THEORY OF THE END - Part 6: The "Environmental" Problem
The sixth part of a series exploring various theories on the end of human civilization.
[Note: this is the sixth part of an ongoing essay series. If you enjoy this essay, please consider reading the other parts as well.]
III. The “Environmental” Problem
The problem of the environment will likely go down as one of the most criminally understated issues of our time. Take, for instance, the subject of single-use plastics; plastics that are made to serve one purpose alone before being thrown out. These are usually non-recyclable and are non biodegradable, meaning they stick around for a very, very, very long time.
“Every year, the world produces nearly 400 million tons of plastic, a 19,000% increase from 1950,” claims a 2024 article by Yvaine Ye for Colorado University’s news outlet Boulder Today. She continues:
The amount is forecast to double by 2050 and 90% is never recycled. Over half of the plastics produced are used only once, for things like packaging, utensils and straws.
“A lot of people have a hard time imagining that,” said Phaedra Pezzullo, associate professor in the Department of Communication at CU Boulder. “But we produce an astronomical amount of plastics every day. Most plastic bags are used for less than 12 minutes, but they last on the planet for hundreds of years.”
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than nine billion tons of plastic has been brought into existence since the 1950s, with over half of that having been produced since 2000. “Certain uses for plastic are not only reasonable but important, such as surgical gloves,” writes Courtney Lindwall on the organization’s website. “But these cases make up a small fraction of single-use plastic. More than half of non-fiber plastic, which excludes synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon, comes from plastic packaging alone, much of which is for single-use items.”
The high prevalence of plastics in our environment has led to the emergence of other problems, like that of “microplastics”: small bits of plastic that measure under 5-millimeters long. These have been found in many places throughout the human body, including (as was recently revealed to the shock of internet denizens) human semen and follicular fluid. CNN reports in a July 2025 article:
A small group of 25 women and 18 men participated in the research, published Tuesday in the journal Human Reproduction. Microplastics were detected in 69% of the follicular fluid samples and 55% of the seminal fluid samples. Follicular fluid is the liquid that surrounds an egg in an ovarian follicle…
“Previous studies had already suggested this possibility, so the presence of microplastics in the human reproductive system is not entirely unexpected,” said lead research author Dr. Emilio Gómez-Sánchez, director of the assisted reproduction laboratory at Next Fertility Murcia in Spain, in a statement provided to the press. “What did surprise us, however, is how widespread it is. This is not an isolated finding — it appears to be quite common.”
Keep in mind that we do not currently know the ramifications of this, but it is nonetheless alarming, especially considering the decline in human fertility that we’ve witnessed over the past few generations. The fact is that we are altering the environment of our planet for the foreseeable future simply through the use of plastics alone. This does not even take into account other massive issues like deforestation, overfishing, and the hideousness of factory farming, all of which are well known to the general public but ultimately ignored. It’s no exaggeration to say that an in-depth exposition of all of these topics would produce multiple volumes in itself, thus such an endeavor is well outside the scope of this series.
The lack of action we currently see is not due to our institutions being unaware of the environmental harm inflicted by our industrial and postindustrial societies (we actually know quite a lot about how we’ve been changing the planet), rather there is a general lack of initiative primarily for reasons of efficiency.
A corporate entity’s duty is, first and foremost, that of production. They manufacture goods or provide services and make sure these are accessible for the end-user. They do not, however, need to consider what happens afterwards, as this would be a burden on the corporation and would thus interfere with optimal production capacities. For example: the “end of life” for a product is very rarely taken into account and, if it ever is, we are provided with very minimal measures (like recycling symbols on plastic products).
It is often said that lack of environmental concern can be chalked up to mere profit motive, but while there is indeed some truth to this, the problems we are currently seeing are well beyond the scope of what corporations are capable of solving. These are entities created for the purpose of ever-increasing production. To task them with fixing the environmental problems that they have contributed to would require a complete restructuring of what we know as the corporate animal, and thus the dissolution of our entire hyper-consumerist society. It is, to put the matter simply, a fundamental problem.
We could, of course, appeal to the government to solve these issues, and many activists do, but what can they really accomplish? The government is, in essence, built on the same fundamental beliefs and values which have led to modern Corporatism. The assumptions behind how corporations operate are the same that the government operates under, i.e. it is always good to maximize production and deliver more goods and services to more consumers instead of less. It was, after all, this ability that led to the triumph of our supposed Liberal Democracy over regimes like the USSR, so the loss of it would inevitably result in a crisis of legitimacy.
