Climate change truly is a major existential threat, one we're clearly not addressing fast enough. But as individuals, there's little we can do to stop it on a grand scale — it will require global cooperation to overcome. Nonetheless, the accompanying feelings of helplessness when faced with such a daunting crisis can make many feel paralyzed with despair. So what can be done?
"Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto," a new book from University of Tokyo philosophy professor Kohei Saito, offers more than a diagnosis of the systemic problems that brought us to this moment; it lays out, in clear and well-researched language, how those problems can be thoroughly addressed. In 2020, when "Slow Down" was originally published in Japan, it went by the far more fitting title "Capital in the Anthropocene" — with "Anthropocene" being the proposed geological era that began when human activity started radically altering natural conditions on the planet.
