The end of the Megamachine - A Brief History of a Failing Civilisation by Fabian Scheidler is a magisterial book providing a comprehensive picture of the roots of those destructive forces threatening the future of humanity.

Spanning 5,000 years of history, the author explains how the three tyrannies of militarised states, capital accumulation and ideological power have been steering both ecosystems and societies to the brink of collapse.

He says: “We are witnessing how the entire planet, which took four billion years to develop, is being used up by a global economic machinery that produces vast quantities of goods and mountains of refuse at the same time, insane wealth and mass misery, massive overwork and forced inactivity… Today, 42 men possess the equivalent of that owned by the poorer half of the world’s population. It seems that the only remaining goal of the global “Megamachine” is to incinerate the Earth for a small clique of the absurdly super-rich.”
 
There are, though, alternatives to this system. Almost every sector of our society and economy could be reorganised in a different way.