https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205231177370
Critical Sociology
1–8
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DOI: 10.1177/08969205231177370
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Between De-Growth and
Eco-Modernism: Theorizing a
Green Transition
Stephen Maher
SUNY Cortland, New York
Joshua K. McEvoy
Queen’s University, Canada
Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet. By Matthew T. Huber. London: Verso
Books, 2022. 320 pp., $20.99 (paper). ISBN: 139781788733885.
In Climate Change as Class War, Matthew Huber makes a welcome contribution to a Left strategy
to address climate change. Most critically, Huber (2022a) urges us to venture into what Marx calls
the ‘hidden abode of production’ and to take seriously the ‘inherent inequality and antagonism
between capital and labor’ found there (p. 54). Published in the spring of 2022, the provocation
could hardly have come at a more critical moment. The mobilizations of 2019, which saw millions
around the world join climate marches and strikes, and Greta Thunberg tell the United Nations,
‘The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not’, have long since faded
into a pandemic-clouded memory. As Huber (2022a: 3) starkly puts it, ‘the climate movement is
losing’, and the deleterious effects of global warming and other related ecological crises continue
to intensify (IPCC, 2023).
Indeed, in 2022, carbon emissions reached an all-time high and fossil capital registered record
profits (Batrawy, 2023; International Energy Agency (IEA), 2023a; Osaka, 2022). Saudi Aramco,
the world’s largest oil company, alone took in US$161 billion in profit, while British Petroleum
(BP) and other oil majors scaled back commitments to reduce carbon emissions and increased
investment in oil production (Crowley and Mathis, 2023; Edser et al., 2023; Mullaney, 2023).
According to an estimate from the normally conservative IEA (2023b), with energy costs soaring,
in 2022 government subsidies for fossil fuel consumption reached US$1 trillion globally for the
first time. Not only is capital’s pursuit of profit maximization not, on its own, leading to significant
investments in a clean energy transition and climate change mitigation, but it is rather continuing
to exacerbate the crisis.
Yet the environmental movement has largely neglected the role of capital in fueling the climate
crisis. Here, Huber’s forceful critique of liberal ‘professional managerial class’ (PMC) advocacy
Corresponding author:
Stephen Maher, Department of Economics, SUNY Cortland, 22 Graham Avenue, Cortland, NY 13045, USA.
Email: Stephen.Maher@carleton.ca
1177370CRS 0 0 10.1177/08969205231177370Critical SociologyMaher and McEvoy
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