Post #4157218

It's important to note that both wildfires and pandemics - like the Ebola incubating, perhaps, in Africa now - are symptoms of capitalism's over-exploitation of resources. Of course there were wildfires and pandemics before globalisation, but their frequency and intensity is increased by over-exploitation of natural resources: trade and mixing of rare species facilitates microbes crossing species barriers, trade and tourism facilitate contagion, just as surely as harmful emissions and over-use of water facilitate fire. And increasing social inequality is also an aspect of the same problematic, because it is multinational capitalism (not small business or local markets) that leads to excess emissions, excess resource exploitation, and excess profit extraction from both people and planet.