How is it that uncertain conditions of “could and might” lead to policy proposals that “require and would”? (updated)

The article demonstrates how climate and capitalism crises need to be analyzed together, if the interconnected emotions of anxiety and burnout are to be addressed effectively..

I agree. My problem is I worry how readers often conflate advocacy and analysis.

First, I feel the author is right in saying: “these insights could be deepened by placing them in the context of the care crisis of neoliberal capitalism”; “such reforms could help create the preconditions for deeper post-capitalist transformation”; and “a ‘polycrisis’ lens might usefully decenter the climate crisis while informing a broader analytic framework and political program”.

But then the author asserts that “this must be a form of polycrisis analysis deeply influenced by Feminist and ecological Marxism”. Also, some of those could-reforms “must prioritize public transit over private cars, circular economies, and extended producer responsibility to reduce extraction as far as possible”. Indeed and also specifically [my bolding below]:

To a large extent this requires the decommodification of care, involving ‘universal guarantees in place that all people will be entitled to care,’ along with expanding publicly funded childcare, physical and mental healthcare, elderly care, and care for those with disabilities (ibid: 195–196). It also requires revitalizing community infrastructures – like libraries, community centers, parks, and public spaces – that have decayed under decades of neoliberal privatization and austerity (particularly in poor communities) (Rose 2020). More broadly, ending the care crisis requires social programs that dramatically reduce (if not eliminate) the emotionally distressing dynamics of debt and unemployment by improving economic security for all.

I have no problem with these requirements! My problem is the paradox: Conditions are sufficiently uncertain that we cannot say the proposed reforms would actually work, but we are certain enough to say that these proposed reforms entail must-requirements with varying degrees of specificity.

Now there is nothing inherently “illogical” about taking that latter position. In fact, it’s what we expect from policy advocacy. This is what policy advocates do; theirs is not to analyze the uncertainties and certainties case-by-case, which I would do as a practicing policy analyst.

Policy analysts of course make recommendations and that is an advocacy of sorts. But they do so in the face of that case-specific determination of what is “sufficiently certain” and “certain enough.” For advocates, the determination is a settled matter with respect to their cases.

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Source: Michael J. Albert (2025). “It’s not just climate: rethinking ‘climate emotions’ in the age of burnout capitalism. Environmental Politics (accessed online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2025.2526228).