I started to become aware of the grim realities.c change in 2005 when Merrill Singer and I started to work on a medical anthropology textbook (Singer & Barr 2007). In the chapter on 'health and the environment, we included a section on the impact of global warming on health', which has grown in length in subsequent edi- tions (Singer et al. 2019). Since then, on my own, and with Merrill and others, I have been feverishly working on cli- mate-related issues over the past 14 years (Baer & Singer 2018). Like other eco-Marxists or eco-socialists, I view the capitalist world system as the 'elephant in the room when it comes to the ultimate driver of climate change (Baer 2012) and am convinced that the ultimate climate change mitigation strategy would be to replace capitalism with an alternative world system based upon social parity and justice, democratic processes, environmental sustain ability and a safe climate not an easy task in the face of hegemonic neo-liberalism and rising right-wing populism or incipient fascism.