The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic

An urgent call for the political transformation needed to address the common causes of climate change, COVID-19, and racism.

An iconoclast of the best kind, Stan Cox has an all-too-rare commitment to following arguments wherever they lead, however politically dangerous that turns out to be.--Naomi Klein

2020 was a year defined by crisis. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about the urgency of addressing climate change, but it took COVID-19 to demonstrate clearly that the future of human life on Earth is interconnected and at risk. While the virus quickly spread across the globe, extreme weather events compounded the suffering and economic catastrophe. In the U.S., public demonstrations of outrage over the murder of George Floyd expanded to include a growing awareness of the pandemic's disproportionate impact on communities of color. In cities around the world, people took to the streets to protest racial inequity in all of its forms.

In The Path to a Livable Future, Stan Cox makes plain the connections between the multiple crises facing us today, and provides an inspired vision for how to resolve them. With a deeply informed, clear to-do list, Cox shows us how we can work together to address the climate emergency, white supremacy, and our vulnerability to future pandemics all at once. Our future depends on it.

Stan Cox stands in a class of his own. Chronicling the emergence of a translocal alliance including black, Indigenous and people of color, and a growing number of white folks outside urban centers who have started coming to terms with the pervasive coloniality of our agrarian system and political institutions, The Path to a Livable Future is a testament to the fact that meaningful responses to the multifarious crises we face are unlikely to come--first and foremost--from traditional urban liberal strongholds. Having masterfully demonstrated in Any Way You Slice It and The Green New Deal and Beyond that climate breakdown was fundamentally an energy rationing and wealth redistribution issue, Cox continues to meticulously lay the groundwork for the radical paradigm shift that the ecosphere, our politics, and our economics so urgently require.--Felix Marquardt, author of The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution is Transforming our Lives for the Better

Stan Cox is the author of many books, including Any Way You Slice It, Losing Our Cool, and The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Denver Post, Baltimore Sun.