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The Extraction Mentality
Why Capitalism isn’t our main problem
We often read that our problem with fighting climate change isn’t burning fossil fuels itself, it is consumption. Then we hear that even consumption wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for something much deeper, namely capitalism.
But we can go even further than that — it is not just capitalism, it is extraction — something that is a property of all modern systems, including the devil itself; communism.
Earth is one giant spaceship. All materials are being used in a closed-loop. A minor fraction might escape, a few rocks might fall on it, but by and large, it is all just a giant recycling machine.
The problem with modern economies is not only that we consume, but that we extract materials and energy from the planetary system and don’t return them back into the loop.
Some cycles may be as short as a second, some last for millions of years.
Side note: as long as we’re not constructing massive space ships nothing really leaves the Earth, so the problem of human intervention is not that we extract materials per se, but that we displace them out of their cycles. It is not an extraction but rather a displacement problem. However, on a scale of human perception, the term extraction is easier to understand and visualise.
