The Solutions are Already Here

Tactics For Ecological Revolution From Below

Paperback, 256 pages

Published Jan. 27, 2022 by Pluto Press.

ISBN:
978-0-7453-4511-6
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4 stars (1 review)

Are alternative energies and Green New Deals enough to deliver environmental justice? Peter Gelderloos argues that international governmental responses to the climate emergency are structurally incapable of solving the crisis. But there is hope.

Across the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realise their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal.

Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalised to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.

1 edition

Better than expected, but still rather frustrating

4 stars

My previous attempts at reading Warner have rather run aground on, as I see it, his attempt to lighten Buddhist teachings, but that lean uncomfortably much on "...did I ever tell you I played bass in a punk band." Despite the opening autobiographical chapters, this book largely manages to steer clear of that, but then I'm left wondering what's left. Warner quotes pretty heavily from Dogen, plus more modern teachers such as Nishijima and Kobun, and then offers his own interpretations and personal commentary. Frustratingly, the quotes are only sometimes sourced, leaving the reader unclear where to go read more. Warner's commentary itself contains some gems, especially when he's being particularly humble, but it's not clear there's enough there to justify the reading.