Nicholas Beuret on his book *Or Something Worse. Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition* (Verso), in conversation with Sasha Josette (Working Class Climate Alliance). Part of EBB's Climate Talks series. The push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Nicholas Beuret's incisive critique and actionable strategies empower us to fight for a truly sustainable and equitable future. *Or Something Worse* exposes the bleak realities of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Greening the economy has become a one-sided war, as governments and businesses squeeze the living standards of ordinary people. We need to seize control of the transition in order to reshape it to equitable ends. Existing policies won’t limit global heating to anything close to a safe level. Claims of sustainability disguise a zero-sum battle where the powerful profit and everyone else foots the bill. Green growth was supposed to bring increased wealth for all. Instead, work has been degraded, energy bills have soared, and the most basic necessities have become expensive and scarce. We need to disrupt green capitalism. Nicholas Beuret follows those already fighting back through ‘don’t pay’ campaigns, blockades of fossil-fuel infrastructure, and community counter-planning. He shows we have the tools not only to stop climate change but to build a fairer future. Nicholas Beuret is a lecturer in environmental politics and economic geography at the University of Essex. With a background in both activism and academia, he explores the intersections of climate change, capitalism, and social justice. His work has been featured in the Guardian, The Ecologist, Open Democracy, and Undercurrents. Nicholas lives in the UK, where he continues to write, teach, and engage in environmental advocacy. Sasha Josette is a seasoned climate organiser with interests in building working class cadre for the climate movement and generally starting lots of trouble everywhere! She is the Co-Director of the Working Class Climate Alliance (WCCA), a UK-based organisation addressing the exclusion of the working class from mainstream environmental movements and the professional sector. ------- EBB Talks: Climate. Avoiding the end of the world, navigating the end of the month In 2008, Mark Fisher popularised the idea that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism in his now-classic Capitalist Realism. In the years since, it has become ever-easier to imagine climate collapse than truly transformative solutions. So much of what is written, said and done about climate change is driven by the urgency of preventing ever-worsening climate impacts, imagined as “the end of the world.” But climate activism and green politics don’t happen in a vacuum. They also need to navigate the paycheck reality of the end of the month, and the real-politik of the world as we find it, increasingly featuring climate-hostile far-right populism. As apocalyptic climate futures loom ever larger, systemic political change can feel less and less possible. EBB’s Climate Talks ask what links the big, abstract questions around the end of the world with day-to-day concerns about making it to the end of the month. What role do energy, art, agroecology, food systems, policy and perhaps even (green) populism play in bringing the climate crisis into the kitchen table calculations of everyday life? In a series of events from autumn 2025 to summer 2026, East Bristol Books hosts authors, artists and specialists whose ideas give different windows into climate activism and politics in an era of populism, a prolonged cost-of-living crisis, and political upheaval.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio) — Read more — Read less