David McMullen

This essay originally appeared in Platypus Review 167 | June 2024

ECOSOCIALISM IS NOW well entrenched in the “Left,” and is endorsed by many long-established sects. Proponents believe the deteriorating natural environment has created an urgent need to cast off capitalism and adopt this new green and crunchy variety of socialism. We will then be able to cease growing the world economy and start degrowing to a lower, steady state. Only in this way can we remain within “planetary boundaries”; for the present system cannot do this, with capitalist competition dictating both growth through the treadmill of accumulation and an indifference to environmental costs that do not show up on company balance sheets. Their slogan is “system change not climate change.”