1. Maintain cost competitiveness in the domestic market;
2. Expanding sales and gaining global market share;
3. Deal with specialized industries;
4. Lower production costs in one country versus another;
5. Access to natural resources of another country; and
6. Making available to consumer tastes and choices that are only found in another country or are more competitive from another country.

1. standards, labelling, testing, types of certification;
2. import policies reflected in tariffs quotas, licensing, customs practices;
3. subsidies for local exporters;
4. non-existent copyright protection;
5. restructions of foreign direct investments; and
6. restrictions on licensing, franchising, and technology transfer.

The extinction crisis was caused by an economic system based on capitalism which promotes accumulation by dispossession, and ceaseless growth designed and calculated to encourage a higher yearly GDP that is destroying ecosystems the world over. The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is thus forcing us to work harder to surpass previous GDP consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and scorched planet. This system made it possible for 1% of people in the world, namely Transnational Corporations CEOs, and mostly global corporate America, to have as much wealth as half the world's population, with always the overriding goal for which maximal profits, and not the needs and welfare of future generations. Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transportation of goods in the world has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence has meant that the consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence of the global power of this 1% so, in that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate global ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. In a nutshell, capitalism is responsible for the extinction crisis and, therefore, its defenders and endorsers, mainly the CEOs of corporate America at home and overseas, including their Chief Operating Officers, Board of directors, and Chief Financial Officers, should be brought to justice.

Developed economies have been emitting most of the greenhouse gases that had caused the global warming of our planet, climate change, rising sea levels, and today's environmental and life extinction crisis. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation and production by the developed economies mean a commitment to greenhouse gases pollution. The United States of America has been by far the worst polluter and largely responsible for the crisis in the world today.

What is going on today, the extinction crisis, is largely due to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when natural resources are exhausted. However, greenhouse gases pollution produced in this economic system not only impairs life, but is causing the global warming of the planet, acidifying the oceans, and will be ending life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. So we have now recognized that both the global environmental problem and the social justice issue associated with the crisis are linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other life forms, and plants. The crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice.

This 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine our survival or not as a species and, consequently, the survival of the next generations. The Biosphere is our world, our home. The lives of all lifeforms and plants on our planet deserve protection, preservation, and care. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, environmental and climate justice. 

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, developed economies have been emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) which created global warming and today's environmental crisis, and that makes the capitalism system responsible, and we must first change it. By far, the nation that started, and still is pursuing the largest production of GHGs ever since WWII is America. And America is largely responsible for the global warming of the planet and, therefore the increase in the Earth’s surface temperature, the rising of sea level, climate change, and many other worldwide disasters. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation means a commitment to GHG pollution over 16 times greater than the world’s present remaining Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise. America is to be blamed for the extinction crisis, and should pay. 

The extinction crisis is an environmental issue and also a social justice issue, one that is linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, animals, and plants. The extinction crisis needs to be seen as a key element in contemporary struggles against accumulation by dispossession. This crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. 

The 1% people have as much wealth as half the world's population, and are controlling all economies on the planet. They stand behind a capitalist model of an economic system. 

Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, and in which the histories of all products will be lost. It is now increasingly evident that only by sharing the world's natural resources more equitably and sustainably will we be able to address both the ecological and social crisis we face as Global Civilization. 

The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence mean that the American consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence and reflection of the global power of Transnational Corporations(TNCs), corporate America. Global warming and climate change denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is that the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years. In that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. Globalization has meant the distancing of cause and effect, source and sink, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transport of goods has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. 

How can further troubles not come into being when a vicious globalized capitalist system is in existence for which maximal profits, not people and their needs, is always the overriding goal? The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is forcing us to work harder to surpass previous consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and a scorched planet. 

What is going on today is largely attributable to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when resources are exhausted. However, we also have a double whammy, that of pollution which impairs life and the carbon that’s heating the biosphere and acidifying the oceans, they would end life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. 

Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”). Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live and what they should believe in. 

The word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about  money and markets. But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition. 

Hence, with the dollar as world money the US gains an automatic borrowing mechanism giving it global policy autonomy denied other states. Given a current account deficit financed by savings of others in the world, US government spending on global militarization and other priorities can expand without “crowding out” private sector borrowing.

The main source of economic reliability in America was transferred over time from gold to dollars, specifically to US treasury bills. This major shift allowed the Federal Reserve to print dollars practically without limit (as seen in recent years with interests rates for borrowing money from the FED at around 0%), well aware that the demand for dollars would never cease, this also keeping alive huge sectors of private and public enterprises (such as the coal industry, fracking industry, car manufacturing, food and farming industries, and most importantly the military industry which has always giving jobs to more than half of America's population). This set a course for a global economic system based on financial instruments like derivatives and other securities instead of real, tangible goods like gold. In doing this for its own benefit, the US has created the conditions for a new financial bubble that could even bring down the entire world economy when it bursts. 

To become great again, the US parlayed the world’s largest national debt, its trade deficit, budget deficit, capital account deficit and savings rate deficit, into a position in the global driver seat through the dollar remaining global hub currency. 

Naturally, the more the dollar was used in the world, the more America had the power to spend on the military. For the US, paying a bill of 6 trillion dollars (this is the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) has been effortless, and this constitutes an unparalleled advantage over countries like China and Russia whose military spending in comparison is a fifth and a tenth respectively. 

The United States found itself in the enviable position of being able to print pieces of paper (simply IOU’s) without any gold backing and then exchange them for real goods from other nations. 

This economic arrangement has allowed America to achieve an unparalleled strategic advantage over its geopolitical opponents (initially the USSR, now Russia and China), namely, a practically unlimited dollar spending capacity even as it accumulates an astronomical public debt (over 21 trillion dollars). The destabilizing factor for the global economy has been America's ability to accumulate enormous amounts of public debt without having to worry about the consequences or even of any possible mistrust international markets may have for the dollar. Countries simply needed dollars for trade and bought US treasures to diversify their financial assets. 

What would be the shape and fundamental goals of an expansive anti-capitalist movement against extinction and for environmental justice? It would have to commence with open recognition by the developed nations of the long history of ecocide. Such an admission would lead to a consequent recognition of the biodiversity debt owed by the wealthy nations of the global North to the South. Building on the demands articulated by the climate justice movement, the anti-capitalist conservation movement must demand the repayment of this biodiversity debt. 

