This chapter advances a comprehensive synthesis of world-systems analysis and global environmental change scholarship, arguing that the climate crisis is not an aberration but a systemic outcome of the capitalist world-economy. Drawing on the longue durée of colonial expansion, industrialization, and contemporary neoliberal globalization, it demonstrates how successive energy regimes—peat and timber, coal and steam, oil and automobility, and now critical minerals for renewables—have underpinned hegemonic ascent while accelerating planetary destabilization. Integrating evidence from material and energy flow analysis, multiregional input–output models, footprinting, and remote sensing, the chapter presents an empirically grounded framework linking world-system position, resource and energy infrastructures, Earth-system pressures, and distributional outcomes. Quantitative indicators illustrate how carbon lock-in, supply-chain outsourcing, and ecologically unequal exchange have produced extreme exposure and capacity inequalities: while the wealthiest 10% generate nearly half of global emissions, 3.3–3.6 billion people live in highly climate-vulnerable contexts. Comparative cases from Dutch peat extraction to British coal industrialization and U.S. oil-finance hegemony demonstrate how ecological limits ultimately undermine hegemonic power. The framework provides testable hypotheses and replicable metrics for tracing socio-ecological risk across mineral frontiers, agroecosystems, coastal zones, and megacities. Policy implications emphasize border carbon adjustments, loss-and-damage finance, labor-centered transition planning, and community rights. By bridging world-systems theory with Earth-system science, this chapter offers a unified analytical and empirical foundation for evaluating the global climate crisis and designing equitable pathways for systemic transformation. There is a need for relevant policies to address border carbon adjustments, loss and damage finance, labor-centered transition programs, and community rights. The chapter sets an empirical baseline for later chapters that assess mineral frontiers, agroecosystems, coastal zones, and urban risk.