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In this time of uncertainty, where fascists are seizing power and climate chaos supercharges disasters killing thousands and displacing millions, where a whole world is content to watch settler colonial genocide unfold, it can feel hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. It feels like the future is grim. But all is not lost; the future can be beautiful and bright. A future where our needs our met, our communities and our environment thrive and we all feel fulfilled in our daily life. But to bring about that world, we need to escape the confines of capitalism, imagining and then building a world free of capitalist exploitation and destruction. An
ecosocialist world. Today we dive into that vision of the future. What does it mean? What would an ecosocialist world actually look like? And why giving shape to that world in our imaginations is crucial for building radical movements in the here and now. Hope on the Horizon: It feels like hope is a dwindling flame in the dark, that change is impossible. But we can and must rid ourselves of that notion. We need to light a spark under that dwindling flame and imagine better for ourselves and our communities. We can't just surrender to the exploitation and destruction of capitalism, indeed, as educator Ashley C. Ford writes, "The goal of oppressors is to limit your imagination about what is possible
without them, so you might never imagine more for yourself & the world you live in." As I covered extensively in this video, hope must not be just a feeling- it's a revolutionary act. It's a tool that gives us a north star, a heading from which we might chart a course to a more liberatory and just world outside of the depravities of capitalism. Because to transform and topple our current system of fossil capitalism, to build movements, we need as much worldbuilding as we need critique. We need to envision what a zero-carbon, liberatory world might look like,
so we have something to fight for, not just against. As environmental historian and author of Half-Earth Socialism, Troy Vettese, argues in a conversation I had with him: ["having [00:33:00] this utopia, this end goal, is very useful That actually glues together your coalition. That actually binds you together."]. Luckily there are so many beautiful visions of a future based on the needs of the people and planet from video games like Terra Nil or all the varied visions of solar punk, or even the pan-african eco-tech utopia of Wakanda. Unfortunately, these pieces
of art often lack political direction and insight, which is why we must define and give shape to the political systems that might actually give shape to those visions. That system is ecosocialism. An Ecosocialist Future: For Candice Dixon, working at an Amazon fulfillment facility meant risking injury every single day. And that day eventually came, as she threw out her back and then was made to work for fear of losing her job. 2:11 ["I got injured. I pulled my back out. WILL EVANS: Her doctor told her to limit heavy lifting, but she says Amazon sent her back to work, still dealing with heavy boxes, and her injury got worse. She's now out of work."]. Unfortunately, Candice Dixon is
not alone. Amazon's workplace injury rate is almost double that of the industry average, as workers are forced to work at speed to bring profits to the likes of Jeff Bezos, and there are so many more and worse life-threatening industries that prioritize profits over life and the planet. This is life under capitalism. A system based on the accumulation of profits and capital. We need a vision of a world that runs wholly counter to this. We need ecosocialism -a system based on the needs of both people and the planet. While there will not be, and cannot be,
one singular vision for how ecosocialism might work, there are a number of different throughlines that run through the manifestos and agendas of leftist books like The Red Deal, A People's Green New Deal, Half Earth Socialism, The Future Is Degrowth, and so many more. In short, many of these visions, in their own way, seek to wrestle free from the oppressive shackles of capitalism. The shackles of worker exploitation, the shackles of racism, the shackles of colonialism, the shackles of patriarchy, the shackles of ableism, and the shackles of ecological destruction. To do
so, however, requires a radically different mode of production, one where workers own, control, and decide what gets made and when. That mode could be ecosocialism. An economic and political system that calls for a worker and peasant-led revolution that rips ownership of production away from the elite and puts decision-making power into the hands of the masses. Unlike capitalism, which prioritizes decisions based on the endless creation of products to sell for more profit, ecosocialism advocates for an economy that makes decisions based on the well-being of all people
and the planet, because one of the foundational tenets of ecosocialism must be that the fruits of everyone's labor aren't funneled into the coffers of a single capitalist, but instead distributed according to people's needs. In the words of Karl Marx: "From each according to [their] ability, to each according to [their] needs." But what would that actually entail? What kind of world could foster a good life for all and a harmonious connection with the natural world? To start, any ecosocialist project would need to build out a robust system of free universal basic services.
