The book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase maps four future paths for the human race in the face of automation and climate breakdown. The first future is a utopia of shared peace and prosperity, but the fourth and final path is Exterminism, where the privileged few deliberately exterminate the many. Exterminating humans is a traditional human activity enjoyed by many, but technology has made it possible on a much greater scale, with CO2 the most potent and widely available weapon yet. Today anyone can be an exterminist.
When your highest value is to have more than others and look down on them, you have to keep climbing higher and higher and keep pushing others back down. Because those others have less, they are worth less, for you they are worthless and you have the right to destroy them. This is what they call the "Top of the Titanic Syndrome," where those with the power value being above all others at any cost, even their own lives. On a ship in trouble rather than everyone gathering on the same deck to work together to save everybody, these titanic bosses simply climb higher and higher up and let the ship sink, taking pleasure in knowing they remain on top till the end and everyone else has to die first. So our business, political and religious leaders are happy to sink us to stay on top of us ☑
I do not want to harm others.
I live on a plant-based diet.
I do not fly.
I use public transport.
I use renewable energy.
I demand that leaders make our world carbon neutral in five years, or else quit in shame and let someone else do the job.
I support school strikes. What is the point of children learning skills they will never use when their parents and grandparents kill them.
The symbol of capitalism is the cigar, and for years tobacco companies knew tobacco killed but lied about it and to this day push it on people. Fossil fuel companies push out CO2 and propaganda as the world burns. Could the head of a fossil fuel company repent and say, "We are killing you and lying about it and it's wrong and I can't do it anymore." No, these proud exterminists enjoy killing us, and as sea levels rise and crops fail, they will retreat to higher ground and use robots and mercenaries to kill anyone who tries to follow. Likewise those who fly look down from above and enjoy the knowledge that they are killing poor people of different races in distant countries who cannot defend themselves. Racism and genocide are traditional human pursuits and are the big drivers of climate breakdown - everyday people in rich countries are so keen to kill the poor elsewhere with CO2 that they will even kill their own children, and lie about it. Unless we stop.