Many are drawing attention to the alarming state of things. Within Pearls and Irritations, David Spratt and Julian Cribb have recently provided clear and powerful summary statements of the trajectory we’re on, heading towards catastrophic global ecological and social breakdown. But they proceed as if the problems could be solved. Theyre wrong about that.

They present the necessary and obvious policy changes required, and rage against the failure to make them. The blame is put on corporate greed and the stupid, corrupt and captured politicians that allow the corporations to go on wrecking the planet. Those analyses are usually true enough, but typically incomplete; they fail to represent the situation accurately.

Firstly, it is a serious mistake to blame Anthony Albanese for opening new coal mines. He’s doing it because we live in an energy-intensive society and if he fails to deliver energy the people will throw him out of office and put in someone else who promises to do it. He knows he cant just develop renewables instead; the build rate is about 5% of what would be needed.

We live in a society that is now far down a grossly unsustainable path, incapable of providing what people need without plundering resources and destroying the ecosystems of the planet. We have been warned about this for more than 70 years, by now voluminous Limits to Growth and Planetary Boundaries literatures, but we have taken no notice. All our politicians, bureaucrats, economists, media and ordinary people are driven by an unquestionable growth-forever mentality, incapable of seeing that any other way is possible or desirable.

The growth and affluence game is nearing its end. The coming mega-breakdown could be the end of us all. There is now no possibility of doing anything about it. We are trapped in structures, procedures, institutions, habits, expectations and ideologies that generate it and cannot now be remedied. We must plunge on as rampant consumers or there will be no jobs, incomes, investment income or well-stocked supermarket shelves.

But mega-breakdown? Bit of an exaggeration? Lets see how sustainable we are.

The World Wildlife Funds Footprint measure indicates that Australians today are using over seven times the per capita amount of productive land that would be available to all in 2050.

That measure takes into account only a limited number of factors. The Planetary Boundaries approach identifies limits in nine domains and states that sustainable impacts have already been exceeded in six.

Stocks of almost all global resources are depleting. Mineral oil grades are falling, water resources are increasingly scarce, most fisheries are over fished, forests are diminishing, agricultural soils are being lost or damaged causing concerns about global food supply. It is likely that petroleum supply will peak within a decade.

Massive and accelerating damage is being inflicted on the ecosystems of the planet, the major consequence being the huge loss of species. This is mainly due to loss of habitats, and that is a consequence of economic growth. The WWF says productive land use is already close to double a sustainable amount, but global economic output is heading to double by 2050.

The major environmental impact is the climate crisis. There is now no possibility of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Carbon emissions continue to increase and we are heading for a rise of more than three degrees.

Around the world there is increasing discontent with government, fuelled by deteriorating living conditions, cost of living rises, increasing homelessness, poverty and struggle. As costs rise, environmental damage increases, the needs of the excluded precariat rise, and governments cannot provide. Faith in democracy is declining and many are turning to authoritarian leaders. This is the path to fascism.

Our rich world affluence is built on massive economic injustice. Exploitative resource extraction from poor countries is estimated by Hickle to be worth a net annual flow of $2.5 trillion, not including the environmental damage, low wages and social disruption left in poor countries.

The economic system we have, inevitably, causes this situation, including many other damaging and disgusting effects, not the least of which is skyrocketing wealth inequality. These consequences are produced by allowing development to be determined by rich people investing in what will maximise their wealth, not by what needs developing. There cannot be any other than these outcomes until capitalism is scrapped… but hardly anybody realises or cares. There is no possibility of rational deliberate system change.

All of the above are accelerating rapidly now. Long ago, America was stolen by the rich. As Warren Buffett said, There is no class war in America. There was … but my class won it. The advent of neoliberalism enabled the economy to be geared more directly than ever to the interest of the corporate rich. But that involved persuading politicians to deregulate, privatise, minimise welfare spending and keep labour down. Now such policies are being imposed more directly and viciously by Elon Musk and a handful of billionaire accomplices. The gutting of democratic governing, elimination of dissent, shredding of welfare spending, cutting of taxes for the rich, and ruthless immiseration of the probably 100 million Americans at the bottom rotting in despair will accelerate.

They are so blinded by their greed that they cannot see that they are killing the goose that has been laying golden eggs for them. They will thrive… for a while.

But there is one factor which trumps all of the above. It is the imminent inevitable collapse of the global financial system. The only way the global economy can be kept healthy has been by pumping in vast amounts of money created by the banking system and put into the economy as debt. Global debt has tripled in three decades, is much higher than before the GFC, and is now totally unrepayable. It is not possible for the borrowed money to be invested in productive ventures that will repay it plus interest, basically because people suffering cost of living increases do not have the surplus purchasing power to buy more products. So the loans are being used to buy up assets such as housing which yield rents without producing anything. As cosi-liv and immiseration worsen, at some point lenders will realise that they will not be able to get their money repaid, the system will implode, and catastrophic effects will quickly cascade, including at least widespread bank failures and loss of savings, bankruptcies, inability to finance trade, etc. Many financial analysts see the inevitability now.

Few realise the magnitude of the combined multi-factorial sustainability and injustice predicament set by these conditions. Solutions cannot be achieved by a) reforms or action on the supply side; that is by attempting to find more resources or reduce impacts in an effort to go on meeting existing demand, or b) by an economic system driven by greed and growth. They can only be achieved by enormous and radical transition to a very different social form, primarily defined in terms of large scale degrowth to far simpler lifestyles and systems. This society is obviously totally incapable of making such a transition.

There is only one social form that can solve the problems. Elements of it can be seen in many Eco-Village, Transition Towns, Voluntary Simplicity and Third World alternative movements such as the Chikukwa, Ubuntu, Satyagraha, Zapatista and the many other Latin American peasants’ initiatives. The key principles are, mostly small highly self-sufficient, self-governing and co-operative communities in control of their own local economies which are not driven by profit or market forces… and happy to live frugally with what is sufficient.

(For the details see TSW 2023 and the Pigface Point video.)

How might there be transition to this kind of settlement pattern? The only hope is that the coming time of great troubles will have a slow onset, enabling a large enough number of people to adopt the alternative vision. There are many such projects around the world in rich and poor countries and we must work towards these becoming numerous enough to establish examples of sustainable ways. As conditions deteriorate, people will be jolted into realising that they must strive to build local self-sufficient and co-operative systems. This is happening from Detroit to rural Mexico. In the rich world it will be more easily done in country towns as agribusiness and international trade fail. This is not to say that we are likely to avoid massive chaos and suffering.

But don’t we have to get rid of capitalism first? No we dont, because it is getting rid of itself. Marx saw that its built-in contradictions will eventually destroy it. The coming collapse will finish it off.

What is to be done then? Just help us to get as many people as possible to share this vision, and to do what they can to establish aspects of the new worldview and ways in the minds of others while there is time. Everything depends on how many we have brought to an understanding of all this before the banks go down. The chances of getting through to a sane, just and sustainable alternative system are not good, but you have no alternative, but to help us get there. All you have to do is raise these issues wherever you can.