This is both easy and hard to answer, Umair. The simple answer is, “ourselves”. The hard answer is that we have to come up with a way to stop thinking of and grooming human beings as a pestilence on the planet and instead find a unified way for all people to be potential contributors to it. People need to feel useful and valued by something greater than themselves. That’s what religion does, even though the ‘greater’ part is usually imaginary and aristocratic. The modern Left needs to get real with the actual world: finding a way for humanity to be useful to its own future on the planet and in the universe: to end the competitive extraction philosophy of colonialist aristocrats, and to realize that the greatest part of ourselves is what we do for the things and people at ground level.

The Right leaves everything up to the Invisible Hand Job (everyone selfishly competing), and as long as there’s sugar and soda pop, it works for the pyramid scheme of authority. The Left needs to stop believing in the invisible magic and wake up to a dying planet and all of the work that needs to be done, the real value of human labor and creativity (what Obama did), and stand firm on the soil we need in order to eat in the future. We won’t stop climate disaster, and we have to be real about how we discuss it. There’s not going to be a switch that stops the avalanche of tipping points. There’s just going to be work on projects that are going to fail until the old systems are left behind and new projects begin to work for the people who are left and who are willing to move.

We have to stop letting the dollars make all of our decisions and stop putting prices on people. That means all of our purchase decisions must be made with full knowledge of the real costs. Sales taxes are less regressive than a dead planet.