Serge Marti is former editor-in-chief of Le Monde and director of Le Monde Economie.
In this time of great climate awareness, and of the inescapable increase in inequality, is it possible to take stock? At stake, the answers to an essential question: will planet Earth remain livable for the majority of inhabitants?

The ecological reality is more than alarming, and it doesn’t affect only insects or forests; poverty continues to expand in the North as well as the South, on the backdrop of unheard-of demographic growth. At the root of the problem, an outdated economic system. Born out of the industrial revolution, based on liberal capitalism, but not at all humanistic, it is now demonstrating its tragic weaknesses.

And yet, whereas only a Marshall Plan might deliver the planet from the current impasse, ideological barriers and ordinary conservatism prevent it from being put in place. No one can predict the outcome of this very human inertia, but we can at least point out the urgent problems and understand their implications. That is what the journalist Serge Marti does here; he doesn’t just list the catastrophes to come, but also offers a blueprint for possible solutions.