This proposal is based on moving towards a situation in which all nations have the same level of emissions per person (convergence) while contracting them to a level that is sustainable (contraction). A country such as the United States, which has only 5% of the global population, would be allowed no more than 5% of globally sustainable emissions. Such a move would represent a dramatic anti-imperialist shift since the US is at present responsible for 25% of carbon emissions. The powerful individuals and corporations that control nations like the US are not likely to accept such revolutionary curtailments of the wasteful system that supports them without a struggle. Already there is abundant evidence that they would sooner destroy the planet than let even a modicum of their power slip. 

Massive fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon, for example, have funded climate change denialism for the past quarter century despite abundant evidence from their own scientists that burning fossil fuels was creating unsustainable environmental conditions. Such behavior should be seen frankly for what it is: a crime against humanity. We should not expect to negotiate with such destructive entities. Their assets should be seized. Most of these assets, in the form of fossil fuel reserves, cannot be used anyway if we are to avert environmental catastrophe. What remains of these assets should be used to fund a rapid, managed reduction in carbon emissions and a transition to renewable energy generation. These steps should be part of a broader program to transform the current, unsustainable capitalist system that dominates the world into steady state societies founded on principles of equality and environmental justice. 

A legally imposed contraction of the fossil energy supply and a rapid global conversion to renewable energy, is a necessary step toward saving our world, Earth. So what should Society do to avoid the worst impacts of climate change? Capitalism is based on ceaseless compound growth that is destroying ecosystems the world over, the goal in the rich nations of the global North must be to overturn our present expansionary system by fostering de-growth . Most importantly, nations that have benefited from burning fossil fuels must radically cut their carbon emissions in order to stem the lurch towards runaway climate chaos that endangers the vast majority of current terrestrial forms of life.

The extinction crisis was caused by an economic system based on capitalism which promotes accumulation by dispossession, and ceaseless growth designed and calculated to encourage a higher yearly GDP that is destroying ecosystems the world over. The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is thus forcing us to work harder to surpass previous GDP consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and scorched planet. This system made it possible for 1% of people in the world, namely Transnational Corporations CEOs, and mostly global corporate America, to have as much wealth as half the world's population, with always the overriding goal for which maximal profits, and not the needs and welfare of future generations. Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transportation of goods in the world has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence has meant that the consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence of the global power of this 1% so, in that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate global ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. In a nutshell, capitalism is responsible for the extinction crisis and, therefore, its defenders and endorsers, mainly the CEOs of corporate America at home and overseas, including their Chief Operating Officers, Board of directors, and Chief Financial Officers, should be brought to justice.

Developed economies have been emitting most of the greenhouse gases that had caused the global warming of our planet, climate change, rising sea levels, and today's environmental and life extinction crisis. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation and production by the developed economies mean a commitment to greenhouse gases pollution. The United States of America has been by far the worst polluter and largely responsible for the crisis in the world today.

What is going on today, the extinction crisis, is largely due to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when natural resources are exhausted. However, greenhouse gases pollution produced in this economic system not only impairs life, but is causing the global warming of the planet, acidifying the oceans, and will be ending life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. So we have now recognized that both the global environmental problem and the social justice issue associated with the crisis are linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other life forms, and plants. The crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice.

This 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine our survival or not as a species and, consequently, the survival of the next generations. The Biosphere is our world, our home. The lives of all lifeforms and plants on our planet deserve protection, preservation, and care. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, environmental and climate justice. 

The extinction crisis is an environmental issue and also a social justice issue, one that is linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, animals, and plants. The extinction crisis needs to be seen as a key element in contemporary struggles against accumulation by dispossession. This crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. 

The 1% people have as much wealth as half the world's population, and are controlling all economies on the planet. They stand behind a capitalist model of an economic system. 

Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, and in which the histories of all products will be lost. It is now increasingly evident that only by sharing the world's natural resources more equitably and sustainably will we be able to address both the ecological and social crisis we face as Global Civilization. 

The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence mean that the American consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence and reflection of the global power of Transnational Corporations(TNCs), corporate America. Global warming and climate change denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is that the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years. In that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. Globalization has meant the distancing of cause and effect, source and sink, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transport of goods has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. 

How can further troubles not come into being when a vicious globalized capitalist system is in existence for which maximal profits, not people and their needs, is always the overriding goal? The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is forcing us to work harder to surpass previous consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and a scorched planet. 

What is going on today is largely attributable to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when resources are exhausted. However, we also have a double whammy, that of pollution which impairs life and the carbon that’s heating the biosphere and acidifying the oceans, they would end life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. 

Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”). Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live and what they should believe in. 

The word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about  money and markets. But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition. 

Hence, with the dollar as world money the US gains an automatic borrowing mechanism giving it global policy autonomy denied other states. Given a current account deficit financed by savings of others in the world, US government spending on global militarization and other priorities can expand without “crowding out” private sector borrowing.

The main source of economic reliability in America was transferred over time from gold to dollars, specifically to US treasury bills. This major shift allowed the Federal Reserve to print dollars practically without limit (as seen in recent years with interests rates for borrowing money from the FED at around 0%), well aware that the demand for dollars would never cease, this also keeping alive huge sectors of private and public enterprises (such as the coal industry, fracking industry, car manufacturing, food and farming industries, and most importantly the military industry which has always giving jobs to more than half of America's population). This set a course for a global economic system based on financial instruments like derivatives and other securities instead of real, tangible goods like gold. In doing this for its own benefit, the US has created the conditions for a new financial bubble that could even bring down the entire world economy when it bursts. 

To become great again, the US parlayed the world’s largest national debt, its trade deficit, budget deficit, capital account deficit and savings rate deficit, into a position in the global driver seat through the dollar remaining global hub currency. 

Naturally, the more the dollar was used in the world, the more America had the power to spend on the military. For the US, paying a bill of 6 trillion dollars (this is the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) has been effortless, and this constitutes an unparalleled advantage over countries like China and Russia whose military spending in comparison is a fifth and a tenth respectively. 

The United States found itself in the enviable position of being able to print pieces of paper (simply IOU’s) without any gold backing and then exchange them for real goods from other nations. 

This economic arrangement has allowed America to achieve an unparalleled strategic advantage over its geopolitical opponents (initially the USSR, now Russia and China), namely, a practically unlimited dollar spending capacity even as it accumulates an astronomical public debt (over 21 trillion dollars). The destabilizing factor for the global economy has been America's ability to accumulate enormous amounts of public debt without having to worry about the consequences or even of any possible mistrust international markets may have for the dollar. Countries simply needed dollars for trade and bought US treasures to diversify their financial assets. 

What would be the shape and fundamental goals of an expansive anti-capitalist movement against extinction and for environmental justice? It would have to commence with open recognition by the developed nations of the long history of ecocide. Such an admission would lead to a consequent recognition of the biodiversity debt owed by the wealthy nations of the global North to the South. Building on the demands articulated by the climate justice movement, the anti-capitalist conservation movement must demand the repayment of this biodiversity debt. 

This proposal is based on moving towards a situation in which all nations have the same level of emissions per person (convergence) while contracting them to a level that is sustainable (contraction). A country such as the United States, which has only 5% of the global population, would be allowed no more than 5% of globally sustainable emissions. Such a move would represent a dramatic anti-imperialist shift since the US is at present responsible for 25% of carbon emissions. The powerful individuals and corporations that control nations like the US are not likely to accept such revolutionary curtailments of the wasteful system that supports them without a struggle. Already there is abundant evidence that they would sooner destroy the planet than let even a modicum of their power slip. 

Massive fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon, for example, have funded climate change denialism for the past quarter century despite abundant evidence from their own scientists that burning fossil fuels was creating unsustainable environmental conditions. Such behavior should be seen frankly for what it is: a crime against humanity. We should not expect to negotiate with such destructive entities. Their assets should be seized. Most of these assets, in the form of fossil fuel reserves, cannot be used anyway if we are to avert environmental catastrophe. What remains of these assets should be used to fund a rapid, managed reduction in carbon emissions and a transition to renewable energy generation. These steps should be part of a broader program to transform the current, unsustainable capitalist system that dominates the world into steady state societies founded on principles of equality and environmental justice. 

A legally imposed contraction of the fossil energy supply and a rapid global conversion to renewable energy, is a necessary step toward saving our world, Earth. So what should Society do to avoid the worst impacts of climate change? Capitalism is based on ceaseless compound growth that is destroying ecosystems the world over, the goal in the rich nations of the global North must be to overturn our present expansionary system by fostering de-growth . Most importantly, nations that have benefited from burning fossil fuels must radically cut their carbon emissions in order to stem the lurch towards runaway climate chaos that endangers the vast majority of current terrestrial forms of life.

Over ancient time to this day, morality in society made its way into our ways of doing business. So the set of behaviors that constitute Global Civilizational State ethic for a business evolved largely because they provided possible survival benefits to increase evolutionary success. Consequently, peoples evolved socially to express emotions, such as feelings of empathy or guilt, in response to these moral behaviors. Humans developed truly moral, altruistic instincts. When looking across cultures of geo-cultural areas and across millennia, certain virtues have prevailed in all cultures, the major ones include

wisdom, knowledge, courage, justice, love, truth, empathy, kindness, and social intelligence.

Ecosystems are capital assets and when properly managed, they yield a flow of vital goods and services. Relative to other forms of capital, however, ecosystems are poorly understood, scarcely monitored, and in many important cases undergoing rapid degradation. The process of economic valuation could greatly improve stewardship. The question at stake here is whether it is possible to grow the economy and, at the very same time, achieve an absolute reduction in the throughput of energy and materials, that is, to decouple growth from increased material and energy usage. More specifically, in relation to the climate crisis, is it possible to grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions at the same time? Various proponents of degrowth do not deny that it is possible. In the past, Global Community has showed that energy production and world GDP are highly correlated and, since most of the energy is derived from fossil fuels, this involves increased emissions. Unless the connection between growth of production and growth of emissions can be broken, and to a sufficient extent, there can be no reduction of carbon emissions without an end to growth – indeed without contraction. When the USA military is invading or declaring war to an other nation and destroy this other nation, then it owns it, and the reconstruction of the other nation should be an import. The rebuilding includes infrastructure, social and housing habitats, health care, and countless activities to make this other nation (s) a sustainable place to live in. When the USA helps another nation militarily (such as Israel, Saudi Arabia) and those other nations destroy other nations using the military USA hardware and other services, then the costs of those expenses should be condidered as imports when calculating the real GDP. The costs of rebuilding those other nations destroyed by friendly or allies nations are also the USA costs and should also be imports. Biodiversity studies comprise the systematic examination of the full array of different kinds of organisms together with the technology by which the diversity can be maintained and used for the benefit of humanity. Current basic research at the species level focuses on the process of species formation, the standing levels of species numbers in various higher taxonomic categories, and the phenomena of hyperdiversity and extinction proneness. The major practical concern is the massive extinction rate now caused by human activity, which threatens losses in the esthetic quality of the world, in economic opportunity, and in vital ecosystem services. Obvious examples of ecosystem services, let us take a look at human ectivities on rainforests.

Most of the world's rainforest has been severely impacted by human activities. Yes, impacts are severe. Some are listed in the following table.

The extinction crisis was caused by an economic system based on capitalism which promotes accumulation by dispossession, and ceaseless growth designed and calculated to encourage a higher yearly GDP that is destroying ecosystems the world over. The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is thus forcing us to work harder to surpass previous GDP consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and scorched planet. This system made it possible for 1% of people in the world, namely Transnational Corporations CEOs, and mostly global corporate America, to have as much wealth as half the world's population, with always the overriding goal for which maximal profits, and not the needs and welfare of future generations. Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transportation of goods in the world has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence has meant that the consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence of the global power of this 1% so, in that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate global ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. In a nutshell, capitalism is responsible for the extinction crisis and, therefore, its defenders and endorsers, mainly the CEOs of corporate America at home and overseas, including their Chief Operating Officers, Board of directors, and Chief Financial Officers, should be brought to justice. Developed economies have been emitting most of the greenhouse gases that had caused the global warming of our planet, climate change, rising sea levels, and today's environmental and life extinction crisis. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation and production by the developed economies mean a commitment to greenhouse gases pollution. The United States of America has been by far the worst polluter and largely responsible for the crisis in the world today.

