This book confronts the planetary emergency produced by the accelerated ecological devastation of the last half-century. The human species is in a race against time to salvage and restore what it can of the environmental conditions that make a healthy existence possible. This task requires us to reconsider not only the type of energy that we use, but also the institutions, the technology, and the social relationships that determine what is produced, in what quantities, by what methods, and to what ends.

            The core political question raised is the relationship of the ecological order to capitalism and socialism. I argue that sound ecological policy requires a socialist framework, based on democratic participation and drawing on the historical lessons of earlier efforts. I discuss how the project of building such a framework may evolve through the convergence of popular struggles – against all forms of oppression – as these have emerged under conditions of crisis.

Victor Wallis teaches in the Liberal Arts department at the Berklee College of Music and lives in the Boston area. For twenty years, he was the managing editor of Socialism and Democracy and has been writing on ecological issues since the early 1990s. His writings encompass an array of other topics as well, including political strategies, the U.S. Left, U.S. labor songs, and Latin American revolutionary film. They have appeared in Monthly Review, Capitalism Nature Socialism, New Political Science, Socialism and Democracy, Jump Cut, Organization & Environment, International Critical Thought, and the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism, Victor's work, including book-chapters and online publications, has been published in many countries and has been translated into thirteen languages.