Who Will Build the Ark: Debates on Climate Strategy from 'New Left Review'

(Paperback)

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In Green Strategies, leading radical thinkers debate left alternatives to runaway global heating, capitalist crisis and wider environmental breakdown, clarifying the stakes in today's key disputes between Green New Deal supporters and proponents of 'degrowth'. In a series of landmark texts first published by New Left Review, Herman Daly and Benjamin Kunkel discuss the possibility of an egalitarian, steady-state economy, while Robert Pollin warns against the worldwide slump 'degrowth' could bring and calls instead for a single-issue campaign - 2 per cent of global GDP dedicated to the switch to renewable energy - as the swiftest solution to the emissions crisis. Nancy Fraser envisages an eco-socialist exit from capitalism's multifold crises, while Troy Vettese advocates eco-austerity and half-earth rewilding. Lola Seaton draws out the strategic implications of these contested perspectives, in a set of unavoidable 'green questions'. In the realm of contemporary politics, Alyssa Battistoni writes on the dead-end of COP diplomacy, and Cdric Durand asks whether energy shortages will derail the transition away from fossil fuels. The world's major powers accept the likelihood of runaway global heating, yet seem incapable of averting it. Can alternative green models generate the social leverage needed to do so Or, as Mike Davis puts it: Who will build the Ark

Reviews

In recent years, an intense debate has unfolded over the policy and politics of the green transition. Important contributions to this debate have appeared in New Left Review's 'Debating Green Strategy' series. -- Max Krah * Phenomenal World *

Author Bio

Benjamin Kunkel is the author of Indecision, Utopia or Bust and Buzz, a founding editor of n+1, and a member of the New Left Review editorial committee. His writing has appeared in the New Republic, Harper's and the New Yorker. He lives in Colorado. Lola Seaton is an Assistant Editor at the New Statesman and a member of the New Left Review editorial committee. She has written for the Guardian and London Review of Books. She lives in London.