Climate disruption is just one of the ways human life is threatened due to massive environmental destruction. Our lives depend on robust ecosystems and diversity of animal and plant life. A recent study of land animals found that more than 500 species are likely to become extinct within the next 20 years. This is directly because of the economic drives to pillage forests and plunder land for agriculture in the push for rapid profits.
It isn’t just the environment that is at risk due to land-grabs and resource extraction. These are the same profiteering forces that brought humans in contact with the coronavirus, AIDS, and other serious, life-threatening viruses.
The capitalist economy is destroying nature at a rate hundreds of times higher than the previous 10 million years. But we have a chance to stop this. “There is still hope,” as the director of science at the World Wildlife Fund said. “We can start to bend the curve in biodiversity loss and climate change.” He said it was a question of “global ambition,” but working and oppressed people around the world have that ambition already: we are already living with the effects of coronavirus, and the loss of our environment that we depend upon and are a part of. What we are lacking is the political power to make the changes that are clearly needed.
We can put a stop to capitalism and the destruction of the environment and put all of our resources and efforts towards saving the countless species that are at risk of being lost forever… including human beings. We have only a few years to do this, but with millions of people collaborating for the protection of our lives and environment, anything is possible! The task at hand is to organize ourselves for that purpose.
featured image credit: konjure / Creative Commons
