Capitalism is irreparable

December 15, 2025

Jason Hickel is right to excoriate the capitalist system, and Peter Sainsbury is right to quote Hickel at length.

Capitalism has delivered riches to the wealthy of the world, but only through 500 years of unconscionable colonial exploitation of most human beings on the planet and a century of massive exploitation of the planet’s resources. The wealthier each of us is, the greater the legacy of ruin we and our forebears have created. Without erecting massive psychological barriers, we would be overwhelmed by the dissonance between who we are and what we have done.

Can the capitalist beast be tamed to respond to the inextricably linked disasters of inequality and climate destruction? Consider the horrors of cobalt mining (for the new, renewable economy) in DR Congo; the environmental devastation surrounding the northern Siberian city of Norilsk, where nickel and palladium are mined; the environmental and human catastrophe of Ghana’s textile recycling industry; at our own NW Shelf, the farcical approval of Woodside’s ongoing extraction of “clean” gas and destruction of irreplaceable rock art; and myriad other disasters around the globe. The answer is irrefutably “no”.