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Who Will Build the Ark?: Debates on Climate Strategy from New Left Review
What ecological politics should the left propose?
In Who Will Build the Ark?, leading radical thinkers debate left alternatives to runaway global heating, capitalist crisis and wider environmental breakdown, clarifying the stakes in today’s key disputes between Green New Deal supporters and proponents of “degrowth.” In a series of landmark texts first published by New Left Review, Herman Daly and Benjamin Kunkel discusses the possibility of an egalitarian, steady-state economy, while Robert Pollin warns against the worldwide slump “degrowth” could bring and calls instead for a single-issue campaign—2 per cent of global GDP dedicated to the switch to renewable energy—as the swiftest solution to the emissions crisis.
Nancy Fraser envisages an eco-socialist exit from capitalism’s multifold crises, while Troy Vettese advocates eco-austerity and half-earth rewilding. Lola Seaton draws out the strategic implications of these contested perspectives, in a set of unavoidable “green questions.” In the realm of contemporary politics, Alyssa Battistoni writes on the dead-end of COP diplomacy, Cédric Durand asks whether energy shortages will derail the transition away from fossil fuels, and Thomas Meaney compares Green New Deal proposals to the pinched reality of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The world’s major powers accept the likelihood of dangerous climate change, yet seem incapable of averting it. Can radical green models generate the social leverage needed to do so? Or, as Mike Davis puts Who will build the Ark?
In Who Will Build the Ark?, leading radical thinkers debate left alternatives to runaway global heating, capitalist crisis and wider environmental breakdown, clarifying the stakes in today’s key disputes between Green New Deal supporters and proponents of “degrowth.” In a series of landmark texts first published by New Left Review, Herman Daly and Benjamin Kunkel discusses the possibility of an egalitarian, steady-state economy, while Robert Pollin warns against the worldwide slump “degrowth” could bring and calls instead for a single-issue campaign—2 per cent of global GDP dedicated to the switch to renewable energy—as the swiftest solution to the emissions crisis.
Nancy Fraser envisages an eco-socialist exit from capitalism’s multifold crises, while Troy Vettese advocates eco-austerity and half-earth rewilding. Lola Seaton draws out the strategic implications of these contested perspectives, in a set of unavoidable “green questions.” In the realm of contemporary politics, Alyssa Battistoni writes on the dead-end of COP diplomacy, Cédric Durand asks whether energy shortages will derail the transition away from fossil fuels, and Thomas Meaney compares Green New Deal proposals to the pinched reality of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The world’s major powers accept the likelihood of dangerous climate change, yet seem incapable of averting it. Can radical green models generate the social leverage needed to do so? Or, as Mike Davis puts Who will build the Ark?
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 27, 2023
6 people are currently reading
270 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Kunkel
29 books48 followersBenjamin Kunkel is an American novelist. Kunkel grew up in Eagle, Colorado, and was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire; Kunkel studied at Deep Springs College in California, graduated with a BA from Harvard University, and received his MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University.
He co-founded and is a co-editor of the journal n+1. His novel, Indecision, was published in 2005
He co-founded and is a co-editor of the journal n+1. His novel, Indecision, was published in 2005
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 18, 2025
A collection which struggles to justify it’s existence, beyond a vague sense that the NLR wanted to seem like it did have an intervention in ecological politics. Contributions feel like a different time, talking about Green New Deals as well as generally embarrassing discussions of degrowth. Most posed at such a level of abstraction that there are no real stakes or forces capable of actualising them. Only Davis and Meaney really had much heft, and the latter had some bonkers suggestions (describing Cabral as ‘Jacobin-agronomist’ feels borderline Salazar-like as well as just flatly wrong).
Who will build the ark? I don’t think anyone involved in putting this together.
Who will build the ark? I don’t think anyone involved in putting this together.
August 14, 2023
A dull read, which may be part of the problem for getting people concerned about the pending doom of humanity, for if we can't get excited about our galactic demise we may deserve our collective fate. As noted in the Afterword, the essays are extremely dated for the most part which can hardly be helped, but also rather repetitive in their messaging or preferred option(s). Please don't assume that means I am a climate change denier, quite the contrary, but so much of what is written about solving the problem never moves away from two points, both of which for me make the proposals useless circumlocutions of the status quo, even if they make for intriguing reading.
The first point: using Capitalism or capitalist economic modeling to fix things.
The second point: ignoring the politics.
The first is understandable, as so many people have come to believe there is no other way than Capitalism. Few can even discuss Socialism, even fewer will admit Communism is anything but evil. That fact speaks to the average person's lack of intellectual rigour, at the very least.
The second is disheartening. Capitalism is apolitical (or more likely politically parasitical), whereas Socialism and Communism are necessarily intertwined with politics and governance,at least obliquely. Capitalism basically refuses politics, since any acceptance of the right/needs/wants/survival of the polity is immaterial to its systems.
