One of the main problems with the Oil-Value-Life chain is that human desperation anywhere becomes a threat to human life everywhere, because capital reliably conscripts the reserve army of labor into environmentally noxious work. To counteract this predatory (though impersonal) phenomenon, public power seeks to ensure that no one out there is left vulnerable and alone, dependent on capitalist vultures in order to meet their basic needs. Along with public health care, public housing is therefore the strategy’s foundation as much as electric power is. Childcare, education, and eldercare as well. And there is no life, public or otherwise, without recreation and art. A picture of a public-powered life comes into focus, and it involves a shift of collective resources toward low-carbon, high-touch care work. With more than enough doctors and nurses to go around, capitalism can’t hold your loved one’s life over your head and compel you to smuggle petrol in order to get enough money to save them, for example. No one could even justify their highly paid antisocial career with their child’s need for a good education, not if everyone’s child was entitled to a good education regardless of parental income. Perhaps this is counterintuitive, but in such a world we could all take more personal responsibility for our choices.