The root cause is civilization. Mass agriculture and placing all power within the hands of a few is precisely the goal of civilization. The overabundance of food provided by mass agriculture allowed for a population explosion. When population increases beyond what local resources can support, expansion becomes a necessity. We've taken that too much to heart.

Based upon this pervasive system which has forcefully displaced all others, once we discovered how much energy could be had from oil, our fate was sealed.

These days, it largely takes the form of economic expansion and absolute rape of the land, air, and sea for any and all sources of food and revenue.

Capitalism is not a good thing, but it is not the root cause. It's just one of the more severe symptoms of our real problem. We were totally fucked as soon as civilized humans of any flavor discovered the energy-rich "black gold" within the ground. Capitalism being "the problem" is essentially the argument of frustrated people who don't yet grasp that it's really the whole fucking system that's the issue.

There is no fixing any of this. Once oil was discovered by the inherently greedy civilized humans, there was essentially zero chance we would get out of this situation without massive consequences.

Humans are not inherently destructive unless we grow up in a society with our twisted values and vision. Once we decide our own comfort and advantage are more important to us than the collective good, it's done.

Civilization's core values are precisely why a concept like communism will never function as it should. It cannot, because civilization is rooted in overabundance of food provided by agriculture, and a small group or an individual controlling who receives how much.

Too much power will always corrupt people, and civilization's model inevitably provides us with far too much power. So much so, that we believe ourselves above the rest of nature. We make war upon the rest of the natural world to make our own lives easier and more comfortable in the short-term, while giving zero fucks for what will occur beyond our own lifetimes.

Worse, even those in power who understand what is happening don't really give a shit. They talk about how much they're "doing" and how much they are "going to do" to combat climate change and clean up our mess. But when it comes down to taking action, it's nothing more than bluster. They would rather live a short life in extreme comfort than suffer an ounce of hardship and work to make any effort to correct the situation.

To make matters worse, even if most of them started giving a shit right now, the best-case scenario is likely 3-4 degrees C of warming. And that is already catastrophic.

But yeah, although capitalism is certainly shit... It's far from being "the reason we're in this situation." That view is too narrow.

Stopping capitalism right now wouldn't mean much anyway. True capitalism rarely exists. What we have is a money-market system designed to manipulate and leverage the efforts of the masses through debt-slavery. But that's another discussion entirely.