The author critiques the plan advocated by noted climatologist, James Hansen. In this critique he points out the contradictions of the plan because of the demands of private accumulation of capital which is the dynamic engine of capitalism. However, I differ with Foster on one point. The first mandatory step to save the human race is to overturn the system of capitalism. Our masters in the One Percent will never implement Hansen's first step.
Capitalism in the phase of monopoly-finance capital is more prone to economic stagnation, and at the same time more intensively destructive of the planetary environment. For humanity today, facing both climate change and a more generalized planetary ecological catastrophe, due to the crossing of critical planetary boundaries, there is no choice left consistent with long-term survival but to leave capitalism’s burning house. Hansen’s climate-change exit plan represents the crucial first step that must be taken if irreversible climate change is to be avoided. But it is not by any means the last step. A real solution demands a radical alteration in social priorities—the kind of revolutionary transformation that could occur at unimagined speed if the population were once to reach its own social-environmental tipping point.
