What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis

In this provocative and galvanizing treatise, journalist Harris (Palo Alto) grapples with what is to be done about climate change. He considers a range of possible strategies, beginning with “left-liberal” attempts to control economic development “via market regulation and incentives.” Examples include Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included a $150 billion investment in green energy facilities. This strategy’s fundamental shortcoming, Harris argues, is that it’s a national solution to a worldwide problem; the crisis urgently demands a more potent “counterforce to capital”: the “direct social appropriation” of entire industries. As an example, he points to the Build Public Renewables Act passed in New York, which was spearheaded by the Democratic Socialists of America. The legislation commits the state-run New York Power Authority to building renewables if the private sector fails to do so. However, Harris also finds weaknesses in this approach, which he sees as relying on a robust global coalition of working-class voters that is not realistic in the short term. For Harris that leaves only one option, “communism”—a word “weighed down by a lot of history,” but the most straightforward way to describe a strategy that would “abolish” profit-making as the organizing principle of production. Written in a lively and elegant style, this will convince readers that a better world, or at least the continued existence of this one, really is possible. (Apr.)