Global problems

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The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

— Harold Pinter (Nobel prize acceptance speech)

Growth

	The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function
	— Albert Bartlett

Albert Bartlett links the growth of population growth as the fundamental factor influencing energy consumption. The video Arithmetic, Population, and Energy covers exponential increases with examples in population growth, energy growth and peak oil theory.

War

• Middle east

Poverty

• Poverty not inevitable
• Poverty
• Usury
• Fractional-reserve banking
• Currency

Consumption

• Our consumption is senseless and disconnected not only from needs but even from wants

Slave labour

• TED talk - the voice of the Chinese workers

Depression and suicide

• The suicide epidemic

Oppression

• Intellectual property
• Wealth distribution
• Greed
• Corruption
• Suppression of new technology
• Suppression of nuclear fusion
• The petrodollar

Fascism

• Police retaliate against being held accountable for their crimes

Environment

None of the twenty-one sub-targets accompanying the overall target of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 can be said definitively to have been achieved globally... Actions to promote... biodiversity receive a tiny fraction of 'funding' compared to... infrastructure and industrial developments... Moreover, biodiversity considerations are often ignored when such developments are designed... Most future scenarios project continuing high levels of extinctions and loss of habitats throughout this century.

— Global Biodiversity Outlook 3

• Peak oil - peak oil's not the problem, we have more than we need, the problem is more about using it to maintain control, i.e. the petrodollar
• The Petrodollar (local version), Part II
• Global warming - the last ten years are not showing a continued trend in warming
  • Scientific opinion on climate change
  • Rising sea level
  • One of those idiots trying to deny man-made climate change
• Pollution
• Bolivian President Evo Morales: Capitalism harms planet

See also

• Economic bottom line
• Money
• The curse of gold
• World Clock
• Debt clock
• Happy Planet Index
• "Limits to Growth" was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse