And, if it is to be successfully accomplished, the whole will have to be planned.įor example, the system change we need includes closing or significant downsizing many fossil fuel-dependent industries. Changes of the magnitude we want and need will involve many moving and interrelated parts. At the same time, individual movement efforts-no matter how additive-do not automatically encourage an understanding of the challenges involved in the process of system change. There are movements already doing the hard organizing to build support for many of these demands. Among them are ending the burning of fossil fuels for energy, to be replaced with a zero-carbon emissions energy infrastructure developing systems of mass transit to dramatically reduce use of private cars and encourage new forms of living and working in healthy communities retrofitting homes, offices, and factories to improve energy efficiency expanding sustainable agriculture providing high-quality and affordable health care instituting a massive program of public works to upgrade our infrastructure and re-skilling workers employed in environmentally damaging industries to ease their transition to alternative jobs in the expanding green sectors of the economy. 1Īctivists have generated a wide-ranging list of demands to advance the desired transformation. It must be one that also promotes worker empowerment and solidarity, community security and well-being, and democracy. We must decrease carbon emissions as rapidly as possible, and there is no way to do that without significantly changing the operation and aims of our economy. We are close to breaching critical environmental thresholds, setting in motion destabilizing changes to our global climate system that could well make the earth unlivable for humans and countless other species.

The planetary crisis has driven our planet into uncharted territory. He is also the author of the blog Reports from the Economic Front, where an earlier version of this article appeared on October 10, 2022. Martin Hart-Landsberg is professor emeritus of economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.

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