What is going on today, the extinction crisis, is largely due to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when natural resources are exhausted. However, greenhouse gases pollution produced in this economic system not only impairs life, but is causing the global warming of the planet, acidifying the oceans, and will be ending life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. So we have now recognized that both the global environmental problem and the social justice issue associated with the crisis are linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other life forms, and plants. The crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice.

This 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine our survival or not as a species and, consequently, the survival of the next generations. The Biosphere is our world, our home. The lives of all lifeforms and plants on our planet deserve protection, preservation, and care. The genomic information of plants, other lifeforms, and human beings is the common wealth of the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, environmental and climate justice.  Global Civilizational State disapproves of the limitless exploitation of the natural foundations of life, the relentless destruction of the biosphere, and the militarization of the space within and above the Earth's atmosphere. Several important causes of Global Warming, Climate Change, and the extinction crisis, have given rise of an existential threat to humanity and much of Nature.   Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, developed economies have been emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) which created global warming and today's environmental crisis, and that makes the capitalism system responsible, and we must first change it. By far, the nation that started, and still is pursuing the largest production of GHGs ever since WWII is America. And America is largely responsible for the global warming of the planet and, therefore the increase in the Earth’s surface temperature, the rising of sea level, climate change, and many other worldwide disasters. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation means a commitment to GHG pollution over 16 times greater than the world’s present remaining Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise. America is to be blamed for the extinction crisis, and should pay.  The extinction crisis is an environmental issue and also a social justice issue, one that is linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other lifeforms, and plants. The extinction crisis needs to be seen as a key element in contemporary struggles against accumulation by dispossession. This crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. 

Democratic socialism advocates that the control and management of natural resources be under the control of the people. The 1 % super rich people worldwide who thrive within capitalism, must be overthrown. This new way of governing can be achieve through legitimate democratic means by voting in a party that represents this way of governing. Democratic socialism plus implies public owership, not private ownership of natural resources.

Democratic socialism means equality in a democratic state, and is attainable only through the ballot box, by voting, Free and fair election determine changes in government and society. Democratic socialism accommodates dissent and opposing points of view. It ensures a society free from oppression and midnight knocks. It fights dictatorships and control of the super rich 1% of the world population over the natural resources on the planet which caused the planetary state of emergency crisis worlwide, an environmental crisis, a global warming out of control, a climate change crisis, a life extinction crisis, and a widespread life extinctions. Wherever there are people, there will be conflicts, and ethics can help to resolve conflicts. Global Civilizational State proposes that such conflicts be resolved without violence and within a framework of justice. People must commit themselves to the most nonviolent, peaceful solutions possible. This is the pathway to global peace. Over ancient time to this day, morality in society made its way into our ways of doing business. So the set of behaviors that constitute Global Civilizational State ethic for a business evolved largely because they provided possible survival benefits to increase evolutionary success. Consequently, Peoples evolved socially to express emotions, such as feelings of empathy or guilt, in response to these moral behaviors. Humans developed truly moral, altruistic instincts. When looking across cultures of geo-cultural areas and across millennia, certain virtues have prevailed in all cultures, the major ones include wisdom, knowledge, courage, justice, love, truth, empathy, kindness, and social intelligence. These virtues were not always incorporated into the ways of doing business because the 1% business world became corrupted, greedy, no longer in line with humanity's survival on the planet, and more interested in keeping most of the wealth, resources and power for themselves keeping the remaining 99% of the world population in poverty. But today we are going to incorporate these virtues and proper behaviors into corporate citizen global ethics. Because today is time to participate and conduct meaningful action to save the world. Let us show the world a truly sustainable governance by promoting what we want and how we have already started to include people in Global Community ways.

The 1% people have as much wealth as half the world's population, and are controlling all economies on the planet. They stand behind an economic system based on a capitalist model.  Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, and in which the histories of all products will be lost. It is now increasingly evident that only by sharing the world's natural resources more equitably and sustainably will we be able to address both the ecological and social crisis we face as Global Civilization.  The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence mean that the American consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence and reflection of the global power of Transnational Corporations(TNCs), corporate America. Global warming and climate change denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is that the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years. In that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. Globalization has meant the distancing of cause and effect, source and sink, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transport of goods has remained invisible and opaque to consumers.  How can further troubles not come into being when a vicious globalized capitalist system is in existence for which maximal profits, not people and their needs, is always the overriding goal? The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is forcing us to work harder to surpass previous consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and a scorched planet.  What is going on today is largely attributable to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when resources are exhausted. However, the pollution which impairs life and the carbon that’s heating the biosphere and acidifying the oceans, would end life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion.  Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”). Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live and what they should believe in.  The word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about  money and markets. But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition.  Hence, with the dollar as world money the US gains an automatic borrowing mechanism giving it global policy autonomy denied other states. Given a current account deficit financed by savings of others in the world, US government spending on global militarization and other priorities can expand without “crowding out” private sector borrowing. The main source of economic reliability in America was transferred over time from gold to dollars, specifically to US treasury bills. This major shift allowed the Federal Reserve to print dollars practically without limit (as seen in recent years with interests rates for borrowing money from the FED at around 0%), well aware that the demand for dollars would never cease, this also keeping alive huge sectors of private and public enterprises (such as the coal industry, fracking industry, car manufacturing, food and farming industries, and most importantly the military industry which has always giving jobs to more than half of America's population). This set a course for a global economic system based on financial instruments like derivatives and other securities instead of real, tangible goods like gold. In doing this for its own benefit, the US has created the conditions for a new financial bubble that could even bring down the entire world economy when it bursts.  To become great again, the US parlayed the world’s largest national debt, its trade deficit, budget deficit, capital account deficit and savings rate deficit, into a position in the global driver seat through the dollar remaining global hub currency.  Naturally, the more the dollar was used in the world, the more America had the power to spend on the military. For the US, paying a bill of 6 trillion dollars (this is the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) has been effortless, and this constitutes an unparalleled advantage over countries like China and Russia whose military spending in comparison is a fifth and a tenth respectively.  The United States found itself in the enviable position of being able to print pieces of paper (simply IOU’s) without any gold backing and then exchange them for real goods from other nations.  This economic arrangement has allowed America to achieve an unparalleled strategic advantage over its geopolitical opponents (initially the USSR, now Russia and China), namely, a practically unlimited dollar spending capacity even as it accumulates an astronomical public debt (over 21 trillion dollars). The destabilizing factor for the global economy has been America's ability to accumulate enormous amounts of public debt without having to worry about the consequences or even of any possible mistrust international markets may have for the dollar. Countries simply needed dollars for trade and bought US treasures to diversify their financial assets. 

