When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world
Can you see it yet? The Earth systems horizon – the point at which our planetary systems tip into a new equilibrium, hostile to most lifeforms? I think we can. The sudden acceleration of environmental crises we have seen this year, coupled with the strategic uselessness of powerful governments, rushes us towards the point of no return.
We’re told we are living through the sixth mass extinction. But even this is a euphemism. We call such events mass extinctions because the most visible sign of the five previous catastrophes of the Phanerozoic era (since animals with hard body parts evolved) is the disappearance of fossils from the rocks. But their vanishing was a result of something even bigger. Mass extinction is a symptom of Earth systems collapse.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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