As if capitalist-driven deforestation and hunting were not bad enough for the remaining chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild, they are also hit by outbreaks of Ebola. And according to this post on the Conversation, the fatality rate for gorillas is 90 percent and for chimps 77 percent (it's 71 percent for humans). The main problem is not, however, Ebola or even hunting or the disgusting business of humans eating other great apes, but the relentless destruction of West African habitats by companies that export timber to European and Asian countries. The problem is the world market.

Anyone who is familiar with the Washington Consensus and Economic Structural Adjustment Programs will immediately understand why policies like the privatization of the public sector, the removal of capital controls, and fiscal austerity have made many African states very weak—weaker indeed than they were in the '60s and '70s—and so incapable of enforcing these international laws the West dreams up for the protection of the other members in our very close family of apes. As most voters in North America and Europe have been trained to see slow economic growth as the only kind of crisis that warrants dramatic political action, nothing can be expected to be done about crises that are outside of capitalism and its politically supported and constructed pressures and processes.