Human impacts on the environment are intensifying, raising vexing questions of how best to allocate the limited resources available for biodiversity conservation. Which creatures and places most deserve attention? Which should we ignore, potentially accepting their extinction? The answer to this dilemma depends on one's objectives. To motivate action, conservationists often mix diverse ethical and practical objectives, hoping they will reinforce each other. But attention given to one goal may instead diminish the prospects for achieving others.

One tends to be alarmed at the popular concept of globalization because  it is based on greed. Globalization is here to stay and is a fact of life. The world has become global. Societies throughout the world are struggling to be in step with the most powerful nations. National economies and financial markets are connected through computer link-up and are interlocked. Commercial banking and business ownership has no economic or political borders. Because of the dynamic of trade in goods and services and because of the movement in capital and technology, production in different countries has become increasingly dependent on one another.

In consequence of globalization, the new economic and political distribution of power around the world has become very different then we were used to. It has become very fluid, in perpetual motion and affected by global markets. Giant new markets are forming all over the world. Competition is hardening. National economies can no longer insure or guarantee rights of possession on any property. National borders no longer mean protection, security, cultural boundaries, resources ownership, political and economic control.

The extinction crisis was caused by an economic system based on capitalism which promotes accumulation by dispossession, and ceaseless growth designed and calculated to encourage a higher yearly GDP that is destroying ecosystems the world over. The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is thus forcing us to work harder to surpass previous GDP consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and scorched planet. This system made it possible for 1% of people in the world, namely Transnational Corporations CEOs, and mostly global corporate America, to have as much wealth as half the world's population, with always the overriding goal for which maximal profits, and not the needs and welfare of future generations. Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transportation of goods in the world has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence has meant that the consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence of the global power of this 1% so, in that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate global ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. In a nutshell, capitalism is responsible for the extinction crisis and, therefore, its defenders and endorsers, mainly the CEOs of corporate America at home and overseas, including their Chief Operating Officers, Board of directors, and Chief Financial Officers, should be brought to justice. Developed economies have been emitting most of the greenhouse gases that had caused the global warming of our planet, climate change, rising sea levels, and today's environmental and life extinction crisis. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation and production by the developed economies mean a commitment to greenhouse gases pollution. The United States of America has been by far the worst polluter and largely responsible for the crisis in the world today.

What is going on today, the extinction crisis, is largely due to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when natural resources are exhausted. However, greenhouse gases pollution produced in this economic system not only impairs life, but is causing the global warming of the planet, acidifying the oceans, and will be ending life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. So we have now recognized that both the global environmental problem and the social justice issue associated with the crisis are linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other life forms, and plants. The crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. This 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine our survival or not as a species and, consequently, the survival of the next generations. The Biosphere is our world, our home. The lives of all lifeforms and plants on our planet deserve protection, preservation, and care. The genomic information of plants, other lifeforms, and human beings is the common wealth of the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, environmental and climate justice.  Global Civilizational State disapproves of the limitless exploitation of the natural foundations of life, the relentless destruction of the biosphere, and the militarization of the space within and above the Earth's atmosphere. Several important causes of Global Warming, Climate Change, and the extinction crisis, have given rise of an existential threat to humanity and much of Nature.   Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, developed economies have been emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) which created global warming and today's environmental crisis, and that makes the capitalism system responsible, and we must first change it. By far, the nation that started, and still is pursuing the largest production of GHGs ever since WWII is America. And America is largely responsible for the global warming of the planet and, therefore the increase in the Earth’s surface temperature, the rising of sea level, climate change, and many other worldwide disasters. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation means a commitment to GHG pollution over 16 times greater than the world’s present remaining Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise. America is to be blamed for the extinction crisis, and should pay.  The extinction crisis is an environmental issue and also a social justice issue, one that is linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other lifeforms, and plants. The extinction crisis needs to be seen as a key element in contemporary struggles against accumulation by dispossession. This crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. 

Human impacts on the environment are intensifying, raising vexing questions of how best to allocate the limited resources available for biodiversity conservation. Which creatures and places most deserve attention? Which should we ignore, potentially accepting their extinction? The answer to this dilemma depends on one's objectives. To motivate action, conservationists often mix diverse ethical and practical objectives, hoping they will reinforce each other. But attention given to one goal may instead diminish the prospects for achieving others.

Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases; and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects. The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations where individuals and nations will collectively gain if all cooperate, but each faces the temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others. The nation-state achieves cooperation by the exercise of sovereign power within its boundaries. The difficulty to date is that transnational institutions provide, at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by international competition and recalcitrance.

One tends to be alarmed at the popular concept of globalization because  it is based on greed. Globalization is here to stay and is a fact of life. The world has become global. Societies throughout the world are struggling to be in step with the most powerful nations. National economies and financial markets are connected through computer link-up and are interlocked. Commercial banking and business ownership has no economic or political borders. Because of the dynamic of trade in goods and services and because of the movement in capital and technology, production in different countries has become increasingly dependent on one another.

In consequence of globalization, the new economic and political distribution of power around the world has become very different then we were used to. It has become very fluid, in perpetual motion and affected by global markets. Giant new markets are forming all over the world. Competition is hardening. National economies can no longer insure or guarantee rights of possession on any property. National borders no longer mean protection, security, cultural boundaries, resources ownership, political and economic control.

