27 May 2026 – How can we break the consensus trance leading our civilization to the precipice?
Ever since the publication of Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome has told the world that it can’t continue its current trajectory without devastating results. For 50 years, the world has refused to face these facts and alter its fundamental behaviors.
A major reason for this has been the difficulty of envisioning a truly alternative system that could replace the current one. In Fredric Jameson’s iconic words: “For most people, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” As a result, even well-intentioned reformers try to fix what they see as faults in the system without realizing that, in fact the system isn’t broken—it’s doing exactly that it was intended to do.
People increasingly intuit this. Angry and desperate, they turn to the only voices that seem to recognize their plight—extremist authoritarians promising to dismantle the structures that have immiserated them. We all sense the darkening times arising as a result. But rather than shoring up a crumbling system, the most effective response may be to construct a better one within the ruins of the old.
My new book, Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All, published on 28 May 2026, is an attempt to help set this in motion. It lays out the potential for a fundamentally different world system—an ecological civilization based on life-affirming principles rather than principles of extraction, exploitation, and elite wealth accumulation.
Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All
An ecocivilization is a society designed with the overriding objective to set the conditions for all beings to thrive on a regenerated Earth. In place of extraction, zero-sum competition, and endless growth, it sketches out the contours of a society based on regeneration, mutually beneficial cooperation, and oriented toward long-term flourishing.
What would the key operating principles of such a civilization? Here are some of my thoughts:
In place of the dominant culture’s human supremacy, claiming innate superiority over nonhuman nature and granting moral license to destroy ecosystems, an ecocivilization would recognize the intrinsic value of all life.
Where the economy now gives primacy to the proliferation capital above all else, an ecocivilization gives primacy to the essential dignity of all people and their right to flourish.
Whereas global capitalism drives commodification and homogenization—monocrop agriculture and standardization of food, education, and cities—an ecocivilization supports heterogeneity.
Where the wealth pump relies on hierarchical structures to centralize power, an ecocivilization would devolve decision-making through the principle of subsidiarity.
Rather than the structural inequality of the dominant system, an ecocivilization aims at structural equity—equivalent opportunity for each person to fulfill their unique potential.
And where today’s system motivates selfish behavior from childhood onward, rewarding it with wealth, status, and power, an ecocivilization would be built on core design principles for successful cooperation aligned with our evolutionary inheritance.
A defining feature of the ecocivilization framework is its scope. The polycrisis cannot be addressed domain by domain; it requires the coherent redesign of the world system as a whole. In my book, I move through a wide range of domains such as economics, finance, technology, agriculture, governance, law, urban design, and education, drawing on pioneering thinking in each field.
Around the world, visionary thinkers, leaders, and communities—many of them here in the Club of Rome—are already building these alternatives, often without seeing themselves as part of the same larger movement. The book attempts to highlight their work and ideas, and weave their strands together into a coherent whole.
As the juggernaut we’re on accelerates ever closer to the precipice, we might ask whether societal transformation is even possible before things comes apart. But to the extent meaningful hope does arise, it emerges out of the very ruptures of our present breakdown. As the weave of our dominant system unravels, possibilities emerge to reweave our societal fabric into a new design. Difficult as it is, this is nevertheless the calling that the times demand.
This book attempts to offer, not a finely elaborated blueprint, but a broad framework for this new design. In all cases, the outlines of world we need remain just that: rough guidelines, imprecise and blurry, offering hints of a landscape still to be charted. While the foundational principles of an ecocivilization may be solid, one person’s view of it may look different from another’s, and the closer we get there, the more finely we will be able to distinguish its parameters.
In the months and years ahead, I look forward to bringing dialogue and generative debate about an ecocivilization further into the conversation of the Club of Rome. I invite you to join me in this collaborative process of exploration.
Ecocivilization: Making a world that works for all will be published on 28 May 2026. Learn more and purchase a copy here.
