Climate Change: Crisis and Challenge

To successfully address the climate crisis, we must also identify and address the deep root causes that link it to the myriad other crises we face— economic, militarism and war, as well as the intertwined crises of food, water and biodiversity loss. These crises are unified by their common roots in an economic system that encourages banks and corporations to ignore ethical and moral considerations and gamble with the Earth, peoples’ lives, and our collective futures in the service of higher profits. To paraphrase neoliberal economic pioneer Milton Friedman, ‘the corporation cannot be ethical. It’s only responsibility is to make a profit for its shareholders.’ Successfully addressing climate change will require a fundamental restructuring of our society that, if thoughtfully done, can lay a new foundation that will simultaneously help us achieve both global justice and ecological balance.