If we don’t change the conversation, if we don’t deal with the systemic problems of capitalism and come up with a viable alternative, our goose is cooked.
In principle, free transit advocacy can also be an element in a broader vision to reorganize urban life and restructure the social order along red (working class-based, working toward socialism) and green (environmental) lines. This requires working through a host of open questions that go far beyond lowering the cost of fares. These include:
"The private sector and the profit motive cannot deploy enhanced weathering technology at the scale needed, nor push a rapid energy transition, nor build coastal protections at the scale and speed necessary. But none of these tasks is technically or economically impossible. The mechanism needed in each case is state action and the public sector."
The sixth Transform!Danmark Conference, focusing on the development of left economic and ecological alternatives, took place in Copenhagen on 18 March. Once again, it focused on sustainable and fair transformation, as well as a changing society in Europe and around the world.
Growing concerns about climate change and other environmental trends have set off the next round of old Malthusian diagnoses and solutions.
As a case in point, ecological economist William E. Rees recently wrote in the Canadian alternative magazine The Tyee (“Staving Off the Coming Global Collapse” July 17, 2017):
