Part of the work of curbing climate doom is to hold onto a vision of the salvaged future, even under the grimmest circumstances. It is undeniable that we will be living in a quite altered biophysical world in the decades to come; the shape of that landscape is not settled but parts of it are already baked in. How we live on that unstable planet is still an open, political question. We know how the worst scenarios are likely to play out; a starker version of eco-apartheid than is currently the case. The alternatives are not difficult to imagine, or even agree on. A desirable green future would be a world of public affluence and community empowerment, where work is gratifying, energy is clean, technology is redemptive, housing and healthcare are more than adequate, and the food and water supply is safe and sustainable. It would be a world where we commit to living within the limits of our eco-systems and where we are building a culture of inter-species solidarity. Other, more utopian, features of a just society that reach beyond profit and property are also necessary to dream about.

Even more than ever. Just as important is to keep on talking about and pushing for ways of getting there. Most recently, proponents of the Green New Deal and advocates of Degrowth have offered different pathways to that future. The former sees state power and public investment in renewable energy as the key to transitioning toward a green economy while maintaining standards of living. The latter envisages a more radical restructuring of our consumer society, with self-management of services and production at the common center. But we may end up needing a hybrid economy which embraces both, where we do not have to choose as a matter of political principle and practice between "public" and "commons" as macro-level programs for distributing resources. Far from being mutually exclusive, one can be preferred over the other, according to context. Or we can embrace a public-commons model where officials who control provision of services agree to work alongside grassroots organizations in order to ensure community self-management.

A decisive, and timely, shift to mass forms of clean energy, for example, is unlikely without the exercise of public power but democratic participation in decisions about generation, distribution, and administration needs to be locked in. The provision of other goods--food, shelter, health care, clothing, culture, credit, information and learning--would certainly benefit from state backing and protection, but might also be better shared through networks of mutual aid. Our challenge, in the flaky Anthropocene, is to build a post-scarcity society that respects both modes of living and governing.