Every human being grows we 
grow through childhood,
then when we hit adulthood
we reach a plateau.
Our body has a regulating system which
stops growth beyond a certain point.
Occasionally that system breaks down 
and a cell begins to multiply,
and to grow without regulation
and we call that cancer.
Cancer is basically infinite growth
within a finite living system,
which is the human body.
That is exactly what is
happening with capitalism,
capitalism is dependent
on infinite growth,
within a finite living system
which is the planet.
Capitalism is the planets cancer,
and just like cancer in the human
body we have to cut it out.
All through my adult life have been
railing against corporate capitalism,
and consumer capitalism,
and crony capitalism,
these are the real problems.
and it's taken a long time
for the penny to drop.
Maybe the problem isn't
the kind of capitalism
maybe the problem is capitalism.
So let's look at the
planetary disaster:
We're losing the soil, we're losing the 
fresh water, we're losing the insects,
we're losing all the other astonishing
species that we share this planet with.
We're losing the coral reefs,
we're losing the rainforests,
we're losing everything and it's all
going at a phenomenal rate.
What's causing this?
The driving force is
economic growth.
A global economy growing at 3%
a year doubles every 24 years.
And then it doubles again,
and then it doubles again,
that's the trajectory we're
supposed to be on.
That's what governments want where it
just keeps doubling and doubling.
Which would be just fine if the planet
was growing at the same rate,
but we live on a finite planet,
and infinite growth on a finite planet
is a recipe for catastrophe.
The only way it's been done so
far is to use ever-increasing,
areas of the world as places
we effectively steal from.
Where the most powerful parts of the
world extract materials and cheap labor,
from the weaker
parts of the world.
And then ever greater parts of the
world have to be used as a dump,
to dump our waste until
basically the whole world,
is an extraction
zone and a dump.
The whole atmosphere is the
dump for carbon dioxide,
our cities are a dump for air pollution,
our land is a dump for all the junk,
that we use for a day or two and
then get bored of and pass on.
Which you have to do if economic
growth is going to continue.
If you've got enough money
you can buy a piece of land.
You can buy the right to pollute the
atmosphere with your private plane.
You can buy a bluefin tuna
steak despite the fact,
that you're driving a species
into extinction.
You can buy mahogany furniture,
whose extraction is causing massive
destruction in the Amazon.
Money translates into a
right to natural wealth.
Why, what's the just principle?
There isn't one.
And yet that unjust assumption
is at the heart of capitalism.
And those who are able to accumulate
or inherit or grab enough money,
Can then use that money to grab a huge
chunk of our common treasury,
our common resources the stuff
we all depend on to survive,
then they act like they have a natural right
to do whatever they want with that.
If everyone tried to live like the very rich 
today we would need multiple planets,
5 planets, 10 planets, 100 planets, 
but we've only got one.
But if instead you say let's have luxury
but make it public luxury.
Let's have fantastic public swimming pools, 
brilliant public parks, great tennis courts,
great art collections, great museums,
great community centres,
great youth centres, great playgrounds.
All those wonderful things that we
try to accumulate for ourselves,
but let's do it publicly.
Then in creating that space you don't
take space away from other people.
You create space for other people.
You don't need to multiply those
resources again and again and again,
as everyone tries to do it privately.
By doing it publicly you need
far fewer resources.
You can have a really rich fulfilling life with
very high standards of human well-being.
but without the environmental destruction
and in so doing we create community,
where community has been
smashed apart by capitalism.
I don't think there's another way we're
gonna get through this century.
If we carry on believing that
people who are rich today,
can live like the oligarchs,
and people who poor today
can live like the rich,
and everyone can just expand
and expand and expand,
and accumulate and accumulate which
is what capitalism tells us to do.
And that we can just keep on multiplying
GDP and we can double economic activity,
every 24 years like we're
doing at the moment.
Then the only possible
outcome is catastrophe.
We need a whole new
economic system.
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