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

by Troy Vettese

A plan to save the earth and bring the good life to all

In this thrilling and capacious book, Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass challenge the inertia of capitalism and the left alike and propose a radical plan to address climate disaster and guarantee the good life for all. Consumption in the Global North can’t continue unabated, and we must give up the idea that humans can fully control the Earth through technological “fixes” which only wreak further havoc.

Rather than allow the forces of the free market to destroy the planet, we must strive for a post-capitalist society able to guarantee the good life the entire planet. This plan, which they call Half-Earth Socialism, means we

• rewild half the Earth to absorb carbon emissions and restore biodiversity
• pursue a rapid transition to renewable energy, paired with drastic cuts in consumption by the world’s wealthiest populations
• enact global veganism to cut down on energy and land use
• inaugurate worldwide socialist planning to efficiently and equitably manage production
• welcome the participation of everyone—even you!

Accompanied by a climate-modelling website inviting readers to design their own “half earth,” Vettese and Pendergrass offer us a visionary way forward—and our only hope for a future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Environment, Ecology, Climate Change, Economics, Nature

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2022

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the great paradoxes of thinking on the Left is the bad reputation that utopias have, not helped by Engels’ early 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific – a quite reasonable critique of a whole bunch of writers who had a vision of socialism but no real large scale vision of how to get there. This isn’t to say the Marx & Engels had no utopia in mind – they clearly did, laying it out some of the early work. Yet later ‘scientific’ socialists turned into reductionists and crude empiricists who got pretty good at analysis, messed up much of the practice and rather lost sight of where we are going. I see the same logic in those on the Left who write off fiction and utopian writing as a diversion from the ‘real’ struggle (and in doing so lose sight of a vision so become reactive and conserving). Instead, fiction and utopian writing are essential for building understanding of Others and for imagining and trying out ideas about where it is we might be going. All too often I see these discarded because they don’t fit how our models tell us the world works.

Despite all its empiricism, this engaging, frustrating, invigorating and in places downright annoying book is just the kind of utopian thinking we need on the Left – not because it is right (Vettesse and Pendergrass pretty much admit it probably is not), but because it tries to imagine the detail of what a sustainable world might look like, and the sort of ways we might manage that world to keep it going. That is to say, it’s a classic sort of thought experiment, where they make some assumptions and then see where they go. At the heart of their conjecturing lie two things: first that the efforts humans have made to control the global environment (nature) are flawed not in the execution but in the very uncontrollability of such a complex system, and second that much of what passes for socialist economic planning makes the same assumption as most other forms of economic thinking and works as there is a single measure that allows all thing to be easily compared. That is to say, they criticise both capitalist economics and socialist planning for treating price as the straightforward encapsulation of everything that allows all things to be compared.

The argument is, as befits such utopian vision-making, unconventional. First, they explore models of human engagements with the environment through consideration of works by Hegel, Malthus and Edward Jenner each of which proposes a different approach to what they call ‘the knowability of nature’, which they link to the problem of economic planning, indeed economic models, to argue that they are simply too complex to be knowable in detail. The kicker is that they argue that we can build models at a higher level, so detailed modelling may be impossible but global modelling may be possible – and they try to build some. Second they draw on ideas about algorithms linked to linear programming and in natura economic modelling written out of socialist economics to suggest there are viable alternatives to the current approaches. The case, their model, turns on some assumptions and one overarching presumption, which is that to be sustainable the way we live in the world needs to be constrained, and requires a form of socialist democracy. It is this latter assumption that allows their modelling to work, because once the overall constraints are identified and agreed, those best placed to make specific decisions are those whose local knowledge knows what works best given local conditions, within the overall systemic constraints. What’s more, despite the technical complexity suggested by what they are talking about, the case is clear, lucid and assumes no computing or mathematic knowledge.

In his fabulous Envisioning Real Utopias project Erik Olin Wright reminded us that the tasks of an emancipatory social science are three fold: systematic diagnosis and critique of the world as it exists, envisioning viable alternatives, and understanding the dilemmas, possibilities and obstacles associated with transformation. This piece of utopian thinking does what much of the Left leaves out of this task – envisioning viable alternatives. The second part of Wright’s approach looked to those alternatives and asked the extent to which they were desirable (is it a utopia we’d like to be in?), viable (is it a meaningful goal that can be put into practice?) and achievable (do and can the conditions exist for them to be brought about?).

