by Susan George
19 May 2010
Although the G-20 and other official bodies have so far refused to acknowledge the fact, we are not simply living through a financial crisis, however grave the financial aspects of the current upheaval may be, but a multiple crisis whose component elements all strengthen and reinforce each other. For that matter, it's not even a 'crisis', which in uncorrupted language is a relatively brief moment between two possible outcomes—in an illness, for example, between recovery and death. We're in for a much longer period but here we will bow to the now-standard vocabulary.
Beyond finance, one should recognise that inequality within and between countries and citizens has reached unsustainable levels in both developed and developing countries. Poverty is spreading and deepening, food and water scarcities are worsening, conflicts thrive in increasingly stressed societies, and catastrophic climate change—advancing much faster than experts predicted—looms over the whole.
