It's too late': David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost.

[Ol Janx Spirit]

50. Democracy and capitalism are human inventions intended to solve the very specific issues...

...of the ill effects of entrenched political power and the need for a system to unleash the benefits of human ingenuity.

Both have actually worked pretty well as intended for the most part. But the law of unintended consequences is as constant as gravity.

It turns out that democracy is good at solving problems with a fairly short-term horizon, but it struggles to deal with long-term issues because of the continually changing political landscape it encourages. It leaves us incredibly vulnerable to long-term problems like climate change, because the effects of a long-term problem must become a short-term problem before democracy can deal with it--and at that point it is too late.

And this might not be such a big issue if it weren't for the invention of capitalism. Prior to large-scale capitalism the world was held far more static from a production standpoint. In a barter system it made little sense to overproduce since the market for your goods was limited and you efforts were unlikely to gain you very much. Ingenuity was limited to those things that could help make your work easier or help you defend yourself from invaders or be a more successful one. Capitalism would expand the concept of credit into factories and automobiles and airplanes and spaceships and cell phones and the Internet and AI--converting the earth's resources into commodities to be purchased and into CO2.

The unintended consequences of democracy and capitalism are unfortunately currently out-of-control environmental destruction. At this point, something not manmade will likely need to intervene: volcanic eruptions, climate cycles we currently do not understand, aliens offering new technology....