Great article Mike. I too feel the desperation you express here. When I came to this country from the UK, having lived a very privileged life, and fleeing from a marriage that would have trapped me in it permanently, I began my education in politics and economics from Richard Parker.

Richard is an economist who wrote a book in 1972 called the Myth of the Middle Class which talks about all of these issues. We worked together with others to found an alternative newspaper in California, which became the kernel of the idea for the magazine Mother Jones. Working there provided me with the material for my first novel as yet unpublished, and I went on to develop a career in non profit administration and policy focusing on arts and on education.

I’ve now come full circle and in retirement started to write science/speculative fiction, seeing it as a good medium through which to explore contemporary science, philosophy, spirituality and politics.

Having researched extensively in the field of climate change I can say positively we are on the road to making our planet uninhabitable for human beings. You are right when you say that predatory capitalism has brought us to this point as well as evolutionary biology.

I doubt sincerely that no matter whom we elect we’ll solve the problem of species extinction fast enough to prevent it from happening. However if you read the Ends of the World you will be encouraged to know that our beautiful planet will one day come back many thousands of years in the future.

I do believe however that it’s incumbent for people like you and I to keep sounding the warning bell. As King Lear said:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!