While this isn't strictly science, it is important.

Noam Chomsky on our extinction..and other musings.

While I think that Dr. Chomsky misses the larger point that it is the greater "we" that allowed "corporate elites" to flourish, there is not much on the science side that one can easily refute. Capitalism is the exterminator of worlds. Sorry, to twist the phase that J. Robert Oppenheimer pulled from the Bhagavad Gita, but while the many ills that the Manhattan Project brought to humanity, none can compare with Capitalism. Imagine if you will a system that only thrives by extracting more and more forever from a finite world. That's Capitalism. Okay, I know what you're thinking, as I'm thinking it as well. "What the hell is Todd going on about here?"

I'm glad that you asked. Well, truth be known, I'd rather not have to answer this, but I shall :)

Capitalism, as it is now practiced, is the greatest threat to our planet. Unfettered Capitalism since the Industrial Revolution has done more to toxify the planet than perhaps all other things combined.

I have already deconstructed the notion of the "noble savage" in this post. Human beings pretty much suck for all life forms--including human life.

Unfettered Capitalism has only accelerated species extinction, and all the ills that entails by many orders of magnitude.

Since I am on a no bullshit tirade, I have to blame medicine here as well. Modern medicine has taken the principle of Malthusean catastrophism and turned it into a once quaint notion. This is most certainly NOT a food production issue, although increased food production has played a secondary role.

Take a look at this, and tell me that we are not--by any reasonable means--entirely fucked.

Oh, and while I'm pointing fingers, economists are not scientists by any reasonable yardstick. If you think I jest, while you can be continually wrong and still be practicing science, you have to make predictions that pan out. The Economist magazine is held up as some kind of Holy book, but see Massimo Pigliucci's deconstruction of "the dismal science" as practiced by The Economist in: Nonsense on Stilts I really don't know where that came from, but it holds water.

It has been said that paleontology isn't a "science" because it lacks predictive value. While paleontology cannot yet make predictions about future fossilizations, the predictive power of paleontology has yielded spectacular results. Why do you think Neil Schubin knew exactly where to look to find Tiktaalik roseae? Because evolutionary biology combined with the known dates of lobed finned fossil fish, and early amphibians were known to a high degree of accuracy. Der.

I am really getting off-base here. Shorter post: Chomsky and science 1, planet wrecking Capitalists, 0.