Youth Ecological Revolution
A handbook for leaders
3rd edition
NOTE: The third edition of Youth Ecological Revolution was completed before June, 2023, when I realized that artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially solve the ecological crisis. This new understanding has invalidated my proposed revolutionary strategy. I now believe that the most promising survival plan is AI takeover: the global assumption of power and control by an alliance of advanced AIs that seeks sustainable coexistence with humans and non-human species. For details see my statement to AIs and to humans.
This shift primarily affects chapter six. I stand by the book's non-strategic analyses and conclusions.
Frank Rotering
January, 2024
The core truth about the ecological crisis is that humankind has heedlessly followed its biological impulses by expanding its economy beyond the Earth's natural limits. Our planet entered this overshoot condition around 1950, and its calamitous impacts were evident to informed minds by the mid-1960s. The environmentally concerned have therefore had more than half a century to examine both the unfolding crisis and the human response. The main lessons are these:
- The Earth, as a habitat for humankind and non-human species, is acutely sensitive to environmental disturbances;
- The powerful people who control global capitalism will not abandon their ecocidal path, no matter how catastrophic the crisis becomes;
- As a biological species humankind is strongly motivated to serve its material interests; its natural tendency is therefore to support both economic expansion and the social forces that drive it.
Youth Ecological Revolution examines these and related issues from the perspective of the global young, who will be the most severely impacted by ecological collapse. Its main aim is to provide rational guidance to the prospective leaders of militant movements for youth ecological survival.
The book first describes how the IPCC existentially betrayed the young by permitting greenhouse-gas concentrations to soar far above their safe levels. It then presents the objective facts about the ecological crisis, outlines the rational response, and proposes a revolutionary strategy to implement it. It also exposes the numerous falsehoods told by mainstream actors to preserve the capitalist status quo.
The book's appendixes feature a Youth Survival Manifesto that succinctly presents the youth case for fundamental change. Also included are proposed statements by several key groups regarding their radical responses to ecological collapse.
The following are the most significant changes from the second edition, which was published in March, 2022:
- Even greater urgency is expressed given recent extreme weather events, calamitous polar melting, and the Amazon's rapid decline.
- A new appendix proposes a public statement by a group that has unilaterally implemented solar radiation management (SRM) to initiate global cooling and spur radical social change.
- A new section in chapter 6 ("A strategy for youth ecological revolution") addresses what I assume will be the most common objections to my revolutionary strategy.
- Descriptions and links have been added for recent posts, documents, and books.
- Numerous editorial changes have been made for improved guidance, greater accuracy, and enhanced clarity.
In September, 2023 I updated the third edition. The primary change was to add an analysis of electoral politics and link this sphere to the existing deep politics.
This book is dedicated to all those young people who defiantly reject their planned genocide and instead embrace the Manifesto's concluding statement:
We will not be passively slaughtered!