Vettese and Pendergrass are strongest on the viability question, although their fictional creations of what this world might look like, modelled as a piece of writing on William Morris’s 1890 novel News From Nowhere, posits a pretty good and rewarding life, invoking Marx in The German Ideology that it could be possible “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner … without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic”. Yet this is where some of the frustration lies, in that the achieveability question is left, for the most part skipped over, except that trying to humanise nature (and therefore relying on geoengineering as a solution) is not the way to go while the social movement needs to better draw in scientists – although to be fair, this is a plan, not necessarily a path to that plan.

This, then, does what good utopian writing should do: it allows us to consider what a better future might look like. What’s better is that Vettesse and Pendergrass have sufficient technical skills to not only build the computer systems that allow that planned future to be explored, but have done so in a way that we have on-line access to their systems and join in, making different assumptions to see what happens. It’s probably not the answer, it might not even be an answer but it is an attempt at one that gets beyond the technocratic reductionism of much that passes for economic and environmental assessments on the Left, let alone the Right. That makes it worth our while as something that is good to think with.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't think I am able to rate this book. Why so? Because one of my key principles is to separate the book from the concept/technology it describes. So e.g. if the technology is excellent, but the book is terrible, I rate it as bad. And the other way around. But in this case ... the ideas presented in this book ... are so abysmally, incredibly wrong that I don't think I could separate that from the overall judgment...

First of all, why did I read this book - a book about socialism? Because of my recent visit in Edinburgh... I enjoyed the beautiful city, its landscapes, and all the historical places, but one day, when I was passing by the fence of the university of E., I've seen a series of posters - invitations for passers-by to attend the meet-up of local ... Marxists. My jaw has dropped nearly to the ground - as someone from a former communist country, I have a very clear and categorical standpoint when it comes to communists, Marxists, and radical socialists. The memories are still fresh, they are being passed gen to gen, taught at school - basically, NEVER AGAIN.

But people from the so-called Western World have never experienced those atrocities - and apparently, young idealists want to "fix" the world using the concepts introduced by long-dead red comrades ... Scary shit. And then I spotted "Half-Earth Socialism" - the book which promises to solve the most pressing issues of today's Earth by ... turning half of the Earth (involuntarily, by revolution(s) led by socialist activists) into a giant kolkhoz. It sounds so-so-so-so horrible that I simply had to read it. It took me just three sessions and I'm really scared.

I'm not going through everything that you can find in the book. I don't think I can find the strength/motivation to do so. Let me summarize my key thoughts only:
* there are plenty of claims, but NONE of them is based on facts/references to the source - there are just radical opinions peppered with emotional statements
* people who have written this book advocate the model that has failed miserably, but they don't address any reasons WHY it (communism) has failed (except mentioning prometheism as a wrong direction) - what does that say about their thought process?
* they claim that small-scale experiments (of self-sustained environments) didn't work, so they advocate for a "big bang deployment": no room for experimentation, no room for empirical tests, no feedback mechanism; they want to change the planet this way, how does that even sound?
* they bring in Havana and Soviet cyberneticists as sources of inspiration and good patterns for replication - initially, I thought it was a joke
* they convince the reader that central planning (on the level of the planet) is possible (!) with the usage of linear programming (!) - they don't have a basic understanding of ANY theory of complexity
* they appear not to understand the primary human motivations: honestly, they claim that you can convince people to perform the shittest jobs by giving them additional vacations in centrally managed resorts; is this some KIND OF JOKE?!
* the section about replacing money with something unclear and that later you can just "simply" request a replacement for something that has broken ... this isn't even funny

The theories in this book are harmful. Idiotic. Ridiculous. They have nothing in common with reason, science, and understanding of human nature. At least a few times, I thought this book is a joke, prank, or some sort of performance. But apparently, this is not the case. This is poison. Avoid.

