Capitalism is currently facing a convergence of crises: of overproduction, financial instability, and ecological catastrophe. Yet they can’t ease up on production, but continue to forge ahead. It reaches such irrational proportions that in China, there are 12-24 massive cities built each year that have no people living in them. At the same time, 80% of that country’s rivers no longer support life.

Industrial/extractive expansion is causing global, terminal ecological crisis. If unchecked, pollution, water shortages, nuclear radiation, soil depletion, global warming and geo-engineering could wipe out all life on Earth. But the internal structural economic crises are, for capitalists, even more urgent than the ecological crisis. The ecological crisis is simply collateral damage, an effect or consequence of their main pursuit. The capitalist growth imperative cannot be denied.