 | |
| Author | Mathew Lawrence, Laurie Laybourn-Leighton |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Verso Books |
Publication date | 2021 |
| Pages | 280 |
| ISBN | 978-1-78873-877-4 |
| 333.72 | |
Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown is a book authored by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton. It was published in 2021 by Verso Books [1] and focuses on the climate crisis and the economy, advocating in favor of ecosocialism.
At the time of the book's publication, both authors worked for think tanks, with Mathew Lawrence at Common Wealth and Laurie Laybourn-Langton at the Institute for Public Policy Research. [2]
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Planet on Fire advocates for environmentalist movements to move toward ecosocialist politics. [2]
Writing in the New Statesman , senior online editor George Eaton described Planet on Fire as offering "an urgent alternative" to the "broken model" driving a rapid rise in carbon emissions. [3] A review in Jacobin by writer and climate activist Sam Knights described the book as "an essential vision of the future". [2]
On the website of the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics, environmental policy researcher Flora Parkin characterized Planet on Fire as "credible, vital, and honest". She wrote that the book "encourages the reader to reimagine an economy that can foster a healthy and flourishing environment for all"; she noted that the authors' analysis uses "a dual approach", emphasizing the possibility for institutions to be created and abolished through law and politics while simultaneously arguing that economics should be reconnected to "nature, social relationships and fairness". [4]
A June 2021 list of the "Top 10 books for a greener economy" assembled by Ann Pettifor for The Guardian included Planet on Fire as the tenth book. Pettifor wrote that the book "helps to unpick how the climate crisis relates to the other pressing challenges that we currently face" and that the authors "offer some worthwhile answers". [5]
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses; support of ecofeminism, organized labour, criticism of corporate globalization, fascism and capitalism. In 2021, Klein took up the UBC Professorship in Climate Justice, joining the University of British Columbia's Department of Geography. She has been the co-director of the newly launched Centre for Climate Justice since 2021.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is a progressive think tank based in London. It was founded in 1988 by Lord Hollick and Lord Eatwell, and is an independent registered charity. The think tank aims to maintain the momentum of progressive thought in the United Kingdom through well-researched and clearly argued policy analysis, reports, and publications; as well as a high media profile.
Mark Lynas is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change. He has written for the New Statesman, The Ecologist, Granta and Geographical magazines, and The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the UK, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post in the United States; he also worked on and appeared in the film The Age of Stupid. He was born in Fiji, grew up in Peru, Spain and the United Kingdom and holds a degree in history and politics from the University of Edinburgh. He has published several books including Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans (2011). Lynas is research and climate lead for the Alliance for Science and is co-founder of the pro-science environmental network RePlanet. Since 2009 he has been climate advisor to former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, and he currently works to assist Nasheed with the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of the world's most climate-vulnerable 58 developing countries. He is a strategic advisor for the international ecomodernist NGO WePlanet. He has co-authored a number of peer-reviewed scientific publications, including a 2021 paper which found that the consensus on anthropogenic climate change in the scholarly literature now exceeds 99%.
Hilary Wainwright is a British sociologist, political activist and socialist feminist, best known for being a co-editor of Red Pepper magazine.
Ann Pettifor is a British economist who advises governments and organisations. She has published several books. Her work focuses on the global financial system, sovereign debt restructuring, international finance and sustainable development. Pettifor is best known for correctly predicting the financial crisis of 2007–08. She was one of the leaders of the Jubilee 2000 debt cancellation campaign.
Martin Lawrence Weitzman was an economist and a professor of economics at Harvard University. He was among the most influential economists in the world according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). His latest research was largely focused on environmental economics, specifically climate change and the economics of catastrophes.
Degrowth is an academic and social movement critical of the concept of growth in gross domestic product as a measure of human and economic development. The idea of degrowth is based on ideas and research from economic anthropology, ecological economics, environmental sciences, and development studies. It argues that modern capitalism's unitary focus on growth causes widespread ecological damage and is unnecessary for the further increase of human living standards. Degrowth theory has been met with both academic acclaim and considerable criticism.
Owen Hatherley is a British writer and journalist based in London who writes primarily on architecture, politics and culture.
Green New Deal (GND) proposals call for public policy to address climate change along with achieving other social aims like job creation, economic growth and reducing economic inequality.
Andrew Simms is an author, analyst and co-director of the New Weather Institute. He is a research associate with the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex and Fellow at the New Economics Foundation.
Eco-socialism is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, ecology and alter-globalization or anti-globalization. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures.
Ecomodernism is an environmental philosophy which argues that technological development can protect nature and improve human wellbeing through eco-economic decoupling, i.e., by separating economic growth from environmental impacts.
Sustainable capitalism is a conceptual form of capitalism based on sustainable practices that seek to preserve humanity and the planet, while reducing externalities and bearing a resemblance of capitalist economic policy. A capitalistic economy must expand to survive and find new markets to support this expansion. Capitalist systems are often destructive to the environment as well as certain individuals without access to proper representation. However, sustainability provides quite the opposite; it implies not only a continuation, but a replenishing of resources. Sustainability is often thought of to be related to environmentalism, and sustainable capitalism applies sustainable principles to economic governance and social aspects of capitalism as well.
Nick Srnicek is a Canadian writer and academic. He is currently a lecturer in Digital Economy in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. Srnicek is associated with the political theory of accelerationism and a post-scarcity economy.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an American academic, writer, and activist. She is a professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016). For this book, Taylor received the 2016 Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book from the Lannan Foundation. She is a co-publisher of Hammer & Hope, an online magazine that began in 2023.
Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist, based in London, England. He is the author of The Transition Timeline, co-author of several other books including What We Are Fighting For, chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees.
Grace Blakeley is an English economics and politics commentator, columnist, journalist and author. She is a staff writer for Tribune and panelist on TalkTV. She was previously the economics commentator of the New Statesman and has contributed to Novara Media.
Economics for the Many is a 2018 collection of essays edited by the British Labour politician John McDonnell. The book contains left-wing perspectives on topics such as industry, housing, tax and devolution. It was published by Verso Books.
Andreas Malm is a Swedish author and an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University. He is on the editorial board of the academic journal Historical Materialism, and has been described as a Marxist. Naomi Klein, who quoted Malm in her book This Changes Everything, has called him "one of the most original thinkers on the subject" of climate change.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire is a nonfiction book written by Andreas Malm and published in 2021 by Verso Books. In the book, Malm argues that sabotage is a logical form of climate activism, and criticizes both pacifism within the climate movement and "climate fatalism" outside it. The book inspired a film of the same name.