Diana Stuart, Brian Petersen, and Ryan Gunderson

BOOK DESCRIPTION

While calls for “system change” to address the climate crisis have become more common, it is important to identify what system change should entail and why. This book examines what a climate agenda for system change might include and why these policies and programs are critical to minimize global warming and enhance social wellbeing. While our current trajectory involves maintaining the status quo and relying on future technologies to mitigate climate change, a system-changing agenda has the potential to more rapidly, effectively, and justly minimize warming. Drawing from ecosocialism and degrowth, the authors identify key agenda items and why they should be prioritized. The book then focuses on how system change might take place, identifying obstacles and challenges, and motivations for persevering despite opposition.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

“Diana Stuart, Brian Petersen, and Ryan Gunderson have provided an analysis almost unique in the literature on climate change, offering authentic hope to humanity.They do so by facing up to the need for system change, rejecting the false sirens of denialism and technological utopianism, while presenting concrete, radical solutions. Anyone concerned about the future of humanity will want to read this book.” – John Bellamy Foster, Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and author of The Dialectics of Ecology

“This book offers plausible pathways and tools for ecosocialist degrowth. A must-read by anyone interested in radical alternatives to the current impasse.” – Giorgos Kallis, ICREA professor, ICTA-UAB, Barcelona and author of In Defense of Degrowth

“This book is an outstanding contribution to the reflection on the alternatives to destructive climate change. Starting with a brilliant criticism of the capitalist irrational rationality, as illustrated by market fundamentalism, the authors map the road for a transition towards a new society, based on collective ownership and degrowth: ecosocialism.” – Michael Löwy, Emeritus Research Director in Social Sciences at the French National Center of Scientific Research and author of Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe

“Stuart, Petersen and Gunderson mobilize powerful traditions of critical thought to unveil ideological bastions of techno-capitalist climate agendas that deny the need
for social transformation and instead double down to further dominate nature through Western science. To demonstrate societies’ potential to create and sustain different systems, the authors present purposes, policies, and tangible actions advanced by socialist and degrowth pathways toward deeper change. Amid feelings of impotence and despair, this book rallies authentic hope to fuel courage to work toward change on multiple fronts and scales.” – Susan Paulson, Professor at the University of Florida and co-author of The Case for Degrowth

“This excellent book lays a foundation for a positive social transformation in the age of ecological crisis. The future is degrowth communism.” – Kohei Saito, Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo and author of Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

You can read the book online below, DOWNLOAD it for free, or purchase a paperback copy at your local bookstore or online. Please see the list of resellers HERE. 

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