What's Left

Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis

By: Malcolm Harris

Narrated by: Patrick Harrison

A vital guide for collective political action against the climate apocalypse, from bestselling progressive intellectual Malcolm Harris—“a brilliant thinker and writer capable of making the intricacies of economic conditions supremely readable” (Vulture).

Climate change is the unifying crisis of our time. But the scale of the problem can be paralyzing, especially when corporations are actively staving off changes that could save the planet but which might threaten their bottom lines. To quote Greta Thunberg, despite very clear science and very real devastation, the adults at the table are still saying “blah blah blah.” Something has to change—but what, and how?

In What's Left, Malcolm Harris cuts through the noise and gets real about our remaining options for saving the world. Just as humans have caused climate change, we hold the power to avert a climate apocalypse, but that will only happen through collective political action. Harris outlines the three strategies—progressive, socialist, and revolutionary—that have any chance of succeeding, while also revealing that none of them can succeed on their own. What's Left shows how we must combine them into a single pathway: a meta-strategy, one that will ensure we can move forward together rather than squabbling over potential solutions while the world burns.

Vital and transformative, What's Left confirms Malcolm Harris as next-generation David Graeber or Mike Davis—a historian-activist who shows us where we stand and how we got here, while also blazing a path toward a brighter future.

Critic reviews

“What’s Left is a lively, informative, and invigorating book on a subject that truly could not be more important: how to fight for our future on earth.”—Sally Rooney, author of Normal People and Intermezzo

“The climate crisis is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Among the central questions: How do we get off fossil fuels and still keep the wheels of civilization spinning? In What’s Left, Malcolm Harris has written a repair manual for life on our rapidly warming planet. It’s smart, practical, and it will change how you think about our collective future.”—Jeff Goodell, New York Times bestselling author of The Heat Will Kill You First

A Structured Analysis of Solutions to the Climate Crisis

What’s Left does an excellent job of laying out the economic paths forward to address the climate crisis.