Ecosocialist bookshelf, June 2015

Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a semi-regular feature. We can’t review every book we receive, but we will list and link to any that seem relevant to Climate & Capitalism’s mission, along with an excerpt from the publisher’s description. Titles listed here may be reviewed in future.

Clive Hamilton, François Gemenne, Christophe Bonneuil, editors
THE ANTHROPOCENE AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Rethinking modernity in a new epoch
Routledge
If in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognized scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, this book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science.

Andrew Sayer
WHY WE CAN’T AFFORD THE RICH
Policy Press
Sayer bursts the myth of the rich as specially talented wealth creators. Furthermore, as the risk of runaway climate change grows, he shows how the rich are threatening the planet by banking on unsustainable growth, and forcefully argues that the crises of economy and climate can only be resolved by radical change to make economies sustainable, fair and conducive to well-being for all.

Johan Rockström, Mattias Klum
BIG WORLD, SMALL PLANET
Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries
Max Ström Publishing
Stockholm Resilience Centre Director Johan Rockström and National Geographic photographer Mattias Klum combine stunning photography and recent insights from sustainability science to argue that the tools to do what’s required already exist. It is possible to feed nine billion people without destroying our forests and deliver power to our economies without burning fossil fuels, they conclude.

David Ray Griffin
UNPRECEDENTED
Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis?
Clarity Press
This book combines an extensive treatment of the main features of the dangerous climate change that threatens us., our children, and grandchildren; a lengthy discussion of social failures that led to the problem; and an examination of the moral, religious, and economic challenges that must be met.

Kerryn Higgs
COLLISION COURSE
Endless Growth on a Finite Planet
MIT Press
Higgs explores the resistance to ideas about limits, tracing the propagandizing of ‘free enterprise,’ the elevation of growth as the central objective of policy makers, the celebration of ‘the magic of the market,’ and the ever-widening influence of corporate-funded think tanks—a parallel academic universe dedicated to the dissemination of neoliberal principles and to the denial of health and environmental dangers from the effects of tobacco to global warming.

McKenzie Wark
MOLECULAR RED
Theory for the Anthropocene
Verso
Radical new critical theory for the twenty-first century: McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other, through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build.