Name: Half-Earth Socialism
Rating: 3.333333333333333 (3 reviews)
ISBN: 9781804290385

Drew Pendergrass

Troy Vettese

A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics

Half-Earth Socialism

taylor miles hopkins

Perhaps the key philosophical principle of eco-socialism is not the unknowability of nature but something else, say, the hybridity of nature and culture.

Keeping track of the three main philosophical foundations of human relationships with the environment that are continuously brought up at the beginning (first two have aged poorly in their opinions, which I agree with).

“Hegel believed that humanity would eventually fully 'humanize' and control nature, an attitude towards nature that would later be called Prometheanism…Malthus' influence…his dread of 'overpopulation'…Jenner, who studied and popularized the smallpox vaccine, presciently warned against humanity’s natural dominion over the animal kingdom.”

Not only has the scale of humanity's attempted control of nature never been greater, but its pace of growth has become ever faster.

The concept of Half-Earth comes from E. O. Wilson, an entomologist whose research has shown the need to rewild half of the planet to staunch the haemorrhaging of biodiversity. While global warming, poaching, and invasive species decimate flora and fauna, Wilson stresses that the greatest driver of extinction remains habitat loss… As 15 percent of the world's land area is presently protected (plus a measly 2 percent of the ocean), only half of all species will survive the Sixth Extinction. To create a global ark able to protect 84 per cent of species, then 50 per cent of Earth needs to be protected.

The second interpretation is that there is only one vessel, Earth, that can contain and sustain both humanity and nature, and therefore we must be careful to properly maintain this vital craft… Earth is a natural machine, both ancient and alien, whose operating systems we will never fathom, and therefore it is wisest to let the ghost in the shell control the circuitry even if we do not always under stand it ourselves. 

Prometheanism is predicated on the ability to intelligently intervene in nature, but such action is impossible on Hegel's own terms because knowledge is produced through action. Therefore, the humanization of nature proceed in conditions of ignorance, with all the danger that entails.

…nature is more unknowable than the market, and therefore far more deserving of our awe as an unconscious, decentralized, and unimaginably complex System. 

Instead of the humanization of nature, much work in the future will be rewilding, which can be theorized as a kind of unbuilding of the world…unbuilding would be the equally hard work of disentangling human consciousness from self-willed nature. This cracks open the concept of labour and our understanding of progress as we have known it since 1798, creating the possibility for a new admixture of work and leisure, as well as a new relationship between humanity and nature. The task of unbuilding makes clear that environmentalism isn't so much the idealization of 'pristine' nature (though it is vital to protect intact ecosystems) but the recognition that it is still possible to repair our broken world.

But all the rest can be preserved indefinitely; art, love, play, etc., etc.; in short, everything that makes Man happy

That nature is ultimately unknowable does not mean we should not try to understand as much as we can about our beautiful, bewildering world. Our knowledge of nature will change, as will society and the technology it commands.

Animal husbandry takes up 4 billion hectares—40 per cent of Earth's inhabitable land. It is no wonder, as a recent study has found, that 'animal product consumption by humans (human carnivory) is likely the leading cause of modern species extinctions".

Capitalist agriculture has created a world where 60 per cent of the total terrestrial mammalian biomass is livestock; only 4 per cent is wild mammals, while humanity composes the remaining 36 per cent.

Half-Earth socialism requires a similar balancing act, supplying everyone with the material foundations for a good life sustenance, shelter, education, art, health—while protecting the biosphere from destabilization. In the scientific literature, this challenge is known as the 'planetary boundaries' debate, in which scientists calculate how to support everyone's basic needs without trashing the planet.

Possible reference for symbol section in HCDE308

 …he [Neurath] devised ISOTYPE (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education), a graphic language designed to convey complex economic information not only to Austria's working class but even to people who could not read German (or read at all). ISOTYPE was the fruit of his collaboration with Marie Reidemeister…and artists Erwin Bernath and Gerd Arntz. Inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics, Neurath developed ISOTYPE as a pictographic language based on a few simple principles, including the ideas that individual 'symbols must be self-evident, clear in themselves', and that their combination 'may form a unit of information like a story’…Neurath thought that a visual language could democratize reason by making the essence of an economic problem apparent to non-experts…was designed to help teach the working class to see the economy, all the better to appropriate it for themselves.

