“When you’re in a world that is careening out of control, where we’ve broken through seven of the nine safe dimensions of safe operating space that scientists have discovered, it’s unrealistic in my view to focus on those little things and think that will lead to a real better outcome. What’s realistic is backcasting.” — Jeremy Lent

There Is An Alternative. That is the central argument of Jeremy Lent’s new book, Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All. Margaret Thatcher’s historically materialist TINA — THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE — was both the most seductive and disempowering message the neoliberal establishment ever produced. As long as everyone believes in the inevitability of free market capitalism, nothing will ever really change. Anti-agency is the name of agency. We just push for slightly higher carbon taxes and slightly fewer fossil fuel subsidies and give it the euphemism of “progress.” For Lent, however, this is environmental capitulation.

Jeremy Lent imagines a genuinely sustainable world — one where humans have a long-term relationship with the living Earth. From that vantage point, the steps that look realistic to the incrementalists seem timid or counterproductive. He reminds us that we’ve broken through seven of the nine safe operating dimensions that scientists have identified for a stable Earth system. No, incrementalism isn’t realism. Rather than progress, it’s a trance-like slide into the apocalypse.

Rather than state control or free markets, the alternative Lent introduces in Ecocivilization is the commons — Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom’s third way in which humans self-organise in the collaborative ways of the natural world. It is already happening, he says, in places as far apart as Cleveland, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi. Maggie was wrong, the Anglo-American Lent insists. TINA is bunk. THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE.

Five Takeaways

• The Consensus Trance. Media owned by billionaires who don’t benefit from people freaking out. We broke through seven of nine safe Earth operating dimensions. It should be front-page news every day. Instead: the news cycle moves on.

• Backcasting vs Incrementalism. Two realisms: what’s realistic given the forces around us now vs what’s realistic given the destination. Slightly higher carbon taxes may be taking us in the wrong direction. Start with the sustainable world and work backwards.

• The Commons: Ostrom’s Third Way. Not state control. Not free markets. Humans self-organising as evolution shaped them to — collaboratively, cooperatively. Elinor Ostrom showed it works. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland are doing it now.

• TINA Is the Most Disempowering Message Ever Produced. There is no alternative. As long as everyone believes it, nothing changes fundamentally. Ecocivilization is Lent’s counter: there is an alternative. Believe it first. Then figure out the steps.

• Why People Vote for Strongmen. They feel the system is designed to screw them. They’re right about that, wrong about the solution. The alternative is what AOC, Bernie, Mamdani represent: the courage to actually stand for human dignity.

About the Guest

Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker described by George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age.” He is the author of Ecocivilization (Melville House, May 26, 2026), The Patterning Instinct, and The Web of Meaning. He lives in Berkeley, California.

References

Ecocivilization by Jeremy Lent (Melville House, May 26, 2026): mhpbooks.com/books/ecocivilization
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons
Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit Level

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: temperature records breaking again
00:01:43 Why don’t people freak out?
00:02:12 The consensus trance
00:03:21 Backcasting: start with the destination
00:05:37 Regenerative agriculture
00:08:00 The commons: Elinor Ostrom’s third way
00:17:05 State vs market: the failing debate
00:19:45 What about the billionaire class?
00:20:20 The Spirit Level: equality and well-being
00:22:00 The Swedish laptop story
00:24:15 Is this realistic?
00:25:20 AOC, Bernie, Mamdani
00:28:00 TINA and why it’s wrong
00:31:10 Does eco-civilization require catastrophe?
00:33:30 Backcasting is the rea