Our current economic systems have become addicted to “growth at all costs”, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). They assume that GDP growth is synonymous with increasing wellbeing and prosperity. However this approach has led to growing inequality, an escalating climate crisis, and the depletion of natural and social capital. We are no longer generating genuine progress. Our approach to economics and development needs fundamental transformation.

A global movement is coalescing among a large number of individuals and organizations around the need to shift economies away from a narrow focus on marketed goods and services (i.e. GDP) to one more broadly focused on ‘sustainable wellbeing’. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a step in this direction, encompassing a broad set of 17 goals that go far beyond GDP growth, and include eliminating hunger and poverty, reducing gender and overall inequality, urgent action on climate change, and restoring marine and terrestrial ecosystems. So what is a wellbeing economy? A wellbeing economy has the fundamental goal of achieving sustainable wellbeing with dignity and fairness for humans and the rest of nature. This is in stark contrast to current economies that are wedded to a very narrow vision of development, indiscriminate growth of GDP. A wellbeing economy recognizes that the economy is embedded in society and nature. It must be understood and managed as an integrated, interdependent system.

Wellbeing is the outcome of a convergence of factors, including good human mental and physical health, greater equity and fairness, good social relationships and a flourishing natural environment. Only a holistic approach to prosperity can therefore achieve and sustain wellbeing. A system of economic governance aimed at promoting wellbeing will therefore need to account for all of the impacts (both positive and negative) of economic activity. This includes valuing goods and services derived from a healthy society (social capital) and a thriving biosphere (natural capital). Social and natural capital are part of the commons. They are not (and should not be) owned by anyone in particular, but make significant contributions to sustainable wellbeing. True freedom and success depend on a world where we all prosper and flourish. Institutions serve humanity best when they foster our individual dignity while enhancing our interconnectedness. To thrive, all institutions (including businesses) and society must pivot toward a new purpose: shared wellbeing on a healthy planet. To achieve a wellbeing economy, a major transformation of our world view, society and economy are needed to:

1.Stay within planetary biophysical boundaries – a sustainable size of the economy within our ecological life support system.

2.Meet all fundamental human needs, including food, shelter, dignity, respect, education, health, security, voice, and purpose, among others.

3.Create and maintain a fair distribution of resources, income, and wealth – within and between nations, current and future generations of humans and other species.

4.Have an efficient allocation of resources, including common natural and social capital assets, to allow inclusive prosperity, human development and flourishing. A wellbeing economy recognizes that happiness, meaning, and thriving depend on far more than material consumption.

5.Create governance systems that are fair, responsive, just and accountable.

There are many individuals and groups who have espoused versions of these basic ideas for decades. They may have used different approaches and different languages, but all share common approaches and, above all, a common goal. Perhaps more important are the many individuals and groups already putting the ideas of a wellbeing economy in practice. These include millions of activists and social entrepreneurs of various types from around the world. The challenge is to acknowledge these many diverse initiatives and harmonize these voices, while allowing a diversity of language to communicate with a variety of audiences. WE-All is fundamentally an effort to do just that – to catalyse a cooperative, harmonized, and unified approach to creating a wellbeing economy.

An economy based on the overriding goal of GDP-growth inevitably crashes through the boundaries of planetary capacity. By affording no value to unexploited resources and assets, and by making no judgments about the quality or meaning or consequence of production and consumption, its growth conflicts with natural and social equilibria. In contrast to this destructive path, the wellbeing economy model specifically strengthens social and natural capital while generating human development. A ‘virtuous circle’ can be created whereby value that is measured in terms of wellbeing feeds the improvements in the human and natural capitals upon which the creation of value depends. The negative impact on the environment will be greatly reduced as the ‘circular economy’ model of resource recycling and systems for up-cycling are integrated into mainstream business models. The ecosystem services that the GDP model considers free of charge will become fully valued components of society’s infrastructure, supported by new common asset governance institutions that connect people more closely to natural ecosystems. Economic ‘growth’ in this model lies not in the exploitation of natural, social, and human resources but in improving the quality and effectiveness of human-to-human and human-to-ecosystem interactions, supported by appropriate enabling technologies.

A major issue in climate economics is whether it is possible to halt the growth in carbon emissions and to achieve, instead, a rapid reduction. Carbon emissions will never fall at a sufficient rate in a growth economy. An entirely different way of thinking about climate issues is needed, one that is consistent with the limits to growth paradigm. The alternative way of framing the climate debate is:

• Humanity is faced with the high likelihood of a catastrophic ecological tipping point and this crisis is part of a general crisis at the limits to economic growth
• There are many unknowns at that tipping point – beyond which there might be runaway climate change because of feedback
• This tipping point imposes the need for an absolute limit on what can safely be emitted and what must be clawed back out of the atmosphere – given the uncertainty with a need for a high margin of safety
• This limit trumps any growth agenda because the danger is so great and ecological scale limits must be imposed in physical quantities (e.g. of allowed carbon emissions) before the market can be allowed to operate
• The limits to economic growth require that climate policy be part of a more general transition of society and economy for which efforts must be made to enrol everyone.
• Techno-innovation may have a role in the transition but will not be the sole or even the main method of reducing energy consumption – moral, cultural, behavioural and other changes are also needed.
• Limits need to be imposed as equitably as possible as part of the larger transition
• We need to get on with this task now, as a matter of urgency

To grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions at the same time can be done with various proponents of degrowth not denying that it is possible to increase the efficiency with which energy and materials are used in the economy. They do not deny that the amount of carbon emitted per unit of output can be decreased.

The question at stake here is whether it is possible to grow the economy and, at the very same time, achieve an absolute reduction in the throughput of energy and materials, that is, to decouple growth from increased material and energy usage. More specifically, in relation to the climate crisis, is it possible to grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions at the same time? Various proponents of degrowth do not deny that it is possible to increase the efficiency with which energy and materials are used in the economy. They do not deny that the amount of carbon emitted per unit of output can be decreased.

No good or service can be produced without energy – even “information” requires energy to run the computers or make and print books, magazines and newspapers. As the economy grows it requires more energy and, because virtually all energy in our society is generated by burning carbon fuels, that means more CO2 emissions.

