This is why at this juncture, we can no longer afford to choose capitalism. Capitalism sees even the worsening of the global environmental crisis, climate change and all, as just another opportunity to make money. A rampant wildfire is an opportunity to sell wildfire insurance; a plague of locusts is an occasion to sell more fertilizer. So-called Negative Emissions Technologies, as we’ve learned, may produce side effects that ruin the planet, but even these can be seen as yet more business opportunities. This is precisely what Naomi Klein characterized as “disaster capitalism.”