Marking it with 1 star, so everyone avoids this cesspool.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this, despite being fairly obviously on the ecomodernist end of ecosocialism and so hence unsure about compulsory veganism and land-tilling. Half-Earth Socialism does some quite unusual things in the often very hand-wavey ecosocialist Verso book subgenre. It's both a) very honestly implausibly utopian (bookended with dystopian and utopian short stories) and b) very plausibly hard-headed about planning and economics, and what the authors think would have to be lost to create an ecosocialism that wouldn't just reverse climate change, but also zoonotic pandemics and mass extinctions (they're also quite right that too many accounts try to separate out these three clearly linked phenomena). That dialectic of 'ideally, we'd like x very special thing' and 'here's the exact computation we'd need for it to work' makes this a compelling read, even though I'm not sure if I'd last long in their particular form of socialist society.

[Mesut Bostancı · Rating 5 out of 5]

A recent tweet from the co-author nicely sums up the stance that Half-Earth Socialism is up against. "Why are there so many 'ecosocialists' who hate animals?" It can be hard to be a socialist and an environmentalist at the same time in terms of knowing what exactly to do with one's sentimentality. On the one hand socialism requires a certain kind of irreverence, a sweeping, critical militancy always on the lookout for moralism as cover for base material interests. On the one-hand is the sandal-wearing, deep earth ecology which draws strength from a spiritual ethics of care. These two attitudes have butted heads as much in theoretical debates of Victoria-era England as in the drudging DSA committee meetings of today. It is clear that Troy and Drew are intimately aware with this seeming contradiction, and try their hand at an affective-aufhebung by using the best tools of both political traditions: empirical data and utopian dreaming.
They do this, in part, by asking two parallel questions: what would an ecological socialism look like without recourse to the tricks of Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism, and what would a socialist ecology look like without recourse to the illusions of apolitical half-measures and bourgeois patronage. What if a socialist project was structured around values like self-abnegation, thrift, and epistemic modesty? What if an ecological blueprint required many of the cliches of actually existing socialism: quotas, shortages, and the endless centrality of politics in its most basic form: the art of who gets what, when, how. Rather than defer the unappetizing hard truths of socialist efficiency or ecological limits, Troy and Drew acknowledge bravely that as things stand now, there is no way to have our cake and eat it too. Without using any of the cheap tricks of “net-zero emissions” or techno-utopianism, they spell out clearly what it would take to live within our planetary means *right now*. If critics of the book dismiss mandatory veganism and a 10-fold energy reduction for Americans while the global south gets to double theirs as political non-starters, they are welcome to offer an accounting in which exurban-dwellers get to keep driving their electrified dick-head trucks to buy Costco T-bones on the free market, but mind you *without* using any accounting tricks like direct-air capture or cold fusion. In this regard, they share all of Vaclav Smil’s realism, with none of his distaste for its political implications.
But if they’ve done the math, they’ve also done the dreaming. The closing chapter offers a fictional glance at their Utopian vision of half-earth socialism, a world in which we bike through tomato fields to the district labor sub-committee. If the empirical polemics of the first part of the book is meant to shake ecologists out of their magical thinking and convince them of the necessity for an economy based on a democratically planned economy, the utopian section offer socialists a version of partisan sentimentality: not everyone who wants to continue to share planet with birds and wolves is a neo-liberal shill. As it turns out, empirical modesty and economic thrift are values that are not key to ecological conservation, but may well form the basis of socialist democratic practice as well. The book beautifully weds, according to my own aesthetic-political preferences, the ecological and the socialist according to Gramsci’s maxim: "La sfida della modernità è vivere senza illusioni e senza diventare disilluso."

[Ishan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The recently published IPCC Report puts this book in earth-shattering context. (both literally and figuratively). The Authors present what I suppose would be called four main ideas to put forth the idea of half earth socialism. I have to, in my very, average-ish person understanding, give props to them for coming up with these ideas, and for encouraging in their own way, radical thinking on how to save the earth from climate catastrophe.

As it happens with almost any other book, there were things that I did not agree with or those that did not make sense to me, but then reading is not for the purposes of reinforcing one's own thought processes.