An ecosocialist world must supply what capitalist systems are loath to provide for fear of workers no longer needing to deflate their wages just to live: the goods and services required to live. As Sean B. from the Party for Socialism and Liberation notes, ["under a socialist government every person would have unrestricted access to food clothes shelter healthc care quality education."]. Universal services mean a nationalized or even a global healthcare system where you no longer have to go deep into debt to get basic or advanced medical care. It
means free childcare for those who need it, and generous pay for those who wish to care for their kids full-time. It means extensive and free mental health services as we unpack the traumas of past oppression under capitalism. Free education from pre-kindergarten through college is also a must, because critical thinking and curiosity need to blossom in an ecosocialist world. Importantly, all of this work is non-extractive and low-carbon. These are inherently green services. But universal services don't stop at care. Imagine zero-carbon housing that is free or low-cost- no longer tied to speculative markets and crushing rent spikes. Low-carbon
retrofitted homes and apartment buildings would be affixed with solar and battery storage, and cohousing and co-op living across all ages would be the norm. No longer does the very house we live in distance us from the people we love or destroy the planet. Of course, for those who are uninterested in community living there would be sustainable single-family homes available too, but they would be a far cry from the McMansions of suburbia that are so popular now. Housing, especially in the United States, would need to degrow in individual size but expand in capacity
so that we can assure no one is living on the streets. People would no longer own multiple homes; instead, access to vacation homes and resorts would be shared and could be tied to work hours and community contributions. Put enough time in at the solar power plant or the farm and get three weeks at the cabin on Lake Michigan. Because all commons, from parks to natural wonders to golf courses, must be decommodified and accessible to all. An ecosocialist society must foster conditions so places where people can congregate outside of the home for free flourish. Whether it's neighborhood canteens, free theaters, museums,
parks, cafes, or libraries, living the good life means access to activities with community. And to get between all those places, this world needs free, electrified, and frequent public transit. Not just intercity trams, buses, and trains accessible to all with disabilities, but also bike-sharing programs with e-bike options and extensive walking paths as well. And for those who need more accessible options, electric taxis can bring people from door to door if needed. Zoom out past the urban landscape, Max Ajl envisions a web of cities and greenbelts in
his book A People's Green New Deal: "Greenbelts surround all cities, as popular planning converts sprawling suburbs into farmed swards. High-speed trains link bigger cities to smaller ones, smaller ones to capillary lines leading to outlying hamlets." Alongside housing, transit, and care, an ecosocialist economy must transform food systems- regeneratively grown, tasty, and nutritious food should be available to all. No longer relying on industrial agriculture that guzzles fossil fuels and destroys the soil, food should be distributed via free canteens or local groceries- not locked
behind ever-increasing price tags. But all of these free universal services are just the start. To build a better world for all people and planet, we must dramatically transform not only the way we work but also why we do it. Under capitalism, we work jobs we're uninterested in for meager wages. Indeed, at the core of the capitalist model is worker exploitation. Very simplistically, this means that during an eight-hour work-day, for example, if a laborer is paid $80, a small chunk of a worker's time is spent making $80 worth of products; the rest is unpaid or surplus labor.
That is where the capitalist makes their profit. The longer capitalists can stretch that time of unpaid work, and the more efficient they can make their workers, the more profits roll in to their wallets. And workers are forced into this exploitative situation because if you don't work, you can quickly lose access to a roof over your head and food on the table. This must change. There must be guaranteed green and care jobs for all who want them, and those jobs must pay a generous wage to live with dignity, not just to survive. Or perhaps in the future,
jobs won't need to pay a wage at all as all needs are already provided for. The workweek would shrink to four days, encouraging everyone to foster recreational and communal hobbies, and recognizing the importance of rest, family, and community life. Crucially, the factories, restaurants, and businesses are not owned and operated by the elites or capitalists on the board, but instead by the workers themselves. They collectively decide how the workday happens in order to create what is needed for the people. Because ultimately, an ecosocialist world will focus on creating products and services we actually need,
rather than commodities to sell for a profit. This means no more "bullshit jobs" as David Graeber puts it, where all you do is email all day to middle management. But it also means an ecosocialist world must create a culture without consumerism. One that bans advertising and fosters a creative commons. One that enshrines the right to repair and rejects throwaway culture. When we build an economy that centers around use rather than profits, the need for marketing to drum up "false needs" as I talk about in this video, and the prevalence of planned obsolescence drops dramatically. Imagine a world without incessant ads telling you to buy more at
every moment. A world where the creative-minded among us don't need to flock towards marketing agencies to create art for products, but instead are supported enough to explore and make beautiful art. In short, people's creative energy could be poured into making free art, movies, and music for all. Art that doesn't need to be behind a paywall or stuck in a museum or behind a movie ticket, because culture becomes a shared, public good. And in turn, this new culture informs not only our economies but also how we relate to each other and the world.
