The Lancet Commission's report on "21st Century Global Threats to Health" identifies seventeen interconnected crises threatening life on Earth: air pollution, antimicrobial resistance, childhood malnutrition, the collapse of development and health assistance, conventional conflicts, high alcohol use, high blood pressure, income inequality, low educational attainment, the malicious use of AI, nuclear conflict, obesity, pandemics, poor mental health, smoking, and unhealthy aging.
These are not isolated problems. They are symptoms of a single underlying system. If left unaddressed, the Lancet projects these threats will cost humanity at least one billion years of healthy life by the end of this century (2025–2100). The impacts will be uneven. Working and marginalized populations in underdeveloped and developing countries will pay the highest price.
The Origins of the Crisis
What produces these seventeen threats? The answer is capitalism—as an economic, political, social, and cultural system. It creates the conditions in which corporations overexploit nature, destroy the environment, and impose climate change on poor people in terms of lives and livelihoods.
Extractive and large-scale industries cause water, air, and land pollution, killing more than 8 million people annually worldwide. Climate-driven wildfire smoke claimed over 154,000 lives globally. The WHO predicts extreme heatwaves could cause 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050. Pesticides and fertilizers used in industrial agriculture pollute land, air, water, and food.
Profit-driven agriculture under capitalism uses 70% of all antimicrobials in livestock, aquaculture, and farming—not to treat illness but to promote rapid growth. These antimicrobials enter the human food chain through contaminated food, creating the conditions for antimicrobial resistance. This is worsened by the privatization of healthcare, where sickness is a business.
Pharmaceutical companies pay medical practitioners to overprescribe antibiotics, accelerating resistance. A Lancet and WHO study reveals that antimicrobial resistance directly causes 1.14 million deaths and is associated with 4.71 million deaths globally each year. The environmental crisis breeds pandemics. COVID-19 has caused approximately 7.12 million deaths worldwide.
Profit Over Life
Tobacco smoking caused roughly 100 million deaths in the 20th century. If current trends persist, it could cause up to 1 billion deaths in the 21st century. Governments continue to promote it by following the rent-seeking culture of capitalism. Historically, tobacco industries played a central role in converting a need-based society into a desire-based society, in line with capitalism's requirements.
Tobacco companies continue to make super-profits at the cost of human lives. Similarly, capitalist rent-seeking policies frame, promote, and implement alcohol policies through governments, causing 2.6 million deaths worldwide each year.
Wars and conflicts are not natural. They are promoted by imperialist forces to sustain capitalist exploitation, control people, and seize resources. Data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Brown University, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo reveal the cost. In the 20th century, more than 231 million people lost their lives in wars and conflicts. In the 21st century, more than 9 million have died so far.
All these deaths were avoidable. They were imposed by imperialist wars, geopolitical hegemony, and resource conflicts waged to uphold capitalism as the dominant system. All viable alternatives are either destroyed or suppressed by wars, crises, and conflicts created by capitalist and imperialist forces.
The Mental Health Crisis
The culture of atomization, alienation, individualization, commodification, and mass consumerism produced by capitalist culture creates the conditions for poor mental health and unhealthy aging. The WHO reports roughly 8 million deaths by suicide per year globally due to mental health issues. One billion people live with mental health conditions worldwide. Stressful living conditions, sleep deprivation, restless lifestyles, loneliness, poor diet, smoking, and substance use cause unhealthy aging.
These conditions are created by capitalism, in which insecurity, competition, crisis, and conflict have destroyed the collective foundations of life and happiness. It is calculated that 69% of global deaths are due to unhealthy aging. The WHO estimates obesity causes 3.7 million deaths worldwide, with more than 1.9 billion adults suffering from obesity. Over half the global adult population could be obese by 2050 if current trends persist.
Contradictions of the Same System
Obesity and childhood malnutrition are contradictory challenges produced by a single source: capitalism. It produces economic crisis, exploitation, and income inequality that breed hunger, homelessness, illness, and child malnutrition. The WHO argues that 45% of all deaths in children under 5 are linked to malnutrition, causing an estimated 2.2 million to 2.4 million child deaths annually worldwide.
The collapse of welfare states in pursuit of economic austerity and the destruction of Development Assistance for Health by global institutions and governments accelerate the global health crisis. The reduction or complete abandonment of development assistance could cause between 9.4 million and 22.6 million excess deaths across 93 low- and middle-income countries by 2030. It could cause 2.5 million deaths among children under five. These deaths are completely avoidable.
The Ultimate Threats
The weaponization of AI and the threat of nuclear weapons by imperialist forces pose the greatest danger to human life and the planet. These threats carry the potential for catastrophic extinction.
All these deaths and destitution are completely avoidable. The world produces enough food, homes, employment, and wealth. But it is controlled by a very few individuals and families in a world economy dominated by capitalist and imperialist forces.
There Is No Alternative but to Defeat Capitalism
In pursuit of profit, capitalism is not only mortgaging our future but landing working masses in the gas chambers and gallows of death and destitution. Capitalism means accumulation of profit at the cost of people, lives, livelihoods, and nature.
The struggle for life and sustainability requires an egalitarian political, economic, cultural, and social order shaped by distributive justice. Such an order can ensure security, peace, prosperity, and happiness worldwide. There is no alternative but to defeat capitalism in order to establish an alternative and organic system called socialism, where the collective foundation of life can be re-established to end death and destitution in the contemporary world.
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*Academic based in UK
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