And also actual old-fashioned slavery. I've read there are more slaves in the world today than there were in the 1700s. Even modern western countries aren't immune, it's just more invisible .Sex trafficking is a good chunk of this.

Okay, I can see how you got that from my post. I was a bit hyperbolic in my original post, and I apologize.

I'm not REALLY making a moral equivalence argument or saying anything about comparing the horrors of slavery to work... I'm saying getting rid of slavery was easier to enact because there was an alternative system that happened to be ultimately profitable for the rich at the same time. Yes, wars have been fought to stop abolition, but at the end of the day, after slavery was abolished, the rich found a way to stay rich almost everywhere - abolition came at very little real change to the wealth structure of society. They had a supply of labor to exploit for profit during slavery, and they had one after. The fact is that the moral and financial interests both aligned on making abolition happen - it wasn't caused by pure strength of willpower. And yes, the system we have now is MUCH MUCH better than true slavery, but it's still a stretch to use the current system as a beacon of hope.

On climate change the moral and financial interests are NOT aligned in a clear way. There are always still going to be financial incentives to screw the climate for extra money. By comparison, if slavery were somehow legal again TODAY, it's not clear it would be profitable for anybody to actually do it. That difference will make climate goals harder to enact.

wtf? by what standard?

if the climate change inaction (or worse, sabotage) did not convince you, I am certain the COVID behaviour should have

Humans frequently band together during disaster

If they are directly affected sure... otherwise people may throw some money (which is usually promptly embezzled) and move on

humans care for their young and old

Their own young, sure let's say that is the common majority. Their own old? a lot more questionable. Other people's LOL... can't tell you how many people complain about their taxes feeding other people's children. But this is not an argument against what I claimed... what I said was basically echoing what Tommy Lee Jones beautifully said in MIB, in a nutshell: a human (as an individual) can be AMAZING, but humans (as a herd) tend to default to he lowest common denominator and that sucks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkCwFkOZoOY

humans don’t typically engage in cannibalism of the weak

what do you think capitalism is?

humans rarely fight to the death or even serious injury

Ok, now you are joking... no matter how old you are, I know with 100% accuracy that you have never lived in a world where, somewhere, there was a military conflict and people were being slaughtered... I know because we have not had such a time since 1816 (and that may just have been an absence of records)