In the past, It was showed that energy production and world GDP are highly correlated and, since most of the energy is derived from fossil fuels, this involves increased emissions. Unless the connection between growth of production and growth of emissions can be broken, and to a sufficient extent, there can be no reduction of carbon emissions without an end to growth – indeed without contraction.

It may be that depleting fossil fuel supplies and the production crunch brought about by rising energy and material costs that was described in an earlier chapter, will achieve a considerable turn down in carbon emissions anyway. This would not be a particularly pleasant resolution of the crisis but it would certainly change the conditions in which the climate crisis would have to be resolved. On the other hand, the global power elite appear to be hell bent on continuing to extract and use carbon based fossil energy if they can, so we cannot totally be sure if things will evolve into this kind of crunch. This is despite the fact that in 2012 the International Energy Agency acknowledged that 2/3 of recoverable carbon in fuels needs to stay in the ground up to 2050 to have any change of staying below a temperature increase of 2degrees C. This matches findings from the IPCC working group 3. (IPCC.WG3.Final Draft AR5. Presentation 2014)

There is plenty of carbon here to bring greenhouse gas concentration levels well above 600 ppm. As we have already seen, fracking for shale gas is just one of several options being pursued to get new fossil energy sources out of the ground in the face of the depletion gradients, bringing with it the threat of high fugitive methane losses. Underground gasification of coal is another technology based on extracting the energy from deep coal seams by partially burning it underground to extract the energy in the form of syngas. When it comes to the surface, syngas can be burned to generate electricity. If this can be made to work, there are unfortunately very large reserves of coal in the world that can still be used as energy sources.

Worse still, attempts are being made to tap “frozen” methane from the oceans called methane hydrates. This is a dangerous process because methane hydrate unfreezes from its crystalline form directly into methane gas and, when it does so, it enormously expands in volume. The process is thus, very unstable and explosive.

The different components to explain the growth (or reduction) in total emissions are growth of the economy measured as GDP per capita (GDP/population); growth of the population; the energy intensity needed per unit of economic output (energy/GDP) and the emission intensity of that energy (CO2e/energy).

With global population increasing at 1.3% and the global per capita income increasing at 1.4% per year in real terms, the required technical improvement (reduction) in carbon intensity is greater than 2.7% (1.4% + 1.3%) per year. So what has the rate of technical improvement been? Carbon intensity has only been improving at 0.7% per annum. Thus, emissions have been increasing at 2% per annum. While the efficiency with which the global economy uses energy, as measured by the energy/GDP ratio, has continued to improve, the slow decarbonisation of the global energy supply has been put into reverse. The carbon intensity of energy is actually increasing, particularly as more coal is being used. The fact that there is so little sign of hope appears to be because, as depletion has driven up oil and gas supplies and prices, coal is being turned to instead, as well as more emission intensive sources of oil and gas (like Canadian tar sands and shale). Keeping global climate close to a safe range will require a long-term atmospheric CO2 level of about 350 ppm or less. If emissions reduction had begun in 2005, reduction at 3.5%/year would have achieved 350 ppm at 2100. Now the requirement is at least 6%/year. Delay of emissions reductions until 2020 requires a reduction rate of 15%/year to achieve 350 ppm in 2100. If we assume only 50 GtC reforestation, and begin emissions reduction in 2013, the required reduction rate becomes about 9%/year.

Just to stop global emissions growing, if GDP growth rates are 2.7% pa then carbon intensity must reduce at 2.7% per annum, which is nearly 4 times the current rate of improvement. In order for emissions to fall at 10% per annum, if growth continued at 2.7% pa, this would require carbon intensity to improve (reduce) at 12.7 % per annum. This is 18 times the current rate of improvement. Dangerous climate change can only be avoided if economic growth is exchanged for a period of planned austerity within Annex 1 nations at the same time as there is a rapid transition away from fossil-fuelled development within non-Annex 1 nations.

A policy that would lead to a very dramatic process of “degrowth” because production is dependent on energy. With fossil energy availability radically reduced by a cap that really bites, the amount of production in the economy would be driven downwards.

An upstream cap imposed on sellers of coal, oil and gas can cover all fossil fuels entering the economy and would be simple to impose, at least in administrative terms. Most countries already impose duties on fossil fuel sales so there are procedures already in place monitoring the input of fossil fuels into different economies.

Obviously, administrative simplicity is only a part of the problem of setting and operating a cap. Driving a contraction of the economy would be immensely unpopular, unless accompanied by multiple other policies and social changes to enable billions of people to achieve dramatic changes in their lifestyles. These changes should be, above all, concentrated on the rich and would have to be made anyway because of depleting fossil energy and materials resources. Needless to say, this is nothing like the working of the policy architecture designed in Europe by BP, its corporate allies and government. The European Union policy was designed, consciously or unconsciously, to deflect direct controls away from the fossil fuel industry onto its customers. It is riddled with loopholes and special clauses that make it easy for large businesses to game the system and generally to make it unworkable. Because of business pressure so many permits have been issued that there is no real restraint on emissions in practice. Rather than having a direct control over what fossil fuels are allowed into the economy, the policy architecture has been focused upon the users and uses of fossil fuels at the demand end. In the jargon, the policy is imposed “downstream” rather than “upstream”. As is obvious, the number of users and uses of fossil fuels “downstream” is much greater than the number of suppliers “upstream”.

It would have made sense to control emissions by capping the amount of fossil fuels going into the system at the source of initial supply. This is called capping the emissions “upstream”. The fossil fuel suppliers would have to have emissions permits (indicated by the yellow rectangles) to cover the emissions caused by the fossil fuels they bring into the system. What happened instead in Europe was that the ETS was imposed downstream on large fossil fuel users. These are companies running power stations, cement works, steel mills and the like. This covers 45% of the EU’s CO2 emissions. Individuals are not covered in this scheme but could be through “personal carbon trading” (PCA), based on “personal carbon accounts”. The problem is that this would be administratively complex. Everyone would have to have their own personal carbon account, presumably by using a carbon card rather like a debit or credit card. In the early stages of the European ETS, most permits to emit were initially distributed to the main emitters for free. This meant that, to the extent that the permits had any market value, it was the companies that captured their value. The mechanism and reasoning worked like this: companies that have to surrender their permits because they have been emitting CO2 reason that, because the surrendered permits have a market value, surrendering them means the loss of this market value to the company. Thus, as far as the company is concerned, this loss when their permits are surrendered is one of their costs of operation. So, even though they were given the permits in the first place, they pass on this “cost” to their customers in increased prices. Because it was designed by pushers of fossil fuels, the European Union established a system that runs on a “pay the polluter” principle. The idea is supposed to be that, over time, more of the permits will be auctioned by states which will capture the revenue raised. However, there has been some dragging of feet on this and governments are reluctant to implement this system in favour of their fossil fuel corporations. Poland has even wanted to use revenues arising from ETS permits to subsidise new coal fired power stations.

