Greed going from a well understood vice and personal failing to an aspirational core value for developed nations caused this. Society has yet to even begin to reject the message of the oligarch class to consume and produce value for them and their unquenchable greed. Unsustainable expectations of infinite economic growth/metastasis on a finite world is absolutely insane and how we got here.

There is no hope for humanity short or medium term. The only faint long term hope is that whatever amount of humanity that survives the self-inflicted greed-pocalypse actually learns that driving/incentivizing competition between humans will lead to disaster, and that we must share, cooperate, and consider the consequences of our actions for our species. The global economy chose “die alone” over “live together.” The endgame of which being those luxury bunker compounds capitalism’s few winners have been building in temperate areas to die alone of old age inside to spare themselves of the consequences of their actions on everyone else, you and I who will have to learn to subsist in the new normal climate, or die by its hands.

Jubilant, shameless capitalistic selfishness as a core value is how we got here. If we refuse to learn that lesson even after we start dropping like flies from heat, crop failures, and lack of fresh water for decades, then our extinction will be well deserved.