The problem was not a simple one, since the anti-aircraft predictor had to take into account the turbulence of the air and a degree of randomness introduced by the pilots' actions… In mixing human and machine, the anti-aircraft predictor was the first self-consciously cybernetic system. 

…what tends to be on offer in socialist political theory: either tiny but loosely connected anarchist communes or a top-down authoritarian structure. 

Burmatova thought that this kind of model naturally allowed for the inclusion of environmental concerns. She was especially interested in the l impacts of industrial projects: ʻthe local level of analysis…gives one the opportunity to more closely study and con- sIder the specificities of individual plants, natural resources, and conditions of a given territory from the point of view of nature conservation and protection.”

Kornai contrasted socialism's congenital problem of shortage with capitalism's tendency to surplus…the environmental crisis itself could be considered an inevitable consequence of capitalist overproduction, where too much of nature has been humanized, to the point of destabilizing capitalism itself.

Capitalism comes with an embedded form of coercion that drives growth: the threat of unemployment, homelessness, and starvation for those unwilling to sell their labour, and bankruptcy or hostile takeovers for any firm that fails to make the going rate of profit. The socialist economy, however, will necessarily have weaker powers of coercion. If we believe that every human being deserves food, shelter, health care, education, and electricity, then we cannot force people to work by withholding those needs. Everyone will be motivated instead by positive incentives that lack the knife's edge of immiseration, such as social obligation, personal satisfaction, pride, leisure, and even modest material bonuses.

We're always making new blueprints for the future', Edith replied."That's the nature of democracy: permanent dissatisfaction with the present.”

Troy Vettesse

To save our future we must re-wild the earth! Our fossil fuel-driven society has run out of time. Only by rapidly giving up our reliance on carbon can we pay down the debt of fossil capital and buy a liveable future without a mass extinction or global warming. In this visionary and incisive manifesto, environmental scholars Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass outline the structural, economic, and social changes de-carbonization will require. Drawing from detailed environmental modeling of our planet's many possible futures, Vettese and Pendergrass argue that we will need to give half of the earth's land, now used for agricultural and meat production, back to nature--rewilding half the earth. The only political program that can give us a livable half-earth, they argue, is socialism: a planned socialist society can constrict the destructive industries ravaging our world--fossil fuels, cars, aviation, meat, and real estate--while expanding renewable energy systems, organic agriculture, public transport, and health and education systems. Half-Earth Socialism argues that we can consciously and democratically direct human society's interaction with nature--and in fact, we must, if we want any kind of livable future on this planet.

A Manifesto to Save the Future

Tony

Edit - here's a better review: https://cosmonautmag.com/2022/10/who-...

Decent chapters 2 & 3. I wish that instead of focusing on "Prometheanism" and touting "utopianism" they would actually go in-depth on all of the shortcomings that current solutions. I wish that authors would actually go into systems theory in-depth to explain how exactly it can help us build a sustainable society instead of namedropping system theory pioneers. Instead this book reads like a cheap and pretentious polemic for a dead ideology.

Incredibly informative with an amazing list of references. Really helped me with understanding a more structured view on different eco-philosophies. Refreshing to read from such an open point of view, specifically a “you might not agree with all of this, but at least think about it and see where you end up” stance. I think this helped make each idea more approachable while also balancing urgency with plausibility. 

Some sections, such as the more mathematical ones, were a littler harder for me personally to get through (slower reading with such densely-packed informative paragraphs), but glad to have all the info there with a synthesis. 

The fourth chapter was a great way to wrap up these ideas through fiction writing. Why not hope for a utopia?

Incredibly informative with an amazing list of references. Really helped me with understanding a more structured view on different eco-philosophies. Refreshing to read from such an open point of view, specifically a “you might not agree with all of this, but at least think about it and see where you end up” stance. I think this helped make each idea more approachable while also balancing urgency with plausibility. 

Some sections, such as the more mathematical ones, were a littler harder for me personally to get through (slower reading with such densely-packed informative paragraphs), but glad to have all the info there with a synthesis. 

The fourth chapter was a great way to wrap up these ideas through fiction writing. Why not hope for a utopia?

Half-Earth Socialism A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics

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