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Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises
A clear-eyed and urgent vision for a new system of political governance to manage planetary issues and their local consequences.
Deadly viruses, climate-changing carbon molecules, and harmful pollutants cross the globe unimpeded by national borders. While the consequences of these flows range across scales, from the planetary to the local, the authority and resources to manage them are concentrated mainly at one the nation-state. This profound mismatch between the scale of planetary challenges and the institutions tasked with governing them is leading to cascading systemic failures.
In the groundbreaking Children of a Modest Star, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman not only challenge dominant ways of thinking about humanity's relationship to the planet and the political forms that presently govern it, but also present a new, innovative framework that corresponds to our inherently planetary condition. Drawing on intellectual history, political philosophy, and the holistic findings of Earth system science, Blake and Gilman argue that it is essential to reimagine our governing institutions in light of the fact that we can only thrive if the multi-species ecosystems we inhabit are also flourishing.
Aware of the interlocking challenges we face, it is no longer adequate merely to critique our existing systems or the modernist assumptions that helped create them. Blake and Gilman propose a bold, original architecture for global governance—what they call planetary subsidiarity—designed to enable the enduring habitability of the Earth for humans and non-humans alike. Children of a Modest Star offers a clear-eyed and urgent vision for constructing a system capable of stabilizing a planet in crisis.
Deadly viruses, climate-changing carbon molecules, and harmful pollutants cross the globe unimpeded by national borders. While the consequences of these flows range across scales, from the planetary to the local, the authority and resources to manage them are concentrated mainly at one the nation-state. This profound mismatch between the scale of planetary challenges and the institutions tasked with governing them is leading to cascading systemic failures.
In the groundbreaking Children of a Modest Star, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman not only challenge dominant ways of thinking about humanity's relationship to the planet and the political forms that presently govern it, but also present a new, innovative framework that corresponds to our inherently planetary condition. Drawing on intellectual history, political philosophy, and the holistic findings of Earth system science, Blake and Gilman argue that it is essential to reimagine our governing institutions in light of the fact that we can only thrive if the multi-species ecosystems we inhabit are also flourishing.
Aware of the interlocking challenges we face, it is no longer adequate merely to critique our existing systems or the modernist assumptions that helped create them. Blake and Gilman propose a bold, original architecture for global governance—what they call planetary subsidiarity—designed to enable the enduring habitability of the Earth for humans and non-humans alike. Children of a Modest Star offers a clear-eyed and urgent vision for constructing a system capable of stabilizing a planet in crisis.
305 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 23, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 3, 2025
interesting? yes. workable? no, but what even is workability anymore i guess.
January 30, 2025
The first half of the book resonated deeply with me. It’s examination of governance immediately brought to mind concepts from Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems—particularly the idea that our current world order, built on artificially drawn national borders, often fails to align with sociological and ecological realities.
Meadows argues that there is no single, legitimate boundary around a system because the world is a continuum; systems are interconnected rather than discrete. Instead of limiting our thinking, boundaries should encourage us to think beyond them. Yet, as humans, we resist confronting limits when they interfere with our own plans and desires. Similarly, while we often hope that the “invisible hand” of the market will guide us toward optimal outcomes, even in a purely human construct like the economy, real-world actors—including nations—operate with bounded rationality and short-term incentives, leading to aggregate outcomes that benefit no one in the long run.
Blake’s vision of planetary institutions with regional subsidiaries - second half of the book - is plausible, though, as he repeatedly emphasizes, it remains a vision rather than an implementation plan. This distinction is crucial because history has shown that even the best ideas can lead to disastrous consequences when implemented poorly. The book’s conclusion acknowledges several critical challenges that must be addressed for such a system to be effective. A system is more than the sum of its parts, and designing a hierarchy that reflects this complexity is no small task.
Beyond enforcement and fair representation, the book made me consider deeper systemic risks: How do we prevent governance structures from falling into classic system traps like policy resistance, rule-beating, and incomplete goals? How can we design reinforcing feedback loops that align the interests of diverse groups rather than entrenching division? These are open questions, but they are the right ones to ask if we hope to build sustainable planetary governance.
“You think that because you understand ‘one,’ you must therefore understand ‘two,’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and’.”
Meadows argues that there is no single, legitimate boundary around a system because the world is a continuum; systems are interconnected rather than discrete. Instead of limiting our thinking, boundaries should encourage us to think beyond them. Yet, as humans, we resist confronting limits when they interfere with our own plans and desires. Similarly, while we often hope that the “invisible hand” of the market will guide us toward optimal outcomes, even in a purely human construct like the economy, real-world actors—including nations—operate with bounded rationality and short-term incentives, leading to aggregate outcomes that benefit no one in the long run.
Blake’s vision of planetary institutions with regional subsidiaries - second half of the book - is plausible, though, as he repeatedly emphasizes, it remains a vision rather than an implementation plan. This distinction is crucial because history has shown that even the best ideas can lead to disastrous consequences when implemented poorly. The book’s conclusion acknowledges several critical challenges that must be addressed for such a system to be effective. A system is more than the sum of its parts, and designing a hierarchy that reflects this complexity is no small task.
