Thread by @SteB777

There's a necessity to understand big picture thinking, joined up thinking, the overview.

All the things I've been commenting about, the climate and ecological crisis, politics, the genocide in Gaza, the pursuit of economic growth, neoliberalism, are all highly interlinked.
1/🧵

The interlinking theme, is humanity and social justice. As @GretaThunberg has explained, she is a climate activist, because of the threat to humanity. It is entirely mistaken to see climate activism, as somehow apart from other social justice issues.

2/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1936789…

If we do not urgently address the climate and ecological crisis, it will cause massive impacts, starvation, and the likely collapse of our civilization. This, and other social justice issues, all have one major cause.

3/theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In short, this singular cause, is industrial capitalism, which emerged out of European colonization of the world, and the industrial revolution, which started in Britain, the pre-eminent colonial power of the time.
4/

All instances of social injustice, poverty, modern oppression and wars, can be traced back to this point in history. It's all highly interlinked. It's impossible to separate the massive accumulation of wealth by billionaires, from the climate crisis.

5/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1938021…

Therefore, to see the situation in terms of lots of different issues, as if they are somehow separate, and not related, is totally unrealistic, and contrary to the facts. It is the powerful and wealthy vested interests, that want you to see it all, as different issues.
6/

One of the most ridiculous things, was when after her voyage on the #FreedomFlotilla, it was claimed that #GretaThunberg had forgotten about the climate crisis. As if the climate crisis was totally separate, from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
7/

As Greta has had to explain over and over again, this is all about entirely avoidable humanitarian crises, driven by the colonial, capitalist mindset (capitalism became big, by financing colonialism). These are not separate, and unrelated matters.
8/

It was first recognized at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, that the capitalist industrial system, created during the industrial revolution, was if left unchecked, going to destroy the natural systems humanity relies on.

9/un.org/en/conferences…

The world's governments agreed to an Action Plan, to avoid an impending crisis. Whilst agreeing to this, no action was taken by these governments, and the situation got much worse, resulting in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

10/un.org/en/conferences…

Once again, world leaders pledged radical action to change direction. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit, dealt with social issues, poverty, inequality, and recognized all these sustainability issues, including climate change, as interrelated.
11/

Once again, governments and big corporations, ignored the pledges they made, to carry on with business as usual BaU, ignored the serious threat to humanity, and instead focused on economic growth and profit.
12/

What politicians, the media, economists, big corporations and oligarchs have done, is to take the clear joined up issues, documented in Our Common Future (1987), and to turn them into supposedly separate, unrelated issues.

13/sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/docume…

The reason for dividing it up into separate issues was to stop the public seeing all these matters were highly interlinked with common causes, that without major system change, and a complete divergence from BaU, it was going to be impossible to address any of these crises.
14/

Powerful vested interests didn't want any change to BaU, the fossil fuel industry, the destruction of natural systems, because it would affect their bottom line, their obsession with wealth accumulation.
15/

This is why the powers that be, leading politicians in the pockets of the oligarchs, the oligarchs themselves, big corporations, don't want people to see this overall polycrisis in a joined up way, because it would shine a big light on their part in this.
16/

In short, the oligarchs and the big corporations don't want the public to see how all these problems are interlinked, for fear the public would demand a move away from BaU, which would threaten their wealth accumulation obsession. It really is that simple.
17/

None of my commenting on the political situation is really political, in that I don't have any ideological position, other than our system should not be driving humanity, into a humanitarian crisis.
18/

@threadreaderapp unroll