“The meteor has already struck”: Mathew Lawrence on how ecosocialism can save Earth
The
Planet on Fire author on where Keir Starmer is failing, Joe Biden’s radicalism and the lessons of Covid-19.
For the planet, normality has resumed all too quickly. After falling by a record 7 per cent in 2020, global carbon emissions are forecast to rise this year at the second fastest rate in history. That it took the worst pandemic for a century to briefly reverse this trend is indicative of a broken model.
Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown, a new book co-authored by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton, offers an urgent alternative. “The meteor has already struck… This is not something abstract down the line,” Lawrence, the 34-year-old founder and director of the think tank Common Wealth, said when we met in a park in east London. Earth does not have the luxury of time – we are living with the consequences of climate change: drought, famine and disease.