Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism

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A vast new apparatus will be needed to introduce the necessary changes in energy production and consumption, and to ensure climate justice, and that a fair distribution of the very substantial costs of the transition to sustainability does not fall unduly on those less responsible for the incipient catastrophe. The obsession with consumerism will have to be supplanted by greater self-sufficiency, voluntary simplicity, and the satisfaction of needs rather than wants. An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it. Original, punctiliously researched, and erudite, Utopianism for a Dying Planet suggests a possible and potentially effective way of responding to what is increasingly and universally seen as the gravest crisis ever faced by humanity.”—Artur Blaim, University of Gdańsk

Gregory discusses the role of utopian and dystopian narratives as useful mechanisms for imagining meaningful social and political change. He explains how utopia can help in preparing us for climate change. The destruction all around us at a warming rate of 1.2°C will bring us to this end if we remain on our current course. It indicates that the entire global warming narrative of a “sustainable” increase of 1.5-2°C has been false, and misleading. So, we need to achieve warming of below 1°C. And this means more dramatic interventions than any previously mooted. UtopianismOriginal, punctiliously researched, and erudite, Utopianism for a Dying Planet suggests a possible and potentially effective way of responding to what is increasingly and universally seen as the gravest crisis ever faced by humanity.” —Artur Blaim , University of Gdansk

In what way is utopianism distinct from the broader categories of hope, wishful thinking and the imagination?As a matter of principle we cannot understand utopia without confronting dystopia, for they are intimately interrelated. Much greater social equality is upheld in nearly all utopian visions, whilst extreme inequality is typically associated with dystopia, and with current neoliberal societies like Britain and the US, and kleptocracies like Russia. So we will need a Universal Basic Income, a four-day work-week, the guarantee of universal health care and so on. Right-wing “utopias” typically rely on the labour of the many to support the ideal lifestyle of the few – think of Nazi Germany, but also white supremacy racism generally. Enslavement, pervasive fear, widespread disinformation, and oppression of minority groups typifies these “utopias”, which are dystopias for the minority. So if we accept a modified version of the Morean paradigm of utopian republicanism, greater equality and widespread consent must define any future utopian vision. You discuss the concern that utopia’s alleged drive towards perfection makes it totalitarian. How do you respond to other arguments that utopia is authoritarian because it requires or enforces a certain type of participation from individuals, e.g., that their behaviour is somehow improved, that they are more community-minded, kinder to one another, etc? Do you think that there is anything to the accusation that utopia is illiberal in this sense? In the context of the climate crisis, do we have the time to be worried about this type of concern? For four reasons I have chosen to portray this response in terms of the long tradition known as utopianism, which dates from the publication of Thomas More’s famous Utopia (1516), but stretches through to early socialism and Karl Marx to the early environmentalist writers and the deeper green thinkers of the 1980s and later. Predicting our climate future: what we know, what we don't know, what we can't know October 12, 2023