I used to be a fairly negligent consumer of world affairs.

Despite always being a person of strong opinions (or just “opinionated” according to those not in agreement with my opinions, as well as those of the strong opinion that opining strongly about anything is an unnecessarily aggressive and un-genteel way to live – incidentally, I have never heard a man referred to as opinionated…), my thoughts on domestic politics and global affairs were unformed.

They were also uninformed, as not only did I leave the UK before reaching an age of political and social curiosity, but having then bounced through a further three countries in varying degrees of economic precarity (me, not them), a good few years passed before I had the available bandwidth to develop a deeper understanding of the geopolitical fabric of human existence.

For many years, my concern and compassion were almost exclusively reserved for the natural world and its mistreatment at the hands of Humanity, which was bad enough for the mental health.

But it is so very much worse now.

Having been raised in a family that is deeply connected the rhythms of the planet and its biosphere, I was first introduced to the looming threat of climate change almost four decades ago. As a teenager, I remember trying to raise awareness outside our social circle only to be roundly scoffed at. Being considered “too young to know anything much” undoubtedly played its part, but I do not think that was solely to blame. I suspect it was also true that all but those in closest contact with the natural world still held blindly to the dichotomy of Humanity being both powerful enough to bend the planet to its will, while also being too powerless to affect any meaningful damage.

The suffering of the natural world and its non-human species for a long time caused not much more than a mild ripple in the global conciousness, and an equally impoverished lack of global action. Something I always found baffling, given how tightly our fates are interwoven. But even more shocking is the lack of global action provoked by the suffering of the “developing” human world.

There can be no clearer sign that not only are most humans completely detached from their symbiotic relationship with the planet that sustains them, but that they also feel little to no kinship with most of the rest of their very own species.

Only when the ever more frequent climate disasters started to affect wealthy Westerners, did we seemingly reach the point at which this looming global catastrophe became something worthy of closer attention.

Today, aside from nutjobs who see conspiracies around every corner and arseholes who profit handsomely from the degradation of our planet (the latter, happily insulated by ill-gotten wealth, will also be the last to feel the ill effects) much of the rest of humanity has now cottoned on to the fact that we are racing towards our own self-inflicted demise.

And yet here we are: still resisting renewable energy in many quarters, still producing single-use plastic crap by the tonne and inventing more every day (disposable vapes – it defies the imagination), still chopping away at the Earth’s lungs, still concreting over floodplains, still polluting water courses, still destroying protected habitat for profit, still using dangerous chemicals on the land, still overfishing…, still…, still…, still…

Plus the very latest obsessive obscenity: AI data centres. On a planet that is on orange alert, where clean water risks becoming a luxury item. And to what end? Most AI output seems to be aimed at destroying the creative industries, allowing people to create vacuous cartoons of themselves on social media, rendering humans even more ignorant with doctored photographs and video footage of things that never happened, and providing “facts” at the touch of a button. Facts the user must then fact-check because AI is prone to barefaced lies when it does not know the answer.

It is all so utterly pointless.

And as with most things, the brunt of the resulting hardship is borne by those who bear the least responsibility: first the natural world and its non-human species, and then the poorest nations. While the wealthy West pollutes and consumes and affects only the bare minimum of change so as not impinge too much on our lifestyle, or aggravate politicians’ favourite scapegoat and our cruel overlord: the eCoNoMy.

But as long as the “right” people are making money from the schemes putting us all at peril, there is very little chance we will be able to turn this suicidal ship in time. Because not only do those wealth hoarders hold the purse strings, they also have a eye-watering grip on the testicles of global politics. So the change that needs to happen is constantly watered down, or thwarted altogether, according to the whims of the rich and powerful.

This is where unchecked capitalism has led us: (and here I paraphrase somebody, if only I could remember who…) Humanity appears to have decided that preserving and protecting the very ecosystem that renders ours the sole planet in our ecosystem able to sustain us, is not cost effective enough to bother with.

We watch, as hundreds of blameless Nepalis are swept to their death. We watch, knowing exactly what caused this tragedy, just as we know what causes floods, wildfires, severe storms and hurricanes, heatwaves, drought, rising sea levels and melting ice caps.

We watch, aware of just how much our existence, especially in the West, will have to change if we are to have any chance of turning the tide.

We watch, knowing that the only people wielding the necessary power to make those changes (who could legislate renewable energy as the only energy and force energy companies to ready the existing infrastructure to accomodate it, ban single-use plastic crap outright, ban all but the most ecologically-sound logging, ban construction near flood plains, imprison the owners of any company found polluting water courses, destroying protected habitat or using dangerous chemicals on the land, etc etc etc) lack the moral courage to do what needs to be done.

Because as a species, we have simply accepted that the insatiable greed of a few unworthy men (busy accumulating more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes), is somehow more important than Humanity itself.

And as a species – at least those of us in the so-called “developed” world – we are resistant to change that might impinge on our consumerism. We are resistant to the idea that infinite growth on a finite planet is unicorn territory. We cannot accept that future generations must now expect to be (materially and monetarily) poorer than their parents. We negate the irrefutable truth that our consumer demands are directly responsible for the waves of human migration we find so distasteful.

The greed and expectation that is fed by our blind adherence to Capitalism will eventually lead the human race to cannibalise itself – I honestly do not think there exists the collective will necessary to resist it.

And I ask everybody who is quietly and not so quietly despairing at the moral squalidity of it all, while at the same time attempting to make the most of their short time on our beautiful blue planet: How do you cope? Where do you keep your sorrow?