"The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today's political and economic systems", the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg argues . "That isn't an opinion. That's a fact,” she added. I agree with you, Greta. The question is: what is the nature of the alternative political and economic system? Capitalism is a very dynamic system albeit destructive, and not only to nature but also to human body and soul. But it always seeks a way to mitigate that destruction for its own survival. Advances in technology and productivity are contradicted with obscene inequality and different forms of violence by state and non-state agencies. I think that capitalism and capitalist institutions will be able in the short term to delay a climate catastrophe or minimise its impact on the rich countries. In the long term, however, the contradictions of the system are manyfold and there is no room for optimism.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51