So once you move away from arguments about the How (growth, degrowth, green tech, CCS, AI, etc.) and focus on the Who everything collapses. There is almost no political will, in any country of the world, to actually embrace making the necessary changes/sacrifices to slow our destruction of the planet enough to entertain the idea we could actually survive on the planet, a planet we have fundamentally altered but cannot return to its pre-human state no matter what we do. World governments are enslaved to Capitalism and Capitalists (or run by them...), whether they be wealthy or drastically poor. The Capitalist System has become the boss of world politics, and there are no plans to disrupt that reality to build a more equitable or safer operating structure. Humans know with ZERO doubt that they are ruining the planet for human habitation, and yet they refuse to stop doing what they are doing for two reasons: 1) the Capitalists only know control and ownership and luxury and having, and 2) the Rest of Humanity only knows they want to be Capitalists. So the Capitalists will never allow a system that compromises their domination, and the RoH will never allow a system that calls into question Capitalism (which embraces all their hopes, dreams, and expectations) because who wants their entire reason for being/doing shown to be a pile of feces? We know Capitalism is garbage, a system so wholly destructive and wasteful it should have been broken down and thrown away decades ago. But we are proving to be rather resilient to truth and facts these days. All that talk of community and the human capacity for love, compassion, caring, sharing, and the like are looking like lies foisted on the species by some unknown entity to mask the fact we are inherently selfish, nasty, violent, and mostly awful animals that shit in our own beds and wallow in it willingly. Harsh? Look at the world and tell me otherwise. What would you sacrifice to let those with nothing have some of what you feel you have earned? From all appearances few, if any people are willing to make that move. What would you sacrifice to take back from those with almost everything and share it with those they stole it from? Again, from all appearances few will do that either.
I absolutely LOVE science, scholarship, ideas, concepts, impersonal debate about humanity, and various other pieces of mental gymnastics that ignore the humanity of human beings. But we have blown so far past the point of stopping the destruction of the planet and now need to manage the massive changes we have made or allowed to be made on our behalf. We don't need economic forums or academic conferences to detail the wreckage or explain how it got there. We need revolutionaries who will sacrifice their lives to overthrow the power structures that are driving the species to extinction. Anything less than that spells doom. And sadly, much to humanity's dismay, there's no app for that.
The first point: using Capitalism or capitalist economic modeling to fix things.
The second point: ignoring the politics.
The first is understandable, as so many people have come to believe there is no other way than Capitalism. Few can even discuss Socialism, even fewer will admit Communism is anything but evil. That fact speaks to the average person's lack of intellectual rigour, at the very least.
The second is disheartening. Capitalism is apolitical (or more likely politically parasitical), whereas Socialism and Communism are necessarily intertwined with politics and governance,at least obliquely. Capitalism basically refuses politics, since any acceptance of the right/needs/wants/survival of the polity is immaterial to its systems.
So once you move away from arguments about the How (growth, degrowth, green tech, CCS, AI, etc.) and focus on the Who everything collapses. There is almost no political will, in any country of the world, to actually embrace making the necessary changes/sacrifices to slow our destruction of the planet enough to entertain the idea we could actually survive on the planet, a planet we have fundamentally altered but cannot return to its pre-human state no matter what we do. World governments are enslaved to Capitalism and Capitalists (or run by them...), whether they be wealthy or drastically poor. The Capitalist System has become the boss of world politics, and there are no plans to disrupt that reality to build a more equitable or safer operating structure. Humans know with ZERO doubt that they are ruining the planet for human habitation, and yet they refuse to stop doing what they are doing for two reasons: 1) the Capitalists only know control and ownership and luxury and having, and 2) the Rest of Humanity only knows they want to be Capitalists. So the Capitalists will never allow a system that compromises their domination, and the RoH will never allow a system that calls into question Capitalism (which embraces all their hopes, dreams, and expectations) because who wants their entire reason for being/doing shown to be a pile of feces? We know Capitalism is garbage, a system so wholly destructive and wasteful it should have been broken down and thrown away decades ago. But we are proving to be rather resilient to truth and facts these days. All that talk of community and the human capacity for love, compassion, caring, sharing, and the like are looking like lies foisted on the species by some unknown entity to mask the fact we are inherently selfish, nasty, violent, and mostly awful animals that shit in our own beds and wallow in it willingly. Harsh? Look at the world and tell me otherwise. What would you sacrifice to let those with nothing have some of what you feel you have earned? From all appearances few, if any people are willing to make that move. What would you sacrifice to take back from those with almost everything and share it with those they stole it from? Again, from all appearances few will do that either.
I absolutely LOVE science, scholarship, ideas, concepts, impersonal debate about humanity, and various other pieces of mental gymnastics that ignore the humanity of human beings. But we have blown so far past the point of stopping the destruction of the planet and now need to manage the massive changes we have made or allowed to be made on our behalf. We don't need economic forums or academic conferences to detail the wreckage or explain how it got there. We need revolutionaries who will sacrifice their lives to overthrow the power structures that are driving the species to extinction. Anything less than that spells doom. And sadly, much to humanity's dismay, there's no app for that.
January 26, 2025
for reading group.
August 2, 2023
Enriching to read an intellectual debate where there is a shared foundation of values alignment divergences on strategic response, as is the case in this collection of essays from the New Left Review about the appropriate left-wing response to the climate crisis (especially as relates to the question of economic growth)
Read
January 24, 2025learned a lot... took 40 pages of notes...
June 14, 2023
Already five stars because I've been following this debate with a passion, but will love to have it in my bookshelf as well
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews