Recommended: This Changes Everything

Naomi Klein has written an interesting book entitled This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs Climate Change. After making the case again that human-driven climate change is a real threat, she goes on to show that the capitalist system as it is practiced in the Western world simply is not structured to effectively address the climate change problem.  It's not just the constant capitalist drive to grow and expand that impedes addressing the problem, it is even things like the trade agreements between nations which are a problem.

Her arguments and examples are interesting and convincing, but I do note that capitalism isn't the only problem. Authoritarian nations like Venezuela and China and Russia, which depend on oil and gas sales, are no better structured to address the problem than capitalism. I suspect the real problem is not the particular political system in place; the real problem is human nature. Humans will worry more about what to have for lunch tomorrow than about, say, the extinction of the human race in a decade or two.