Critical engagements with “Climate Change as Class War”—proletarian ecology, environmental provision, and the welfare of children as a public good

Abstract

Matt Huber offers a powerful materialist class-based account of the notion of the interplay of nature and human life as the struggle of “proletarian ecology.” This formulation has led me to think about D.W. Winnicott’s idea of infant development and “environmental provision” in class-based terms. Winnicott’s ideas of environmental provision seem well suited to Huber’s work on environmental policy and governance. Issues of environmental provision for caretakers and children are increasingly eclipsed in a public policy sphere dominated by the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) as birthrates for high-income women and families continue to fall and birthrates for the poorest women are almost double those of their higher income counterparts. This paper is part of the SPE Special Theme “Critical Engagements with ‘Climate Change as Class War.’”