I would certainly encourage people to read this book, partly for the ideas the authors present, and partly with the hope that it triggers thoughts amongst its readers, from where we may discover another novel idea which we can set into action, and attempt to, despite a large portions of our own people acting in defiance and in contravention to well-established science and facts, yes, facts that are plain as day.

[Graeme Newell · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Half Earth Socialism" presents a utopian vision for a more sustainable world. I’ve always felt that we need the voices of dreamers in our midst. It’s dreamers who shake us out of our lethargy and help us to envision new ways of tackling stubborn problems.

“Half-Earth Socialism” attempts to continue the tradition of the dreamers by envisioning an earthly utopia where each of us live in harmony with nature. The waste and greed of capitalism have been tempered and there is enough for everyone on the planet to escape the ravages of poverty.

This idea of “half earth” got its start with the famous biologist, EO Wilson. He envisioned healing the ravages of the Anthropocene by re-wilding half the earth.

In “Half Earth Socialism” the authors attempt to help us imagine just how the goal of half earth and a sustainable planet could become a reality. They also create an allegory to help us imagine the daily rhythms of such a life.

Unfortunately, this book doesn’t inspire us to dream. The logic of the authors’ thinking is so flawed that it exacerbates existing feelings of an impending planetary melt down.

The problem is the authors can’t quite make up their mind on a path to follow, so they flip back and forth between two diametrically opposed strategies, thus making their entire premise implausible. They advocate:

-Dialing back capitalism so we harm the planet less
-Powering forward with advanced technology

This book needs to pick a lane. Are we going with Walden pond or a super tech future? We can’t do both.

The authors primarily advocate simplification. This would mean things like:

-Worldwide public transportation instead of personal vehicles
-Veganism instead of steaks and processed food
-Simpler pleasures like family and friends, not world travel and wide screen TVs

They lay out a vision of what this would look like for each of the major consumption areas: food, transportation, energy, etc. Their vision of the future necessitates technological advances that will require unprecedented levels of energy consumption, advanced computer innovation, and resource mobilization.

For example:

-In order to live a vegan life, the planet must eliminate meat and replace it with a major industry cranking out plant-based meat replacements.
-In order to eliminate nuclear power, we should radically advance energy technology, and create vast wind and solar farms.
-In order to create resource equity, we need to create a political system where rich people voluntarily dial back their yachts and villas, and agree to live modestly in dormitories with others.

In other words, the way to achieve a simple, more sustainable world is to innovate wildly advanced technology. The flawed reasoning: simplicity will be achieved through creation of complicated systems. So the next thirty years need to look like this: as global warming spurs worldwide environmental crises, drowning cities, and wild fires, the world needs to not get rattled. It needs to achieve unparalleled technological advancement, all the while cooperating in ways unprecedented in human history.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy a hopeful utopian vision of the future. It provides us with a break from the doom scrolling that tends to pervade our lives. All of us are in bad need of just a sliver of hope in order to combat the environmental armageddon story. But in order for a utopian vision to be inspirational, it must have a basic level of viability.

I feel this book’s reasoning is so flawed that it exacerbates the problem. After reading it, I feel as if the problems are more insurmountable than ever. No one has the future of climate change figured out, but if environmental storytellers hope to inspire us to think in new ways, their tales must have at least a minimum level of plausibility.

[Hannah O‘Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a book that fulfills two of my biggest dreams: First, the authors move beyond a critique of the current fossil fuel based socio-metabolic regime and embark on a thought experiment of a degrowth utopia (and I really appreciate the idea that we don’t just all move into a hippie commune and grow our own vegetables which would be undesirable for me personally and impossible in terms of land use anyway). Secondly, instead of a ‘Promethean’ approach to dealing with climate issues on the left which falsely promises fully automated luxury communism to us but in that same moment denies the existence of planetary boundaries, the book discusses real trade offs between energy, land use, and biodiversity. These are difficult to discuss because it’s unlikely to find a win-win solution for all.

It’s refreshing to read this easily digestible, mere 200 pages long piece where everyone starts off by agreeing that capitalism is the culprit of climate change. The profit motive currently guiding production and investment decisions and the imperial mode of living in the so-called Global North drive us into climate armaggeddon and, unless we change this underlying logic, we are probably doomed. Climate engineers and conservatives alike which promise to save us with the help of BECCS or solar geoengineering are ultimately interested in holding up the current economic system in which they have vested interests and advantages they aim to preserve at the cost of basically everyone else. I myself started my career as a geoengineering hater a couple of years ago, and this book was therefore comfort food for me.

