by Ian Angus

These are my 10 favorite books among the many excellent works included in my Ecosocialist Bookshelf columns in the past 12 months. In alphabetical order by author.

Brett Christophers
THE PRICE IS WRONG
Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet
Verso
Why isn’t the world moving to end emissions and stop fossil fuels? The problem is not that transitioning to renewables is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable. Brett Christopher argues that the global economy is moving too slowly toward sustainability because the return on green investment is too low. He argues we can only advance by taking energy out of the private sector.

Sean Creaven
CONTAGION CAPITALISM
Pandemics in the Corporate Age
Routledge
A major contribution to ecosocialist theory and analysis. Using the metabolic rift framework, noted Marxist philosopher Sean Creaven critiques corporate-capitalist control of the economy, the state, and science, and the grave consequences this has on global public health policy, the ecological crisis of sustainability, and zoonotic pandemic events such as COVID-19. Not an easy read, and not cheap, but highly recommended.

Helen Czerski
THE BLUE MACHINE
How the Ocean Works
W.W. Norton
All of Earth’s oceans are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials. Physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski shows how temperature, salinity, gravity, and tectonic plates interact in a complex dance, to support life from tiny plankton to gigantic whales. Understanding the ocean’s vital role in the Earth system is an essential part of protecting the planet from catastrophe in the Anthropocene.

Aaron Eddens
SEEDING EMPIRE
American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa
University of California Press
From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the world’s largest biotechnology companies, agribusinesses aims to impose genetically modified crops on millions of small-scale farmers across Africa., Eddens shows how the Green Revolution fails to address global inequalities. Seeding Empire insists that eradicating hunger in a world of climate crisis demands thinking beyond the Green Revolution.

John Bellamy Foster
THE DIALECTICS OF ECOLOGY
Socialism and Nature
Monthly Review Press
As with his previous books, Foster focuses on the concrete choice we face between ecological socialism and capitalist exterminism. He explores the complex theoretical debates that have arisen historically with respect to the dialectics of nature and society, and the radical challenges represented by emergent visions of ecological civilization and planned degrowth.

Adam Hanieh
CRUDE CAPITALISM
Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market
Verso
Going beyond simplistic narratives that frame oil as ‘prize’ or ‘curse’, Hanieh shows in depth how oil is woven into the fabric of modern capitalism. Oil has a foundational place in all aspects of contemporary life — no challenge to the fossil fuel industry can be effective without taking this fact seriously. An essential contribution to debates around oil-dependency and the struggle for climate justice.

Ståle Holgersen
AGAINST THE CRISIS
Economy and Ecology in a Burning World
Verso Books
Capitalism produces crises and crises reproduce capitalism. Ecosocialists must understand why that is, and how economic and ecological crises differ. Our strategy cannot be based on what is possible in today’s system, or on what will soon be impossible if the crisis continues. Our historical mission in the face of the climate crisis is to build a movement that can overturn the profit/accumulation system before that hell-bound train takes us over a cliff.

Andreas Malm and Wim Carton
OVERSHOOT
How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
Verso Books
Even before 1.5 degrees, climate disasters are intensifying — and yet mainstream climate policies are based on surrender, on the assumption the best we can do is overshoot the target and cool things down later, using unproven and unknown technologies. In the meantime, the fossil fuel industry swims in the largest profits ever made. Malm and Carton show how this outrageous view came to dominate climate negotiations, and lays out the stakes for the climate struggle in the years ahead

Timothy C. Winegar
THE MOSQUITO
A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator
Penguin Random House
The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, killing an estimated 52 billion people from the total of 108 billion humans who have ever lived. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing.

Li Zhang
THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19
China and Global Capitalism
Stanford University Press
Li Zhang argues that popular narratives of China’s role fail to address the danger of global potential pandemics caused by contact between wild animals and humans. She shifts the debate away from narrow cultural, political, or biomedical frameworks, emphasizing that we must understand the origins of emerging diseases with pandemic potential in the more complex and structural entanglements of state-making, science and technology, and global capitalism.