She didn’t say “97% of human beings”. She said 97% of the time in which human beings have existed.

As to the implication that the last 500 years prove that human society has to be based on greed and hierarchy to survive, you are falling in to the fallacy that correlation equals causation. In the last 500 years, we have had greater hierarchy and greater greed. In the same 500 years, numerous innovations occurred and many things called “progress” occurred.

This proves that those things correlated-that greed and hierarchy developed in the time that the innovations and the “progress” occurred-it does not prove that the greed and hierarchy caused the innovations and the “progress”, or that there was no way the innovations and the “progress” could have occurred without the hierarchy and greed.

We do not know that actual progress and actual innovations could not have occurred had Europe developed on a cooperative, non-imperialist path-that it would not have been possible to get to voluntary cooperation on resources and trade with the peoples of the Americas and Africa. We do now know that the United States could not have developed an economically vibrant civilization without slavery and land theft.

And we do not know that a prosperous, innovative world can’t be created in the future without further harm being done to the climate and to the humans and other species who depend on the climate for its survival.

We do not know that a better, gentler, freer way of running life cannot be devised.