Beyond enforcement and fair representation, the book made me consider deeper systemic risks: How do we prevent governance structures from falling into classic system traps like policy resistance, rule-beating, and incomplete goals? How can we design reinforcing feedback loops that align the interests of diverse groups rather than entrenching division? These are open questions, but they are the right ones to ask if we hope to build sustainable planetary governance.
“You think that because you understand ‘one,’ you must therefore understand ‘two,’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and’.”
March 8, 2026
GRATITUDE TO VISIONARY THINKERS
1. This book makes a grand and preposterous claim: we must think in terms of planetary governance if we have any hope of saving Earth and the life on which Earth depends. When it comes to governance, I suspect most of us think in terms of the nation state, as though the totally arbitrary and completely unnatural idea of a national border is self-evident and inviolable. Blake and Gilman take the time to go back through history to show that it wasn't until 1960 that that concept of a sovereign nation was a fully global concept. Prior to that year, most of the globe contained a struggling mish-mash of principalities that organized themselves with various and struggling forms of rule. (Think of the end of the Hapsburg era, or of how colonialism forced nationhood upon regions with tribal governance). The authors argue that nationhood does't need to be eliminated, but it should take its place in a system governed by planetary authority, in which the flourishing of multi-species ecosystems is the primary consideration of our decision making.
2. Don't turn away! These are not pie-in-the-sky tree-huggers (not that I have anything against tree huggers). The authors describe a concept called planetary subsidiarity, which reimagines systems in which levels of governance from the planetary to the local retain the most authority over their own domains while also remaining beholden to the primary authority of the planet's well-being. It's a complex structure, not without flaws and questions to address, but the overarching idea is that sovereign national interests do not predominate over the needs of the planet. Yes, this sounds like existing agreements such as the world climate accords or even intergovernmental climate treaties made by the UN. The difference is that the United Nations is an assembly of nation states with sovereign interests that always come first and must always be taken into account. What the authors seem to argue for is something like the reverse. The sovereign interests of our planet govern the interests of nations.
3. Sovereignty itself is an interesting concept. As recently as 300 years ago, the idea that anything but a king or ruler could have inherent sovereignty would have been unthinkable. Now we know that a nation and its people possess it. So why couldn't waterways and canyons and the sky have it, too? Of course interests will collide For example, the authors argue that if one species of fox is dislocated by a vast solar array, it may be that the benefits simply outweigh the costs. But a system of subsidiarity would allow for such negotiations to take place -- and, they argue, that environmental scientists or philosophers must be willing to come to the table where their principles might have to encounter real-world stakes and less than perfect solutions.
4. The authors don't mention the idea of a community having a commonwealth stake in certain natural resources. Alaskans, for example, enjoy shareholder stakes in their natural resource - oil, and each resident receives a modest stipend. Obviously, that wouldn't work within the system of planetary subsidiarity because it is extracting a natural resource against the interests of the planet. I'm actually not sure if the concept is inherently antithetical to the idea of planetary subsidiarity, though. What if local communities leveraged resources for the benefit of residents in ways that did not deplete those resources or negatively affect the planet? Or what if there was a planetary financial dividend every human enjoyed simply by being alive on a thriving planet?
5. The idea of such a clash is one of the criticisms I have of the book. Despite its defense of the ecosystem and its elaborate concept of planetary subsidiarity ("Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution) it seems *not* to take actual systems thinking into account. Or, I'm just not clear how a network and a hierarchy can cohabitate, as it were. In systems theory, a positive result such as eliminating mosquitos with a deadly poison can result in devastation for other organisms. This happens when the success of one's results is focused on an element within the system without regard for its affect on the overall system. Factor in the way science is funded, the way merit is determined and the role of Capitalism in finding quick and cheap solutions to immediate problems and you have the state we're in now. Lots of innovation based on a model of short term gain and obliviousness to its ripple effects. In a subsidiarity system, how are the ripple affects accounted for through all the levels of what is, in effect, a benevolent hierarchy?
6. Still all in all I deeply appreciate the hope and imagination it takes to articulate these ideas - and the hope and imagination the authors ask of us as we imagine our future as a species. (Sometimes, I like to imagine aliens coming to take us over because to them we would all just be human, and perhaps then we would realize our common cause.) I also appreciate the way the authors evoke the "Tiny Blue Dot" photograph from 1990 in which the earth is seen as but a speck in the cosmos. Memorably, they quote Carl Sagan on this point, who reminds us of all the bloodshed and devastation brought to the earth and its inhabitants over a microscopic point on this infinitesimally small dot. (Think of Hegseth's recent gloating about the bombing of Iran). Here's the link to the Voyager photo: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voya...
7. Even if the argument doesn't stand for all readers, it's worth entertaining the ideas of big thinkers because they might inspire solutions that really do work. If nothing else, Blake and Gilman remind us that the concepts we see as natural and inevitable (nation states, borders, dominance over one another, extinction of species) and actually neither. It just takes the imagination and will of people who refuse to give up.