By the way, both degrowth and geoengineering have made it into the IPCC report. So interesting timing for this book!

I found the idea behind half earth socialism very intriguing. Calculating different socialist plans based on linear programming, cybernetics, and a kind of in natura calculation fed with climate science data does make sense to me and motivates me to go further into this and understand it better. For now, I’ve played the Half Earth online game and you should too, it’s good craic.

There’s some things I disagree with. The authors claim that electricity comprises only a small part of total energy use, but I would disagree. It is also stated that hydroelectricity and geothermal energy won’t play a big role compared to wind and solar power in a half earth socialist future and I wonder why that is. What was really a bit weird was the statement that the anti nuclear movement was so all-encompassing in the past which I doubt was really the case.

And lastly, the book avoids the question of political feasibility. Not only does the eco socialist revolution which mark the starting point of the half earth socialist utopia seem far away, but also a global system of governance based on the aforementioned mathematical tools appears extremely unlikely. It makes absolute sense to restrict this discussion in the book to the very correct assertion that the alternative might be something like a global climate catastrophe. And I would not criticise the book because of that. There is no general blueprint for changing power structures. But, as one friend of mine said to me once, if we think about solutions to the climate crisis in the framework of political feasibility at the moment, we can also just give up right away.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle calling this book a "plan" isn't really accurate. It's more a "vision." I have nothing against visions, and as visions go, this one isn't so far off from mine. If we don't consider radical solutions and if we aren't prepared to try some of them, we may miss out on the best opportunities for saving our planet. I'm fine with the idea of taking strong action to slow climate change, even if it requires me to cut back on my lifestyle. I do think that a more collectivist society would be a good thing and that it would help us to combat both climate change and social ills such as vast inequality of wealth and political polarization. I agree that treating money as the measure of all things is an error that cuts the human heart out of society. And I agree that the computer science of today could be harnessed for far more effective economic planning than the Soviets were ever able to manage so that a partially planned economy should not be casually dismissed. But Mr. Vettese does not chart a pathway that I think can or should be followed to pursue this vision.

Mr. Vettese is very good at explaining why other people's schemes for combatting climate change won't work. He's right that there are problems with massive deployment of biofuels and nuclear energy. He's right that most schemes for geoengineering our way out of climate change are as likely to cause problems as to solve them. I don't think that universal veganism is the answer, but I acknowledge that our current relationship with food animals and industrial agriculture causes problems of environmental damage, pandemics and ethical issues that need to be addressed. And he's right that neoliberalism is filled with contradictions that make it unworkable as a long-term program, but then he is blind to the contradictions in his own program, which he seems to be saying he doesn't have to worry about since he is admittedly utopian in his approach. I'm afraid that's a double standard that doesn't work for me.

For a utopian view of the future in the struggle against climate change that is much more workable, read Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry of the Future. Mr. Robinson suggests that perhaps we can find our way through to a better future through a variety of actions, ranging from moral authority and leadership in government to changes in social attitudes to some semi-sanctioned ecoterrorism plus a limited amount of geoengineering. I'm not so sure that Mr. Robinson's program will work in the end of the day, but the utopian vision of his book left me with a feeling of hope and possibility, while this one left me shaking my head.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass’s “Half-Earth Socialism” centers on the premise that environmentalists (and also the left more broadly) must re-embrace a lost utopianism, especially in a world where dystopian scenarios become ever more likely. If we want to actually avoid disaster, not merely slow or mitigate it, then we need a positive, compelling vision of what the future could look like. The dominant neoliberal paradigm may be wrong in its assessment of the problem and proposal of solutions, but it is easy to understand and to apply. And so must an alternative.