All of these services will require a fair amount of power, but compared to our capitalist system, significantly less power will be needed as energy-intensive commodity production of useless items is scaled down and production is oriented toward real needs and ecological sustainability, aiming to provide a good life for all. And as we shrink the energy demand hole we've dug ourselves into, we must simultaneously scale up renewable energy at a massive scale while phasing out fossil fuels completely. This means renewable energy super grids
that balance out regional variability when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. It means smaller community-operated solar and wind microgrids. It means a mass expansion of battery capabilities with technologies like pumped hydro. Ultimately, all of this agenda must be couched in an anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist, and anti-oppressive agenda. As co-author of The Red Deal Melanie Yazzie notes ["we say you need to divest from the institutions that cause the greatest harm on behalf of the state right prisons police the military and divesting from those institutions we must reinvest in the common dignity of all which means healing our
bodies and healing our earth"] So, building an ecosocialist future necessitates degrowing and eventually abolishing violent industries like the police and prison system and the military- weapons of state violence that have long terrorized people of color for centuries, especially in the United States. Today, global military budgets eclipse funding for climate action, healthcare, and education, and are used to carry out settler-colonial genocides like that in Palestine. One of the monumental tasks of ecosocialism must be to divert our economy away from one of violence
and oppression, often at the expense of people of color and indigenous peoples, and towards one of care. Instead of punishment and the stick, we must focus on the carrot. Encouraging care, helping zero-carbon communities, social programs, and restorative justice thrive. But of course, it's not enough just to end police and imperial violence and claim that ecosocialism has rooted out white supremacy and imperialist infections. This will be a long struggle, but as Sean B. suggests it might start ["with reparations being paid to black Americans
for the centuries of unpaid labor and super exploitation under enslavement Jim Crow mass incarceration and other forms of institutionalized disenfranchisement all government treaties with Native Americans will be honored and restitution would be made for the land and resources stolen by the deposed capitalist class"]. In short, an ecosocialist world must have at its core policies of reparations, repayment of climate debt, indigenous sovereignty, and land back as a means to start repairing the centuries of racial capitalist harm.
Fundamentally, a market system cannot do any of these tasks. If profit is the driver of invention or production, we will inevitably slide right back to where we are. Indeed, the market economies of today lead to waste and inequality, they are irrational in their chaos. If we already need to heavily regulate markets with elaborate mechanisms to stop a little bit of harm, why bother with the market in the first place. That's why an ecosocialist economy must be a democratically planned economy. I talk a lot more about how and why planning must be central to any
ecosocialist project in this video, but in short, there are many ways in which a planned economy could not only be successful, but also thrive. Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass present a case of a Half-Earth Socialism that sets broad-scale goals like global veganism, energy quotas, and forest rewilding and stewardship under indigenous control based on linear programing. ["We could imagine feasible ways to use simple algorithms to plan plausible ways of organizing society and then debate about what those plans look like and on various levels."] That's Drew Pendergrass,
co-auther of Half Earth Socialism, he goes on to add: ["We imagined a little federalism where we set broad course goals at a large level, and then figure out in detail what that looks like as you go towards the more local level."] In the context of climate change, socialist planning is crucial because as Vettese argues, ["So it's like, okay, someone's vegan or someone has a Tesla, you know, someone doesn't fly, they're great, you know, but what, what is actually necessary? I think. When you're in a market, this is super opaque, one really has no idea.] He goes on to add, that with a planning model, ["You begin to see these things
in their totality, which is difficult to do, or impossible to do with a capitalist system."] In very simplistic but more concrete terms, a linear programming ecosocialist planning model requires us to plug in a number of desired parameters, like we want to cut emissions by 7.6% every year, rewild 25% more land, and redistribute wealth for a global good life, all by 2030, and then according to those paraments the program might spit out a variety of plans with ranging from more lenient energy quotas but faster uptake of vegetarian or vegan production and consumption.
Or perhaps more aggressive rewilding and afforestation instead, or a more rapid increase in renewable production. On a global scale, Vettese and Pendergrass envision thousands of planners and scientists plugging a massive amount of data into a central mainframe (much like already happens with climate models) which then charts out various coarse blueprints 5, 10, or even 25 years into the future envisioning what it would look like to cut emissions, rewild half the planet, and redistribute wealth at different speeds. Those broad plans are disseminated, debated,
and transformed as they pass through to global, national, and local levels. This is socialist planning in motion. For ecosocialist planning to succeed, it must be intensely transparent, accessible, and subject to debate. Plans must come from everyone, be formulated and run through modeling tools, and then sent back to the masses in an endless cycle of construction and exploration. But to get from now to that future, we can't just imagine, we must act. We must build. Building The Future, Today The hope on horizon, that beautiful ecosocialist
future is only just on the horizon. That future is possible, but it's not inevitable. It will be a long road from the current rise of fossil fascism, settler colonial genocide, and intensifying climate disasters to an ecosocialist future that prioritizes a good life for all. But that work is already in action, there are already climate and leftist movements fighting to build power within capitalism in order to eventually break away from it. Because it's not enough just to envision what could be possible, radical hope requires action. That means working toward transitional demands and non-refomists reforms that
alleivitate the harm of capitalist destruction right now. Those look like defunding the police, moratoria on fossil fuel extraction, closing coal mines, raising wages, shortening workweeks, expanding community-owned renewable grids, ending settler-colonial violence, and access to universal services. These build people power by stealing it from the hands of capitalists. Of course these are not the end goal, they are just steps on the path towards a future of liberation. Where all people everywhere can live the good life on a thriving planet. But it will take all of us, with
whatever capacity we have to make that happen. And that starts with joining a group doing the work in your area, while always imagining and dreaming of what a world outside of capitalism could be. But sadly we live in a capitalist world that increasingly preys on your personal information for profit. Data breaches are happening at increasingly larger scales. Right now your personal data: where you live, you phone number, your personal email, even your social security number is probably being bought and sold by hundreds of shady data brokers. Everything from spam calls, to scams, all the way to identity theft of you and your
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