Why We Need to Grow an Ecosocialist Party in America: Part 2

When America is ready for ideas that work, we’ll need political leaders who are ready with ideas that work

Original image from University of Miami News. Modified with AI function in Canva to turn the middle podium from orange to green.

This is Part 2 of my discussion of how ecosocialism might come to America. Part 1 is here. Although America is far from ready for ecosocialist solutions — in fact, it harbors so much resistance to the fundamental precepts of ecosocialism that these ideas have little currency in mainstream American political discourse today — my argument here is that there will come a time, soon, when old mental models will fall and a struggling nation will finally begin to consider radical alternatives. In this piece, I attempt to describe how and when America might come to this point, as climate change and resource depletion wreak havoc across the land.

Climate crises, resource depletion, energy descent, and degrowth

Many have speculated about how climate change and resource depletion will trigger (or are already triggering) our descent from the carbon-powered plateau humanity enjoys today (source). This is the path I have called involuntary degrowth. Milestones likely to appear along this path include:

1. Climate damage, initially in the more-vulnerable Global South…