@bencourtice @pvonhellermannn

I'm with Ben on this. It's always been a polycrisis in that the over-exploitation and pollution of the natural world and of people (both as workers and consumers) is a built-in tendency of capitalism - as is its collapse into fascism when people seriously challenge the over-exploitation. One of the great signs of hope in more recent years is precisely the realisation among both environmentalists and socialists that they are in fact engaged in the very same fight.

Nor do I believe in sudden collapse - indeed I think it's impossible for everything everywhere to fall apart all at once (except in a truly apocalyptic event like all-out nuclear war). Indeed, I tend to think the idea that the world is so capitalist and so interconnected that sudden total environmental collapse is possible is a peculiarly USian perspective, arising partly out of its particular cultural history (cf. the ever-present threat of the 'wild wood' in American Puritan and Romantic arts) and its exceptionalism (all the world is like us).

Rather, the world's likely future is more and more extreme weather events and pollution scandals affecting (disastrously) some people in some places, but observed by others, who gradually learn the lesson that civilisation must take a different direction. This is not to minimise the seriousness of the polycrisis - millions will suffer and die, and not just humans - nor to dilute the demand for urgent action now to minimise this suffering - but it is I believe the realistic view.