This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.
It has become impossible to deny that the planet is warming, and that governments must act. But a new denialism is taking root in the halls of power, shaped by decades of neoliberal policies and centuries of anti-democratic thinking. Since the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans have each granted enormous concessions to industries hell bent on maintaining business as usual. What’s worse, policymakers have given oil and gas executives a seat at the table designing policies that should euthanize their business model.
This approach, journalist Kate Aronoff makes clear, will only drive the planet further into emergency. Drawing on years of reporting, Aronoff lays out an alternative vision, detailing how democratic majorities can curb polluters’ power; create millions of well-paid, union jobs; enact climate reparations; and transform the economy into a more leisurely and sustainable one. Our future will require a radical reimagining of politics—with the world at stake.
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“As this masterful volume makes clear, Kate Aronoff is one of the most important writers ever to take on the climate crisis. She's hard-headed in her assessment of how neoliberalism put us on the brink of civilizational collapse, but she's not hard-hearted: she offers a persuasive case for how, with lots of solidarity, we could still escape the worst of this mess. This book is careful, comprehensive, and compelling, and it should be widely read, since it offers a baseline understanding for thinking through the greatest challenge humans have ever faced.”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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