Our current system prioritizes corporate profits and the accumulation of vast wealth and power in the hands of a few, whereas I imagine a system that prioritizes people and the planet and which is far more equitable. My imperfect label for the former system is "capitalism."
I think the next big thing in the climate movement will be mainstreaming the idea that we can't come out of climate and ecological breakdown without shifting the goal away from profit & accumulation and toward people & planet. That is, to end "capitalism"
The Green New Deal is an important stepping stone but I think we need to go further - we need to actually change the goal of the entire system. The goal can no longer be profit & massive accumulation & desperate consumption, it needs to be happy humans on a healthy planet.
I want to make it clear that I'm not advocating switching to barter, or living in caves, or not having advanced medical care, or anything like that. I'm simply advocating a shift away from the system goal of profit & accumulation at any cost up to and including a livable planet
The first step is to somehow reclaim our captured political system so that we can start implementing common-sense stuff like ending money in politics, lobbying, and fossil fuel subsidies; and implementing electoral reform, districting reform, taxes on the super rich, etc.
And then we start building, and changing, and looking beyond GDP, and healing, and implementing policies that put people and the planet first and that force corporations to serve the public good, not shareholders and CEOs. It's not rocket science
We also need to take a hard look at banking, interest lending, and debt. Banking needs to serve the public good and it cannot be "for profit," that's a powder keg. The whole system spirals out of control when private bankers have that much power to accumulate capital.
Eventually we craft a new economic system that doesn't rely on unending exponential growth (which as a physicist I can tell you is unsustainable no matter how you spin it) but instead distributes work and resources in an equitable way within planetary bounds
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