THE Los Angeles inferno — the latest in a series of global climate disasters — has killed at least 24 people as of Sunday and caused untold damage to property and the planet.
Climate sceptics say wildfires are an annual affair in the Californian city of the rich and famous. But what they don't tell you is that the wildfires are getting progressively worse, with the city having gone without rain for months.
As of Sunday, the wildfires were an inferno of six simultaneous blazes gone wild. But the climate assault isn't restricted to the United States. In August 2022, Pakistan suffered the worst floods in the country's history.
More than 1,700 people were killed and 13,000 injured, according to a British Red Cross estimate. Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia, too, were victims of human-forged climate assault. Yet climate inaction is the order of the day.
We advance two reasons for this inaction: economics and politics. Start with economics. The economic growth model — "free" market capitalism — that has been thrust upon us by economists of a certain mould insists on the government leaving the "invisible hand" (a term coined by Adam Smith but abused by Austria- and Chicago-trained types) of the market to solve our problems.
What these economists are really saying is: corporations should be left alone to do what they please. Unsurprisingly, the nations that have adopted this free market economic growth model are now finding out that most of the things the corporations have done have neither pleased the people nor the planet.
To be brutal, the market doesn't solve our problems, but adds to them. Take climate change. It has become very clear that fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change. Data gathered from the days of the industrial revolution to today speak volumes of how the burning of fossil fuels has warmed the Earth to dangerous levels.
For the record, 2024 became the hottest year on record, pushing global temperatures to the critical 1.5°C threshold. No one is against growth, but growth at all costs is what needs changing.
Economics needn't be harmful, but it would only be so if we end our love affair with unrestrained free market capitalism, says Ha-Joon Chang, a one-time Cambridge University professor of economics in his masterful book, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism.
So a better-regulated market is the answer. One of his recommendations is: governments need to become bigger and more active. Some have called this compassionate capitalism while others have called it a human rights economy.
Whatever the name, the economic system should be built on the recognition that human rationality is severely limited, says Chang.
Like economics, politics, too, must rebuild itself to be more people- and planet-centric, not company-centric. There is no quarrel about the profit motive of companies.
Without profit, no commerce will make business sense. But the quarrel is with profit at all costs. One of the key roles of governments — and therefore politics — is to bring prosperity to all, not to a privileged few.
One way to become people- and planet-centric in this climate-altered Earth is to compel fossil fuel companies to go net zero sooner than later. Later means more fires, floods, droughts, if not extinction.