Climate Change Will Destroy Capitalism

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

2022 is a year that will undoubtedly be remembered as one in which the price of almost everything rose quite rapidly. Across much of the world, the rate of inflation has reached forty year highs and shows no sign of abating. The main cause of the rapidly rising prices has arguably been Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which sparked an energy crisis as well as causing shortages of fertilizer and crucial foodstuffs such as wheat and cooking oil. But there are other causes of inflation. COVID related lockdowns throughout the world also sent prices rising as supply chains became strained across a range of industries. Meanwhile, the major corporations that control the world economy have used the twin shocks of pestilence and war to embark on rampant profiteering and price gouging, further driving up the rate of inflation.

Now the system faces another shock, one that will be far less temporary than those experienced in 2022. Climate change will utterly upend our economies and will do so in a way that mirrors the effects of the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic. The difficulties that Covid has caused in our supply chains, as well as the way in which the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted energy markets, will thus serve as a glimpse into the future of capitalism. The era defining inflation that the war and Covid have unleashed is likely to be a mere prelude to a new era of…