Troy Vettesse

Drew Pendergrass

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

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.

Half-Earth Socialism quotes

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