"As new prime minister briefs cabinet on ‘cost of living government’, critics ask where money will come from"
The "cost of living crisis" = "the climate and ecological crisis". They are one and the same. This connection is hidden, by euphemisms.
1/🧵theguardian.com/politics/2026/…
I am not grasping at straws to make this connection. It must be understood that ecology, is the relationship and interdependence of everything. The human economy isn't separate from it, it is a part of it.
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Some of the connections are obvious. Food prices have sharply risen, often because of "extreme weather", which is a euphemism for climate change, as there is no weather, independent of the climate, which is just the accumulation of weather patterns over time.
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I'm not really sure how the media and politicians get away with talking about extreme weather events, without mentioning climate change, other than it is obvious they are trying to gaslight the public and fear the public demanding climate action.
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Ecological impacts, manifest themselves through long causal chains, where the causes of the impacts is not at all obvious. I will give a simple explanation, although it is unbelievably complex.
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Natural ecosystems take thousands of years to develop, with myriad feedback loops evolving. The capitalist industrial system has only existed for 250 or so years, and much of it is far more recent. It was implemented with little thought for the long term consequences.
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The capitalist industrial system relies on constant, unnatural economic growth. If economic growth just falters slightly, not stops, it seriously disrupts the whole economy and financial system.
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But no natural ecosystem has a perpetual inbuilt growth system. If an ecosystem or living system has a continuous growing component, such as a cancer, or invasive species out of control, the whole system is thrown out of kilter.
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In natural systems, sustained growth is always followed by collapse, the most simply and easy to understand feedback loop, which maintains homeostasis. Ecosystems have a type of homeostasis, not just individual organisms.
9/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostas…
In the industrialist, capitalist system, collapse is averted by constantly expanding into ecological niches, occupied by other species. Self-evidently, this can't be sustained as you can't have infinite growth in a finite system.
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Initially, the free market system, has a tendency to bring prices and costs down, but this is time-limited. If food, or any other natural commodity, becomes limited, supply and demand dictates that prices start to rise as demand increases and supply is restricted.
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The free market, capitalist-industrial system, increases demand for natural commodities that are limited. Our whole economy is totally sustained by natural ecosystems, which we are systematically destroying to create more and faster growth.
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A cost of living crisis is an inevitable consequence, of trying to maintain eternal, maximum growth, in a finite system. Where the free market system, no longer brings prices and costs down, and it increases prices.
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As climate impacts get more severe, it will cause increasing difficulties with food production, causing food shortages, and food inflation. It is not theoretical, it is actually happening, now.
14/independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…
There have been warnings about this, for a long time, including from the intelligence services.
There have been many other warnings about the threat to the UK's food supplies, and the same is true of other countries.
15/theguardian.com/environment/20…
The lack of joined up thinking is incredible, in not just the new UK government, now headed by Andy Burnham, but around the world, where politicians naively think they can address the cost of living crisis, without addressing the climate and ecological crisis.
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It is generally agreed, that the climate and ecological emergency, will lead to future food shortages, not in the distant future, but in the forthcoming years. In a free market system, shortages of a commodity, lead to rapidly increasing prices i.e. a cost of living crisis.
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I come back to my original proposition, that the cost of living crisis = the climate and ecological crisis. It is the UK's intelligence services, warning of future food shortages, which means food hyperinflation, not @ExtinctionR.
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It is smoke and mirrors for politicians and economists to pretend that they can address the cost of living crisis, without addressing the climate and ecological crisis, and major system change, to the system driving the climate and ecological crisis.
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Trump, MAGA, and the other right wing populist idiocy, is magical thinking, to try and overcome this fundamental flaw in the current business as usual model. Trump et al, are an ecological consequence.
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@ZackPolanski @CarolineLucas @natalieben @GreenJennyJones @GreenRupertRead @ProfSteveKeen @ProfBillMcGuire @ECOWARRIORSS @NBPTROCKS @ClimateBen @ClimateHuman @violin4all
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