We are trapped in all these crises by the political system we have in the UK, as they all are in Europe and the United States too. And because 'the west' is significantly influenced by the USA, we're all trapped by those who've captured the political system in the US.
Fundamentally this is a crisis in how we collectively make decisions. Democracy is slipping away. Colin Crouch told us this was already happening in his 2004 book <a href="https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Colin-University-of-Warwick-Crouch/Post-Democracy/1878962">Post Democracy</a>. Increasingly, wealthy individuals and the global corporations they own and manage, and the "think tanks" they finance and pretend to be independent have more say over our laws and policy directions than voting citizens.
The coalition of groups in power know that they won't stay in power if they preside over an economy that's in recession; and perhaps know that the current population of 8.1 billion can't be fed in a world without fossil fuels. As we've seen previously there are multiple reasons why growth is, and will be, increasingly difficult to achieve.
So their strategy appears to be
- +++use all the tools they know to increase growth even for only a short period, even though they know the damaging consequences
- +++convince the rest of us they know what they're doing
- +++use all sorts of mechanisms to divert our attention from this crucial paradox
- silence their loudest critics
- prepare somewhere safe for themselves and their families
Growth will, at some time in the future, become impossible (for reasons we've seen earlier); leading to crumbling of all sorts of services we rely on.