Growth, Democracy, or Climate Action? The New Trilemma of Advanced Capitalism Author: Aidan Regan, Hanna Schwander, Cyril Benoît and Tim Vlandas ISBN-13: 9781788218894Publisher: Agenda Publishing Guideline Price: $35 The premise is simple in Growth, Democracy or Climate Action? The New Trilemma of Advanced Capitalism. You can have any two but you can’t have all three. It is an accessible and succinct political science book, with a straightforward structure. The first chapter sets out the trilemma, depicted visually as a triangle, with each side representing a response. The next three chapters detail each of these responses in turn; the Liberal Status Quo is pretty much what we have in most advanced capitalist societies, the Big Green State is most closely identified in China right now (with some caveats), and Degrowth, we’ll come to later. The final two chapters situate the premise firmly within the political arena, before opening up some potential solutions.It’s a very well-debated book, first drawing the reader into the seductive allure of each response to the trilemma, before shattering the illusion with the crippling reality of its inherent weakness. The authors are clear that this is an analytical framework, that no response is proposed as a stand-alone solution, but that the framework assists us by opening a pathway through these tensions. It’s incredibly refreshing, and quietly terrifying, to describe it in this way. Refreshing to call out the intuitive truth that we all know deep down about our consumerist society – that a planet with finite natural resources cannot sustain a society dependent on growth. And terrifying that the current climate crisis is finally exposing this and forcing a reckoning: “Capitalist accumulation is incompatible with climate stabilization”. The chapter on Degrowth is the most interesting of the three responses. The description of how we could redefine our success metrics in society is captivating: “[Degrowth] seeks to redefine prosperity through sufficiency, care, and collective well-being, rather than through economic output, individual consumption, or financial return.” But the political proposition here is dire; “contraction is equated with electoral failure and political suicide”.The final two chapters provide some interesting analysis and solutions. Regan et al illuminate how time, capacity and administration exacerbate the tensions, and how each of the three responses, in different ways, eschew political agency. This must be reclaimed, and the conflicts inherent in the trilemma tackled head-on, if we are to see an effective response to the climate crisis. Sinéad Gibney is a Social Democrat TD for Dublin-Rathdown.