Ecocivilizaton: Making a World that Works for All, by Jeremy Lent
Jeremy Lent insists he’s not hoping for utopia, but the utopianism of Ecocivilization is inescapable. Can every aspect of human society could be redesigned “to work together as a coherent whole, setting the conditions for all people to flourish”? Maybe this should be done. But how? Could Lent’s dream of “mutually beneficial symbiosis,” a social ecosystem like that in nature, be achieved in the face of intractable human greed and avarice?
Lent’s rhetorical points are often brilliant. If we live in a system run by glitchy software, don’t just fix the bugs (which lead to new bugs), let’s “change the operating system of the entire world,” he insists. Aside from the notion of social justice, the most pressing reason for drastic change is survival. The climate catastrophe is ongoing, and as the author says, it’s still less obvious in North America than elsewhere, including the Global South, whose inhabitants “have very little to buffer them against adversity, abnormal weather and degraded ecosystems.”
Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible, yet we’re governed by institutions exploiting the world’s resources (including human resources) for profit, corporations whose metric for success is growth. Sadly, most people accept the governing system with a shrug. It’s just the way it is—but it wasn’t this way until neoliberalism took hold in the ‘80s with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and company. From the Great Depression through the ‘70s, the developed non-Soviet world moved on a Keynesian middle path between socialism and pure market economics, a regulated capitalism that spurred the spread of the middle-class across the world.
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Lent traces the incremental slide toward the present situation to the 1947 founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international conclave of economists whose worship of market forces was considered extreme at the time. With reason, he calls it “the most successful change-making entity in modern history.” Their neoliberal dogma of “slashing regulations, marketizing public services, and crushing trade unions” advanced through “a series of coordinated, interconnected strategies.” They gained a foothold in academia (University of Chicago), established think tanks (Cato Institute) and media (National Review), and systematically developed media, political and social alliances. “All of this was generously funded by wealthy philanthropists and foundations who stood to gain by the instillation of free market economics into increasingly broad swaths of society.”
The Mont Pelerin crowd, sustained by faith in their ideas, worked pragmatically, step by step in a loose coalition with common goals. Lent finds inspiration in their success for the new global movement he hopes is being born, acknowledging that “its source of power would not so much be financial as in the hearts and minds of billions of people around the world who desire a better future.”
But Lent admits that we are living in an era of surveillance capitalism as well as media platforms whose algorithms “intensify polarization by spreading malicious propaganda” for click bait to drive ad revenue. The result often feels like “collective psychosis.” The author can only wish that the digital universe connecting people to each other and the “data that is generated could potentially be used for the benefit of society at large.” How do we get there? Will our well-paid politicians regulate Big Tech? Will the Tech bros develop a conscience?
Ecocivilization offers cogent descriptions of life on Earth in 2026. However, solving the problems it outlines requires faith in a revolution of the human spirit. At any stage of Lent’s march to brighter horizons, a few malicious actors could thwart the advance. And yet he keeps faith. Quoting Vaclav Havel, Lent describes hope as “an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
