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I first came across the term ‘ecological civilization’ five years ago in an email from Jeremy Lent titled ‘Dare to imagine a Life-Affirming Civilization’.
Drawn in by the bold vision, I joined a series of online classes on the subject, led by Lent, the California-based author of The Patterning Instinct. The class ended past midnight for me, long after my young children were asleep. In the still of the British winter night, I chatted with strangers on Zoom and explored this new idea.
‘Ecological civilization’ is only two words. And yet, put them together and you get something that has never existed before: a modern, technological society that begins and ends with the dignity of all life. The concept emerged in Germany in the 1970s, has become a political buzzword in China, and is now being reintroduced to the west by several prominent environmentalists and systems thinkers.
The mission of Lent’s latest book, Ecocivilization, is to make the reader believe that – despite the interlocking crises of today – a beautiful, new world is possible. Think of it as a stretch class for your social imagination. The ambition is dizzying: to present a story that has the magnetic force to pull us towards what Lent calls an “entirely new phase of human history”. One in which humans learn to cooperate among themselves and also with the rest of the living Earth community. That’s to say, it’s essential, and timely.
Does Lent succeed? And what would an ecological civilization be like in practice?
I began reading the book four days into the US and Israel’s bombing of Iran, a grim backdrop to the bright futures imagined on the page. Lent doesn’t shy away from this disconnect. The early chapters delve into our fossil-fuel-addicted, growth-obsessed present and its colonial and capitalist origins. These are at times a bracing read. But Lent argues convincingly that, as the weave of the world system unravels, “possibilities emerge to reweave our social fabric into a new design.”
Next he sets out the principles of an ecological civilization, drawing inspiration from how life itself has created new cooperative structures by symbiosis. Consider how the first animal and plant cells were formed by the merger of free-living bacteria or how these single cells came together to make larger organisms. Could humans be on the verge of a similar, major leap forward in their cultural evolution? If so, Lent would see it guided by a focus on three values: quality of life (not material possessions), shared humanity, and ecological regeneration.
The core of the book is a dozen thematic chapters mapping out what an ecocivilization might look like in practice in different areas. The range is vast: from citizens’ assemblies to universal basic income, from the rights of Nature to taming corporate power. Lent also tackles replacing GDP, creating a global parliament, and reinventing the commons as shared online community-managed resources. The book overflows with ideas. Lent argues for nothing less than the radical reform of “every major domain of modern civilization”.
At the end of each chapter is a list of these proposals. At first I began by reading these bullet points. This left me overwhelmed by the scale, audacity, and at times unfamiliarity of Lent’s vision. Worker-owned cooperatives the norm. Factory farming abolished. Caps on wealth. Autonomous local communities. A global minimum wage. Law as an extension of ecology. ‘Data trusts’ that pay internet users for the value generated from their data. The skim read left me sceptical about Lent’s claim that the book is “not a utopian dream”.
But reading the short chapters – each taking me less than half an hour – began to change my mind. Lent does a great job here of revealing hidden histories to show that the current version of ‘the law’, for example, is not the natural – or only – way of understanding it. There are alternatives. In easy prose, he synthesises current progressive thinking and practice across such a broad range of areas. These are necessarily brief, but even with topics I know fairly well I always learnt something new.
One shortcoming of the book is its rather static presentation of history. The story he tells is of 10,000 years of elites sucking wealth from ordinary people. This is undeniably a major feature, especially apt today with inequality rocketing in the west in the last fifty years and the reemergence of an oligarchy. What the book misses is any real engagement with the earlier redistribution of wealth in Europe and North America in the first half of the 20th century (as shown by political economist Thomas Piketty) – and with what caused it.
Ecocivilization has little to no discussion of the trade union or anti-monopoly movements or the invention of progressive taxes. Even civil rights and the modern environment movements are barely mentioned. Yet these earlier world-changing reformers – though they did not fully achieve their aims – can fuel radical hope in future transformations.
How might this new civilization come to be? Drawing on the work of the philosopher Roman Krznaric, Lent argues that major social shifts happen when crises come together with ideas and movements.
One of the best opportunities for radical change in recent decades was the 2008 global financial crisis. Yet it was wasted. The mainstream was exposed as fundamentally flawed, but there were not enough bold, alternative ideas lying around to be taken up and implemented. Social movements were not strong enough to counter the political power of Wall Street and the City. So the banks were bailed, Occupy was seen off, and the door was slammed shut. The Green New Deal, cooked up in the aftermath of 2008, took a decade to enter serious political conversations.
There will be more crises. Lent wants to make sure that, when they hit, there are plenty of radical ideas in circulation ready to be put into practice by those in charge. He’s working on the movement side too, helping to found and lead the Ecocivilization Coalition. And I’ve found myself back on Zoom discussing the subject again.
Ecocivilization is a deeply researched and useful book. Lent manages to be constructive, specific and visionary at the same time. In a climate of despair and disillusionment among those who yearn for a better world, it offers a rare, positive vision. For that, Ecocivilization should be cherished.
Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All by Jeremy Lent. Melville House Publishing, 2026. ISBN: 9781685892333
