Padilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “Are We in the Midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction?” Ch. 3.3, p. 98] SPark
Thus, I am not in any doubt that the whole world has now entered the sixth period of mass extinction of species, that this phenomenon could include Homo sapiens, and, even worse, that the main sourceof the extinction is human agency. Nevertheless, it is also clear that this unconscious, irresponsible and predatory behaviour is not perpetrated by humankind as a whole, but by its rulingcapitalist classes. Within that segment of society rentiers oligarchies are the main culprits because they have been managing the economy in an unsustainableway for the sake of the accumulation of capital and not of human needs, and still lesswith adequate regard for theconservation of nature. Neoliberalism (the ideology that preaches the worshipping of ‘markets’) produces a mindset which rationalizes this kind of behaviour and justifies an economy based on “fossil capitalism” (Angus 2016) through its dependence on natural gas, petrol and carbon as the main combustibles for transport, the plastics industry, heating, energy and so on. Thus ‘rampant capitalism’ is the real culprit of the climate change hecatomb to come in the foreseeable future, a catastrophe of gigantic proportions that could include the disappearance of Homo sapiens itself as the dominant species on the planet. Thus avoiding this hecatomb is a matter of life and death for humanity. That is why I have given this book such an arresting and interrogative title that is related to the fact that, as we are already living in the Anthropocene, either we must put an end to neoliberal capitalism or be obliged to face our own extinction. I will discuss some philosophical aspects of this situation on the following pages
