The Case for Ecosocialism in the Face of the Worsening Climate Crisis

Abstract

A fierce intellectual battle continues over the ideological character of green politics. The overall conflict that emerged in past decades between environmental justice advocates on the one hand, and on the other, a coalition of states, corporations and their academic, NGO and media allies will now revive in earnest, given the Biden Administration's January 2021 pledge to take climate change seriously. After the Trump regime's climate denialism, a longstanding challenge to environmental justice now returns in the form of supposedly-pragmatic “ecological modernization” strategies, i.e., regulatory, technicist, market-based, or some combination. These characterized the pre-Trump era but had no discernable impact on emissions. In contrast, David Harvey has long advocated “radicalization of the theses of ecological modernization.” The temptation to avoid in this process is deradicalization through cooptation. But even as technical questions reemerge, the radicalization Harvey calls for becomes ever more relevant.