Ultimately, the global financial crisis of 2008 signifies the deep-seated failure of our conventional socio-economic, ethical and political models. But the ‘credit crunch’ is only one face of global crisis. We also face two other interrelated major ‘crunches’ this century – 1) oil and energy depletion, with evidence that world oil production already peaked in 2006; and 2) dangerous global warming, with evidence that current rates of increase of fossil fuel emissions will lead to a rise of 2-4 degrees Celsius, permanently disrupting Earth’s ecosystems.
The mantra that ‘there is no alternative’ is untenable: neoliberal capitalism encourages forms of unthinking consumerism and unrestrained corporate empowerment that are together destroying the Earth’s ecosystems and depleting our energy resources beyond repair. The unprecedented convergence of global economic, ecological and energy crises threatens the viability of industrial civilization, and proves the urgency of immediate social structural reforms.
Such reforms will have to deal with the following structural features of the current global system, among many others:
1) Global inequalities in ownership of productive resources: Currently around 5 per cent of the world population owns the world’s productive resources. The rest of the population are separated from the means of production, and are forced into various forms of wage labour or servitude to survive. This requires extensive new thinking on how to increase access to, and ownership of, productive resources on the part of the majority of the world population, while respecting individual liberties and private enterprise.
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