1. This book makes a grand and preposterous claim: we must think in terms of planetary governance if we have any hope of saving Earth and the life on which Earth depends. When it comes to governance, I suspect most of us think in terms of the nation state, as though the totally arbitrary and completely unnatural idea of a national border is self-evident and inviolable. Blake and Gilman take the time to go back through history to show that it wasn't until 1960 that that concept of a sovereign nation was a fully global concept. Prior to that year, most of the globe contained a struggling mish-mash of principalities that organized themselves with various and struggling forms of rule. (Think of the end of the Hapsburg era, or of how colonialism forced nationhood upon regions with tribal governance). The authors argue that nationhood does't need to be eliminated, but it should take its place in a system governed by planetary authority, in which the flourishing of multi-species ecosystems is the primary consideration of our decision making.
2. Don't turn away! These are not pie-in-the-sky tree-huggers (not that I have anything against tree huggers). The authors describe a concept called planetary subsidiarity, which reimagines systems in which levels of governance from the planetary to the local retain the most authority over their own domains while also remaining beholden to the primary authority of the planet's well-being. It's a complex structure, not without flaws and questions to address, but the overarching idea is that sovereign national interests do not predominate over the needs of the planet. Yes, this sounds like existing agreements such as the world climate accords or even intergovernmental climate treaties made by the UN. The difference is that the United Nations is an assembly of nation states with sovereign interests that always come first and must always be taken into account. What the authors seem to argue for is something like the reverse. The sovereign interests of our planet govern the interests of nations.
3. Sovereignty itself is an interesting concept. As recently as 300 years ago, the idea that anything but a king or ruler could have inherent sovereignty would have been unthinkable. Now we know that a nation and its people possess it. So why couldn't waterways and canyons and the sky have it, too? Of course interests will collide For example, the authors argue that if one species of fox is dislocated by a vast solar array, it may be that the benefits simply outweigh the costs. But a system of subsidiarity would allow for such negotiations to take place -- and, they argue, that environmental scientists or philosophers must be willing to come to the table where their principles might have to encounter real-world stakes and less than perfect solutions.
4. The authors don't mention the idea of a community having a commonwealth stake in certain natural resources. Alaskans, for example, enjoy shareholder stakes in their natural resource - oil, and each resident receives a modest stipend. Obviously, that wouldn't work within the system of planetary subsidiarity because it is extracting a natural resource against the interests of the planet. I'm actually not sure if the concept is inherently antithetical to the idea of planetary subsidiarity, though. What if local communities leveraged resources for the benefit of residents in ways that did not deplete those resources or negatively affect the planet? Or what if there was a planetary financial dividend every human enjoyed simply by being alive on a thriving planet?
5. The idea of such a clash is one of the criticisms I have of the book. Despite its defense of the ecosystem and its elaborate concept of planetary subsidiarity ("Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution) it seems *not* to take actual systems thinking into account. Or, I'm just not clear how a network and a hierarchy can cohabitate, as it were. In systems theory, a positive result such as eliminating mosquitos with a deadly poison can result in devastation for other organisms. This happens when the success of one's results is focused on an element within the system without regard for its affect on the overall system. Factor in the way science is funded, the way merit is determined and the role of Capitalism in finding quick and cheap solutions to immediate problems and you have the state we're in now. Lots of innovation based on a model of short term gain and obliviousness to its ripple effects. In a subsidiarity system, how are the ripple affects accounted for through all the levels of what is, in effect, a benevolent hierarchy?
6. Still all in all I deeply appreciate the hope and imagination it takes to articulate these ideas - and the hope and imagination the authors ask of us as we imagine our future as a species. (Sometimes, I like to imagine aliens coming to take us over because to them we would all just be human, and perhaps then we would realize our common cause.) I also appreciate the way the authors evoke the "Tiny Blue Dot" photograph from 1990 in which the earth is seen as but a speck in the cosmos. Memorably, they quote Carl Sagan on this point, who reminds us of all the bloodshed and devastation brought to the earth and its inhabitants over a microscopic point on this infinitesimally small dot. (Think of Hegseth's recent gloating about the bombing of Iran). Here's the link to the Voyager photo: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voya...
7. Even if the argument doesn't stand for all readers, it's worth entertaining the ideas of big thinkers because they might inspire solutions that really do work. If nothing else, Blake and Gilman remind us that the concepts we see as natural and inevitable (nation states, borders, dominance over one another, extinction of species) and actually neither. It just takes the imagination and will of people who refuse to give up.
May 25, 2026
very wonky look at how governance needs to move to multi-scale (from planetary to hyper-local) dynamic decision making. This book lays out how we need to be organized in order to deal with planetary challenges (first and foremost climate change and pandemics, but more as well). It is not a roadmap on how we get there. The authors do a good job on discussion the issues and challenges.
April 17, 2026
Striking in some ways and lacking in others. But they don’t claim it’s a comprehensive plan, so I appreciated it for the ideas
October 28, 2024
so many highlights in this thought provoking book on approaching planetary governance! ik the authors emphasize that the point of the book is to start discussions rather than to offer concrete solutions, but there were points in the book where I thought some ideas were not realistic enough. the conclusion reveals a poem that the book got its title from, and it was really nice.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews