Although Ahmed provides convincing data to support the argument that we humans are rapidly approaching the limits to growth on our finite planet due to the unsustainability of capitalism, however my reaction to the article was one of surprise regarding his benign attitude about this world changing event. I couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't on a high dosage of Elavil when he wrote this piece. It seemed as if he were examining an ant colony that might experience dramatic changes. You will find no mention of threats from nuclear wars or catastrophic climate destabilization leading to mass starvation, or loss of millions of lives due to flooding of highly populated coastal areas, etc.
[The crisis] begins to make sense when we re-frame the crisis as not simply an economic one, but as a “bio-economic” one, in which exponential material consumption is increasingly destabilizing the biosphere. This environmental ‘overshoot’ explains “the inability on the part of the capitalist system to continue to produce social well-being and to face the ecological question with any efficaciousness.”
Civilization is thus undergoing a huge, momentous ‘phase shift’ to a new era as the current form of global predatory capitalism crumbles beneath the weight of its own mounting unsustainability. As this process unfolds, it simultaneously opens up a range of scenarios for new forms of society, within which there is an opportunity for “a great transition towards new institutional forms” that could include greater “democratic self-government of communities and their territories.”
