Capitalism and climate change

For some of the people in New York this week demanding action on global warming, the menace is not just carbon dioxide. The real Tyrannosaurus Rex is the American economic system. On Monday, the day after the huge march through Manhattan, a few hundred protesters showed up in the financial district for “Flood Wall Street.” Their slogan: “Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis.”

One of them lamented to ThinkProgress that “not many people are willing to say that the root problem of climate change is capitalism.” Another told The Daily Beast she was there “because I’m a Mashpee Wampanoag native to this country, and as far as I’m concerned, Wall Street greed has been killing me and my ancestors for 400 years.”