This System is Killing Us

‘This System is Killing Us’ is an insider look at the catastrophic effects that energy infrastructure and mining are having on communities, their land and our planet. Xander Dunlap spent a decade living and working with Indigenous activists and land defenders across the world to uncover evidence of the repression people have faced in the wake of untamed capitalist growth. From Zapotec and Ikoot people struggling against wind energy projects in Oaxaca, Mexico to the violence of the Hambach mine in the German Rhineland, Dunlap presents the truth that lies behind the green re-branding of capitalism that social movements in the Global North have been slow to challenge. By centring the struggles of people whose lives are being systematically destroyed, Dunlap reveals blind spots within the current official debates around climate change. The book also speaks to the feuds between socialist modernism and degrowth. While changing public policy could play a constructive role in remediating climate catastrophe, by understanding the successes and failures of those ‘on the front lines’, it becomes clear that decentralise – and ideally viral – self-organisation could be the only way out of this socioecological nightmare.