Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

I’ll start with the environment. The reality is that under capitalist conditions—meaning maximization of short-term gain—you’re ultimately going to destroy the environment: the only question is when. Now, for a long time, it’s been possible to pretend that the environment is an infinite source and an infinite sink. Neither is true obviously, and we’re now sort of approaching the point where you can’t keep playing the game too much longer. It may not be very far off. Well, dealing with that problem is going to require large-scale social changes of an almost unimaginable kind. For one thing, it’s going to certainly require large-scale social planning, and that means participatory social planning if it’s going to be at all meaningful. It’s also going to require a general recognition among human beings that an economic system driven by greed is going to self-destruct—it’s only a question of time before you make the planet unlivable, by destroying the ozone layer or some other way.46 And that means huge socio-psychological changes have to take place if the human species is going to survive very much longer. So that’s a big factor.