Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown

Description

The environment is collapsing at a rapid rate, and in increasingly unpredictable ways. Everyone knows that this is happening, and yet the only politics that is emerging to tackle it are coming from the increasingly nativist far-right. How should the left respond? In Planet on Fire, two rising stars of the British left lay down a set of proposals for a fundamental re-shaping of the global economy and offer a roadmap for tackling climate breakdown. Building on the debates surrounding the Green New Deal, debates that both authors have been central to, Lawrence and Laybourn argue that it is not enough merely to spend our way out of the crisis. Instead we need to rapidly reshape the shape and purpose of the economy, away from the emphasis on endless growth and towards creating a healthy and flourishing environment for everyone. This must be based on the principles of internationalism and the democratic ownership of the economy. Planet on Fire is a radical and achievable manifesto for a new politics and a new economics capable of tackling climate breakdown.

Laurie Laybourn is Director of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which represents over 600,000 health professionals in the UK on climate change and a Senior Research Fellow at IPPR. Mathew Lawrence is founder and Director of Common Wealth, an institution dedicated to ownership for a democratic economy and deep systems change. Previously he was Senior Research Fellow at IPPR, where he was the primary researcher for IPPR's Commission on Economic Justice. He has published widely, including co-authoring Labour's influential Alternative Models of Ownership report

We now face an environmental crisis that has to be confronted. This book sets out the scale of the emergency as well as marks out the route to a better society. This is an essential read.' -- John McDonnell, MP For all who would build tomorrow not merely suffer it; for all who would heal the rifts that threaten us today between the generations and among the peoples; for all who know that human beings and human societies alike stand always within Nature never above it; for all who know that we must now turn our backs once and for all on domination, oppression, and exploitation, of Nature and of each other: this book is a manifesto and a call to arms. Please read it." -- John Ashton, UK climate change envoy 2006-12 This book lays bare how capitalism led to the age of environmental breakdown and what this will mean for human societies. Most importantly, it focuses on explaining what an eco-socialist future would look like and that this future is a realistic, achievable and hopeful alternative to the predominant narrative of doom which typically surrounds discussions of environmental destruction. -- Carola Rackete, activist and author of It's Time to Act Eloquent, clear-sighted and erudite, Planet On Fire is an important analysis of the interlocking political and economic forces driving us towards ecological catastrophe, and a credible route-map towards an alternative -- Will Davies This clear and incisive book starts from the immensely important insight that we cannot understand climate breakdown outside of the capitalist social relations that produced it. Planet on Fire reminds us that climate breakdown is intimately linked to all the overlapping crises humanity faces - from the rise of the far right, to growing socioeconomic inequality, to the COVID-19 pandemic - and that ecosocialism is the only route to an equal and sustainable world. -- Grace Blakeley For all who would build tomorrow not merely suffer it; for all who would heal the rifts that threaten us today between the generations and among the peoples; for all who know that human beings and human societies alike stand always within Nature never above it; for all who know that we must now turn our backs once and for all on domination, oppression, and exploitation, of Nature and of each other: this book is a manifesto and a call to arms. Please read it. -- John Ashton "Capitalism would create a desert and call it profit." Halfway through Planet on Fire, Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton drop this devastating judgement-but they don't stop at doom. Instead they offer blueprints, rally-points for energies, and chronicles of useful pasts for a decarbonized future. In the end, the climate crisis, they remind us, is not about individual morality or scientific authority but power and politics. This is a handbook for the fights to come. -- Quinn Slobodian This book lays bare how capitalism led to the age of environmental breakdown and what this will mean for human societies. Most importantly, it focuses on explaining what an eco-socialist future would look like and that this future is a realistic, achievable and hopeful alternative to the predominant narrative of doom which typically surrounds discussions of environmental destruction. -- Carola Rackete A clear, powerful vision for ecosocialist transition. Don't miss this book. -- Jason Hickel Trump may have left, but Trumpism is here to stay. In response, a transformative Green New Deal is more urgent than ever, charting a course beyond fossil fuel capitalism and deepening eco-apartheid and inequality. This vital contribution is a roadmap for how we get there and a political guide for the times ahead. -- Kate Aronoff The authors' vision of the path to climate justice is an antidote to disaster politics in so many ways, not least because it is both fair and unexpectedly luxurious. Each page is absolutely brimming with ideas as they meticulously take us through every important sector of the economy and reveal carefully thought through recommendations for reform. By focusing on power and who wields it they correctly identify the levers for change and who must now be empowered to push them. * Michelle Meagher, author of Competition is Killing Us: How Big Business is Harming Our Society and Planet - and What To Do About It * Reading Planet on Fire feels like traversing a humming, interdependent ecosystem of ideas, porous to the post-crash movements and thinkers shaping today's progressive environmentalism ... Starkly realistic whilst unflinchingly radical, Planet on Fire is a guidebook of hope for this crucial decade. -- Flora Parkin * LSE International Development * A practical starting point for reworking power structures that are dependent on extraction and initiating the new, society-oriented systems ... essential reading. -- Martha Dillon * It's Freezing in LA! * Offers an urgent alternative. -- George Eaton * New Statesman * Framing the situation in terms of the global inequality that fuels extractive global capitalism, and its roots in colonialism, Lawrence and Layborne-Langton put this power imbalance at the heart of their analysis. It enables them to offer some worthwhile answers for how we might solve our interconnected crises. -- Ann Pettifor * Guardian *