Laurie Laybourn-Langton

central mantra of this book: against oligarchy and breakdown, we must build societies in which we can all flourish.

goal that demands a different type of economy, one reoriented towards meeting social and environmental needs, overturning the injustices of contemporary societies and an extractive, neo-imperial global political economy; promoting communal luxury in societies of everyday beauty and comfort; expanding social ownership and control; and deepening and extending democracy and freedom.

Short History of Environmental Breakdown

happened through a three-step process of expansion, extraction and destruction

took around 200 years to clear 12,000 hectares of forest in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France; by the mid-seventeenth century, colonisers in Brazil were using slave labour to clear the same area in a single year, energised by a booming market for sugar.

history of environmental breakdown is the story of the making of the modern world.

assaulting these foundations in a self-defeating spiral. This spiral has three stages.

the final analysis, environmental breakdown is an issue of justice.

three major problems with the ‘good always wins’ story.

three major problems with the ‘good always wins’ story.