Environmental collapse and health: Policies and paradoxes

Abstract

This essay proposes a critical reflection on the world’s environmental collapse, its consequences on all living beings and the dissociation between the overwhelming evidence and the policies recommended to face the risk of deterioration of life on the planet. It discusses two particularly relevant topics: the climate crisis and the energy transition. It briefly summarizes its structural causes and the theoretical and analytical formulations present in the debates between different disciplines to face these major contemporary problems – Anthropocene, Ecosocialism, Capitalocene. It argues that environmental collapse mobilizes multiple intertwined dimensions, are long and multidimensional processes. It briefly analyzes the ongoing geopolitical crisis and the impact of this scenario on the international system and the United Nations (UN). The information and data come from a non-systematic bibliographic and documentary review, internet articles and media. The intention is to describe a broad panorama, a ‘photograph of the moment’, about issues that are articulated and impact the conditions of the planet. It concludes that problematizing the complexity of the environmental situation and the scope of some policies can help to understand the underlying structural dynamics, depoliticizations and contradictions in a perspective that expands the debate on social and planetary vulnerability