There is certainly no shortage of assets. The 1% rich people on the planet have accumulated their increasingly massive share of global wealth by siphoning off collectively produced surpluses not through hard work but through financial machinations such as dividends, capital gains, interests, and rent, much of which is then hidden in tax havens. Indeed, if we consider the massive upward transfer of global wealth that has taken place over the last half century, it would be fair to say that never before was so much owed by so few to so many. One way to claw back some of this common wealth would be through a financial transactions tax, of even only a very small percentage of the speculative global capital flows that enrich the 1%, would generate billions of dollars to help people conserve hotspots of global biodiversity. Such funds could also be devoted to ramping up renewable energy-generating infrastructures in both the rich and the developing countries. Yet a universal guaranteed income in recognition of biodiversity debt should not be a replacement for existing conservation programs. Instead, such a measure should be seen as an effort to inject an awareness of environmental and climate justice into debates around the extinction crisis. Biodiversity debt would thus augment existing conservation programs while militating against the creation of conservation refugees. Any and all such efforts to work against extinction should be undertaken as acts of environmental solidarity on the part of the peoples of the global North with the true stewards of the planet’s biodiversity, the people of the global South. Only in this way can the struggle against extinction help promote not simply forgiveness and reconciliation, but also survival after five hundred years of colonial and imperial ecocide.

The struggle to preserve global biodiversity must be seen as an integral part of a broader fight to challenge an economic and social system based on feckless, suicidal expansion. If, as we have seen, capitalism is based on ceaseless compound growth that is destroying ecosystems the world over, the goal in the rich nations of the global North must be to overturn our present expansionary system by fostering de-growth . Most importantly, nations that have benefited from burning fossil fuels must radically cut their carbon emissions in order to stem the lurch towards runaway climate chaos that endangers the vast majority of current terrestrial forms of life. Rather than false and impractical solutions such as the carbon trading and geoengineering schemes championed by advocates of neoliberal responses to the climate crisis, anti-capitalists should fight for some version of the contraction and convergence approach proposed by Global Community. This proposal is based on moving towards a situation in which all nations have the same level of emissions per person (convergence) while contracting them to a level that is sustainable (contraction). A country such as the United States, which has only 5% of the global population, would be allowed no more than 5% of globally sustainable emissions. Such a move would represent a dramatic anti-imperialist shift since the US is at present responsible for 25% of carbon emissions. The powerful individuals and corporations that control nations like the US are not likely to accept such revolutionary curtailments of the wasteful system that supports them without a struggle. Already there is abundant evidence that they would sooner destroy the planet than let even a modicum of their power slip. Massive fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon, for example, have funded climate change denialism for the past quarter century despite abundant evidence from their own scientists  that burning fossil fuels was creating unsustainable environmental conditions.  Such behavior should be seen frankly for what it is: a crime against humanity. We should not expect to negotiate with such destructive entities. Their assets should be seized. Most of these assets, in the form of fossil fuel reserves, cannot be used anyway if we are to avert environmental catastrophe. What remains of these assets should be used to fund a rapid, managed reduction in carbon emissions and a transition to renewable energy generation. These steps should be part of a broader program to transform the current, unsustainable capitalist system that dominates the world into steady state societies founded on principles of equality and environmental justice.

Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”).  These types of “value” are seen as extraneous to “the economy.” My colleagues and I wondered if it would be possible to develop a post-capitalist, commons-friendly theory of value that could begin to represent and defend these other types of value. 

What is “value” and how shall we protect it?  It’s a simple question for which we don’t have a satisfactory answer. For conventional economists and politicians, the answer is simple:  value is essentially the same as price. Value results when private property and free markets condense countless individual preferences and purchases into a single, neutral representation of value:  price.  That is seen as the equivalent of “wealth.” This theory of value has always been flawed, both theoretically and empirically, because it obviously ignores many types of “value” that cannot be given a price. No matter, it “works,” and so this theory of value generally prevails in political and policy debates. Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”).  These types of “value” are seen as extraneous to “the economy.” My colleagues and I wondered if it would be possible to develop a post-capitalist, commons-friendly theory of value that could begin to represent and defend these other types of value. Marx’s labor theory of value has long criticized capitalism for failing to recognize the full range of value-creation that make market exchange possible in the first place.  Without the “free,” unpriced services of child-rearing, social cooperation, ethical norms, education and natural systems, markets simply could not exist.  Yet because these nonmarket value-regimes have no pricetags associated with them, they are taken for granted and fiercely exploited as “free resources” by markets. The absence of a credible theory of value is one reason that we have a legitimacy crisis today.  There is no shared moral justification for the power of markets and civil institutions in our lives. Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live.  Consider how the labor of a nurse is regarded under different value regimes, he said:  A nurse working as a paid employee is considered value, creating, a contributor to Gross Domestic Product.  But the same nurse doing the same duties as a government employee is seen as “an expense, not a value-creator,” said Bauwens.  The same nurse working as a volunteer “produces no value at all” by the logic of the market system. It’s perfectly possible to talk about the ‘good life’ without the notion of value.”  The word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about money and markets.  But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition.

Economists are eager to protect their ideas about “value” as money-based and make them normative. Commoners and others, by contrast, want to broaden the meaning of the term to apply to all of human experience. The conventional economic definition of “value” has a significant rhetorical advantage over other notions of value/s.  It can be encapsulated in numbers, manipulated mathematically and ascribed to individuals, giving it a tidy precision.  Value defined as price also has an operational simplicity even though it flattens the messy realities of actual human life and ecosystems. This point is illustrated by open value accounting systems and by organizational experiments in finance, ownership and governance.