall Islands President David Kabua reiterated the “call to the world to declare total war on this century’s greatest challenge: the climate change monster” and urged everyone to “break the addiction to fossil fuel.” Meanwhile, Roberto Álvarez Gil, the foreign minister of the Dominican Republic, called for “those countries that contribute most to global warming to retain in their agendas a vital mechanism for cooperation with those who suffer the effects of climate change the most acutely.” Moreover, Colombian President Gustavo Petro affirmed that “behind oil and coal addiction, there is the true addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, profit, and money.” We can notice how these leaders from the “global south” are worried about our future despite the fact that, as reported by the UNEP GEO-6, the “global north” consume 50% of the world’s resources, account for about 60% of global fossil fuel consumption, and is responsible for approximately 75% of global cumulative emissions since the beginning of the industrial era.
Despite extinction being the ultimate consequence of the current system, to this day, no effective steps have been taken by major countries to try to delay our doomsday. On the contrary, with Trump and his team back in office, many executive orders have been signed that accelerate our annihilation: the immediate withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement and other international climate commitments, the expansion of logging national forests and public lands bypassing environmental protection, the halt of offshore Eolic energy projects, and oil and gas drilling an area of the sacred and pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Firms can no longer ignore the fact that their greed to accumulate wealth and power is depriving people of their fundamental human rights to health, sanitation, water, and food. The environmental crisis is causing the mass extinction of living beings on Earth, whose ability to withstand the destructiveness of Capital is reaching its limit. We currently have two choices, either wake up to reality and rise against Capitalism and its tools, or suffer and perish. If the imminent extinction cannot unite us to rise against exploitation, what will? When will Capitalism stumble under the ongoing hypnotization of the masses, losing the obedience granted by the persuasion that anyone can become a millionaire, when, in reality, the extreme wealth of the few stems from the exploitation of the working class?
Edited By Edna-Carla Rashid and Amin Kharrat