THE PATH TO A LIVABLE FUTURE

A broad-ranging thesis linking the fight against climate change to other pressing current issues.

Like the pandemic and questions of food security, writes environmental journalist Cox, climate change is most damaging to minority and impoverished populations. In the U.S., this translates largely to the Black community, opposed to which is a “retrograde, pro-authoritarian, mostly working-class voting bloc” comprised of White supremacists emboldened by the Trump regime. This minority is so committed to retaining White rule that it stands against any progressive effort to let all boats rise. Anti-science, denialist, and violent, this bloc has to be defanged politically before any such progress can be made. Cox argues that it is a duty of government to declare that food security—access to sufficient food, that is—is a fundamental human right “and that in fulfilling that right the desires of private economic interests will have no standing.” Moreover, writes the author, the solution to the climate crisis and other significant problems is to delink our economy from rampant consumption. Our transformation to a postindustrial economy led to the “mirage” of thinking that our service-based modalities are somehow more environmentally friendly. As it is, Cox holds, overproduction and overconsumption are two sides of the same coin, and both need to be reined in. The pandemic exposed many things, but foremost among them was “how we overvalue the ‘normal’ ”—when, he suggests provocatively, it may well be that “normal was the problem in the first place.” Cox’s manifesto is long on description but short of prescription: There are few specifics about how we can bring environmental equity to all corners of society, to say nothing of how we can reduce all our heavy carbon footprints. Still, many of his suggestions are certainly worth discussion.

An evenhanded though sometimes vague manifesto for making a new post-pandemic world.