This is a long overdue review of a book that could not be more important. I read Gough’s Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing soon after it was published, and I have taken my time to digest and reflect on its messages. Since then, the book’s messages have only become more salient, as young people have gone on strike from school to call out political intransigence to the climate crisis, as scientists’ warnings have become more stern and their connection of the climate crisis with the operation of the economic system less tentative, and as the UN Special Rapporteur has exposed the UK government’s inadequate support (at best) for people failed by the economic system.
This book is rich – and dense. It is not a page turner, but a ‘page-returner’. I found myself leafing back to re-read sections in order to grasp subsequent discussions. But the research and reflections contained between the covers provide the intellectual foundation for the protest placard ‘System Change Not Climate Change’.
Gough is one of the world’s greatest scholars on human needs (he explains his intellectual journey in a short autobiography). His work, with Len Doyal, shows that basic needs encompass physical health, autonomy of agency (mental health, cognitive understanding, opportunities to participate), and critical autonomy. They are satisfied by access to things such as adequate food and water, protective housing, safe work environment, healthcare, and significant primary relationships, and in turn optimized by freedoms from (civic and political rights), freedoms to (rights of access to need satisfiers), and political participation.
