Climate change and capitalism, climate dystopia, and radical climate futures

The number of climate change-related books published during the past fifteen years has skyrocketed to a point where it is virtually impossible to keep up. The literature is also written from many disciplinary perspectives, including climate science, economics, the social sciences, the humanities, and science fiction. In this essay I review eight books, all with a political economic slant, published in 2021-2023. In the review's first section, I discuss three books that recognise a link between capitalism and climate change. In the second section, I turn to the prospect of climate dystopia, a scenario discussed in two other books. Given that the 27 UN Conference of the Parties (COPs) have not managed to successfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many climate scientists are now predicting a four degree or warmer world by 2100 if drastic cuts to emissions do not occur soon. Various other voices, including the authors of the two books in the third section of my review, are considering radical future scenarios and calling for some form of post-capitalism that sets the stage for achieving a safer climate along with a more socially just world system. Last but not least, the review discusses a recently published book that brings together my three themes of climate change and capitalism, climate dystopia, and radical climate futures.