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Our planet is dying. Here's why.

The devastation of the global environment is driven by one thing: money.

In a world system dominated by capitalist economies the profit motive reigns supreme. If money can be made, any damage to the environment or society is of no concern.

Climate change threatens to wipe out the human race, but every facet of the modern global economy is fueled by the consumption of fossil fuels. So, despite the existential threat to humanity, fossil fuels are consumed in ludicrous quantities every day so that the world can “have electric toothbrushes and leave the lights on all night [...] and shit like that” (Hedges, 2012). There is no question that the consumption of fossil fuels is slowly killing the planet, but the corporations and governments responsible remain unconcerned. There is money to be made and that is all that matters.

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This chart shows the global consumption of fossil fuels in terawatt-hours, a measurement of energy, from 1965 to 2019. The increasing consumption of fossil fuels that is driving climate change is apparent. (Source: Our World in Data)

The true injustice of environmental degradation is the relationship between those who are to blame and those who bear the burden.

The corporations who poison the world and cause climate change are almost never held accountable for the despair and destruction their actions cause. 

The Carteret Islands, a small archipelago near Papua New Guinea, is disappearing into the sea as a result of rising sea levels (Redfearn, 2011). These people are not responsible for the climate change that is destroying their home, but they are among the world’s first climate change refugees. Capitalism has devastated the environment and the consequences are affecting the lives of more people each day. But there is more money to be made, so we continue our march towards oblivion.

Consumerism and advertising are extensions of the capitalist profit motive.

Capitalists have engineered a culture built around commodities to ensure there is always demand to answer their overproduced supply.

The 1988 film They Live offers an incisive social commentary about the American culture of consumerism and how it is propped up by the subliminal messaging present in advertising, media, and almost every other facet of modern life. (Source: They Live).

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Consumerist culture supports the overproduction of commodities and overconsumption of natural resources that is destroying the environment.

However, there are costs associated with the consumerism and massive overproduction of the world’s core countries. Unfortunately, because those costs threaten profits, they are often displaced onto the periphery of the world system at the expense of the environment and the people living there. In Ghana, e-Waste from across the world is dumped into massive landfills where it is burned and processed. The water, land, and air is toxic, contaminated with all manner of heavy metals that slowly poison the workers (Lecture 1). This is the cost of consumerism in the Global North, and the price is paid not by those who purchase the goods but by those who have their homes and bodies destroyed.

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