And would the people even want the measures required to combat the harm we’ve inflicted on our environment to be undertaken? I implore you to ponder this inquiry deeply. It seems highly probable that any severe contraction of the economy, even in the pursuit of objectively noble goals like “saving the planet,” would be deeply unpopular with the nation’s constituents, and would thus result in a devastating democratic defeat.
“But what of the experts?” one may ask. “If they have so much sway over the government and public opinion, then surely they could help solve these problems.” This line of reasoning has been adopted by many in left-leaning political spheres, and it indeed makes sense. After all, it is primarily the “expert” class who champions the NGOs pushing awareness of these issues and presses for more corporate initiatives around “sustainability” and the like.
There is, however, a catch. The experts are only considered “experts” within the pre-existing system. To fully convey the magnitude of our environmental impact and the social reorganization which would need to be enacted in order to rectify it would be to undermine their own credentials. Therefore the most sensible path for the expert to take is that of half-measures. We’ve seen this with the World Economic Forum’s efforts to engineer solutions through corporate apparatuses; efforts that are now forever associated with the line “you will own nothing and be happy.”
This line is derived from a 2016 essay from Danish parliamentarian Ida Auken entitled “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.” In the text, she outlines her vision of a future where property has been abolished and all resources are free, with most work being done by robots and artificial intelligence. It’s worth noting that the essay does not entirely match up with the WEF’s actual initiatives, but the recontextualization of the phrase “you will own nothing and be happy” to fit the context of benevolent megacorp dictatorship (the far more likely future if our current trajectory is to be considered) was inevitable.
All in all, it may very well be the case that the “experts” are the best positioned to ameliorate environmental catastrophe. After all, they have the ear of both government officials and corporate executives and have thus been able to enact moderate changes to the behaviors of their respective institutions. Yet their success has still been quite small. That doesn’t answer the question of whether or not we would even want them to reshape our society, of course. As G. K. Chesterton warned in his book “Orthodoxy”:
The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
Lastly, we arrive at the subject of the activists, who were characterized by Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History and the Last Man” as the saving grace of the Liberal Democratic system regarding problems of the environment. He writes:
As a whole, democratic political systems reacted much more quickly to the growth of ecological consciousness in the 1960s and 70s than did the world's dictatorships. For without a political system that permits local communities to protest the siting of a highly toxic chemical plant in the middle of their communities, without freedom for watchdog organizations to monitor the behavior of companies and enterprises, without a national political leadership sufficiently sensitized that it is willing to devote substantial resources to protect the environment, a nation ends up with disasters like Chernobyl, or the desiccation of the Aral Sea, or an infant mortality rate in Krakow that is four times the already high Polish national average, or a 70 percent rate of miscarriages in Western Bohemia.
Ironically, it is the activism class which has been the most thoroughly delegitimized in the eyes of the public since the publication of Fukuyama’s book, having found themselves not only impotent but having their image overwhelmingly characterized by ridiculous stunts and public nuisance. As an example, we can take a look at the activist group “Just Stop Oil’s” campaign to raise awareness by throwing soup onto famous paintings in museums. In a video taken by Just Stop Oil, their activists said of those arrested for their participation in the stunt: “Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history” (yep. There it is).
The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who I cited in the previous chapter, said in his manifesto that Leftist activists have a certain “masochistic” bent, writing:
Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.
This seems to ring true, and has been to their detriment in these particular cases. However, more baffling to me is their fixation on causes that are doomed to fail, like the idea of ceasing all uses of oil in order to prevent further alterations to the Earth’s atmosphere. Without the implementation of a proper replacement for said oil, there is no world in which developed countries will willingly surrender the use of fossil fuels, not only because it would be massively unpopular with the populace, but also because it would put them at a massive competitive disadvantage on the global stage. But maybe the impossibility is the point. Perhaps it’s merely the martyrdom that they seek instead of true societal change.
In any case, the issue of environmentalism is one that the Liberal Democracy championed by Francis Fukuyama has utterly failed to address, and this will only become more inescapable in time.
Thank you all for reading, and I hope to see you in Part 7.
To be continued…