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Essential synthesis of the climate crisis (especially drawing from the past 20 years of Earth System science) + the political economy that drives it (global capitalism):

The Brilliant:
--I love systems-level analysis and multi-disciplinary synthesis, as opposed to division-of-labour compartmentalization and reductionism; we are so conditioned to neglect the big picture.

The Great Acceleration from Holocene to Anthropocene:
--A crucial aspect of the big picture (Earth System) of the climate crisis is the ��Great Acceleration�� in climate destruction (including climate change) that has occurred since�� WWII! It has not been a steady rise since the Industrial Revolution. The capitalism characterized by post-WWII American petroleum invading into every aspect of life (and thwarting alternatives) is the overwhelming culprit. Not some vague notion of “technology��, or “overpopulation��.
--Another key aspect of Earth System science is how human civilization has been entirely dependent on the incredibly stable climate of the Holocene epoch, and how delicate this balance is when put in context with the lifetime of the Earth. Earth Science examines the “planetary boundaries�� (including climate change) required to maintain the Holocene conditions, and how these are severely under attack.

Socialism or Barbarism:
--The author cites Marx: humanity makes its own history, but not under conditions of its own choosing. This sets up an eloquent case for ecosocialism, and the need for socialism to be pluralistic and up-to-speed with science. Sure, science does not answer numerous social questions, but it offers tools to better understand the conditions on which we build society.
--Capitalism is on a path towards barbarism. For liberals who disagree, try turning off your consumerist mass media and taking a look at the real world, where elites are responding to the climate crisis by building more walls and hiring more armed security. The ultranationalist/reactionary/xenophobic responses to mass migration from the global south sets the stage for barbarism. Capitalist power has always thrived on abstraction, so during crises we are plagued with scapegoating the visible and vulnerable. The global south has been wrecked by centuries of colonialism, which includes today's capitalism: the global division-of-labour outsources environmentally-destructive production to the global south. And now, they are the first fed to extreme climate and resource crises (Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence)...

The Missing:
--The author briefly dismantles neo-Malthusian ��overpopulation�� claims (the actual numbers are absurd, but then again global inequality is absurd), which is unpacked in the author's Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
--First step is diagnosing and prioritizing the issues, which this book provides a major piece (the environment). The next step is how to bring about change. Recognizing that the peoples�� movements in the global south/indigenous are on the front lines of ecosocialism is important (such as the People’s Agreement, Cochabamba).
-A People’s Green New Deal
-The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth

--It is useful to learn socialist ideas that build better societies, not just resist. However, resistance is essential especially for the Global South to even survive imperialism, and this is something Western utopian armchair critics too often dismiss. For the details:
-Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
-The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump

--In parallel with being grounded in the full geopolitical and historical context of imperialism and resistance, we can consider more utopian change (while negotiating the many contradicting social perspectives). We need to directly challenge Liberals on how to build a better world, and spread these ideas far and wide. Of course we want a Green New Deal, but beyond that:

1) Decommodification of land/resources & revaluing work:
--The rise of the global market (the triumph of market "exchange value" over "use value") created the commodification of land (i.e. a price on land based on how much it output it could generate for the global market), which led to the Enclosures (privatization of land, kicking off the serfs). Some serfs were hired back as proto-entrepreneurs which the rest had to beg for jobs, forming the wage labour market. See: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
--Further commodification and risk management came with stock markets, limited liability, corporate law, and private banking. The logic is to build confidence by assuming future productivity gains (hence, conjuring unsustainable growth) while externalizing risk and costs (including environmental costs!):
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
--To reverse this, we need to reverse the commodification/Enclosures' privatization and re-value work towards social needs, in particular under/unpaid care work. Contradictions eventually bubble up into the surface, as seen in COVID19 and the public recognition of "essential workers". What are our social values and how do we distribute resources in accordance with this? For example, a pillar of leftist feminism is revaluing social reproduction:
-The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values
-Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto
-Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
...For decommodifying land and revaluing our relationship with nature (the "Commons"):
-Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
-Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

2) Economic Democracy: Worker Self-Directed Enterprises, owned-and-operated by workers (there is no democracy without economic democracy), can be a direct challenge to the capitalist property regime (private shareholders vs. wage labour) once combined with macro-level support (public banking, abolishing the stock market, etc.):
-macro: Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-micro: Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
...This also ties in with automation benefiting society (i.e. reduce working hours) rather than profiting rent-seeking private owners while threatening structural unemployment for wage labour.

3) Participatory Democracy: Western liberal democracy opens the political sphere for limited participation (periodic voting) while the spectrum of debate is predefined by the corporate media/public relations and actual power moved to the private economic sphere. Workplace democracy is a crucial place to start since the working masses spend their best waking hours there. Community building needs to be built in parallel: The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

4) Abolishing Economic Rent: the other related component of capitalist property rights (apart from worker control) is economic rent-seeking:
-The Bubble and Beyond
-Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
-Debt: The First 5,000 Years
...Finance Capitalism is the evolution of capitalist property relations to externalize risks and costs; each of these will need to be addressed:
a) Land rent: Why Can't You Afford a Home?
b) Interest (usurious loans, coupon-clipping bondholders): The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity
c) Monopoly pricing: natural monopolies (natural resources, utilities, physical/social infrastructure) and increasingly intellectual property.