This is a very useful book, providing a revolutionary Marxist perspective on the struggle against climate change.

What I found particularly interesting and informative was the detailed histories of such things as the use of coil, oil and plastic; detailed discussions of the science of climate change and biodiversity loss; and interventions into debates such as over the term 'Anthropocene'.

There are unfortunately a few downsides to the book. Due to the fact it is mostly a collection of previously published essays, we are treated to the same quotations from Marx and Engels, and the same anecdote about Marx being interested in the science of soil degradation, multiple times. Each chapter starts out at a very introductory level, rather than building on one another; two of the shorter chapters are almost unnecessary, mostly repeating arguments made in more detail in other chapters.

Possibly the biggest problem is that the essays within the book were originally written to inform already convinced Marxists about environmental science and history, not to intervene into climate debates to convince committed environmentalists of the need to be revolutionary socialists. While the environmental science in the book is detailed and well presented, the political arguments are cursory at best. Nowhere in the book is there a comprehensive and convincing discussion of: why capitalism can never be a rational or democratic system; why socialism would be a rational and democratic system; what exactly a revolution is and why it is necessary; the capitalist state and why it will take mass, revolutionary organising to overcome it; why reformism must be overcome and how; why it is necessary to be a committed, organised, revolutionary socialist. One chapter even bizarrely claimed Marx didn't have an answer to capitalist ecological crisis. (Hint: the answer was and is revolution.) Perhaps one of the many invocations of the story of Marx and soil could have been replaced with a discussion of the violence meted out to Standing Rock protestors, including attack dogs and limbs blown off with flash grenades, or the murders of environmental activists such as Berta Caceras, and an intervention could have been made into the question of how Extinction Rebellion should approach the police. For a book seemingly aimed at convincing climate activists to be revolutionary socialists, these drawbacks seem unfortunate and strange.

Nevertheless, this book is still excellent and I recommend it to anyone interested in not dying from climate change.