If we are to design such utopians, we must understand what is malleable about our current situations. Their first chapter analyzes three strains of environmental thought: Prometheanism, Malthusianism, and ecological skepticism. Each strain has a different answer to the question of “what can be controlled?” Nature, demography, of the economy. The Promethean belief that humans can bend nature toward our will isn’t just present in the dominant neoliberalism but also very essential to Marxist theory. The authors argue that you can’t just green Marx by reading Capital with green-tinted glasses; Marxists share the neoliberal view of capital as an unconscious, all-powerful force—just abhorring it instead of celebrating it. The belief that nature can be controlled is a folly, and a possibly dangerous one at that. Recounting the fiasco of Biosphere 2, they note, “The most important story from the wreckage of Biosphere 2 is the impossibility of controlling ecological systems of even a modest size.” If we can’t even control that, what makes us think that we can successfully embark on geoengineering on large scale?

They are similarly critical of the Malthusian strain in environmentalism, which focuses on the expansion of the human presence on earth as the main driver of environmental degradation. “There are different variants of Malthusianism,” they write,” but often little separates the genocidal from the respectable strains.”

They place greater faith in an ecological skepticism (a strain of thought never directly fleshed out like the more commonly known one, but reflecting a belief that our disturbances of nature can have unforeseen ripple effects and that our fore-knowledge is thus inherently constrained) that they trace back to Edward Jenner, who traced the rise of new disease strains to the domestication of animals. Since animal agriculture is a choice when it comes to the social order, we can, of course, choose differently. The authors similarly revisit some of the discussions in Plato’s Republic about the social order and the food system: once you introduce animal husbandry into your ideal society, the demands for land grow (you need grazing land, and the land to grow food for the livestock), and things get ever more complex.

Such insights invite us to reflect on the underlying organization of society, and proffered solutions, which they deride as “demi-utopias,” posit a greener future by leaving those organizations intact. Thea idea of bioenergy carbon capture and sequestration sounds great on paper, but if its ever growing demand for land is held to planetary boundaries, it suddenly accomplishes quite little. An increasing faction of the environmental community has been embracing nuclear power as a near-panacea, but the scaling up of nuclear power to what it would need to be to reach climate goals is daunting—amplifying underlying risks. Similarly, “half-Earth” proposals that leave the underlying system intact have often led to a neocolonialism that props up racist and dictatorial regimes. A “half-Earth” without a movement behind it can quickly become dystopian.

Yes, to the “half-Earth,” the authors say—as we need to preserve the earth’s natural systems of carbon capture and sequestration, but make it socialist. Their “half-Earth socialism” seeks to prevent the Sixth Extinction, practice “natural geoengineering” (with rewilding as an example), and create a fully renewable energy system. This is not without its tradeoffs. The authors are quite clear that a fully renewable energy system will have a much higher need for land, hence the book’s frequent championing of veganism. Such a system also needs energy quotas, which they argue should be designed to allow growth in the developing world along with sharp cuts in rich countries.

Such a future has many tradeoffs, and we need to address them democratically. The latter chapters of the book focus on a rediscovery of forgotten strains of socialist planning that were more democratic than the dominant Soviet model and also create space for an economic order that doesn’t reduce everything to money, and the authors sketch out a chapter evocative of Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward.” Their fictional sketch future seems limited in its audience to an academic crowd (the protagonist was having a lively debate with colleagues and friends hailing from different strains of socialist thought the night before), and a full-fledged utopian vision will take more than a chapter. The reader is left with many questions (such as what global or even regional connectivity looks like, given the minimal references to communications technology and a possibly dystopian mention of people needing formal governmental approval of long-distance travel; or what the city looks like), but the value of such sketches are in the questions they raise more than the answers they provide.

When talking about utopias, the question always becomes, how do we get from here to there? Utopian dreams are fun; utopian realities are better. Vettese and Pendergrass insist on the need for the heterogeneous movements of the left to unite around a shared agenda: indigenous, feminist, labor, animal rights, climate. Throughout the book, they emphasize that the marriage of science and social movements is a potent one. Science disconnected from social movements can easily end up with hubris or authoritarianism. Social movements disconnected from science can end up self-defeating or aimless.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give 3.5 if I could. It was better than I expected going in as someone with what I, of course, view as a justified bias against certain kinds of degrowth arguments to which anything "half earth" brings to mind. At its best the book is a playful account of the limits of certain kinds of ecomodernist socialism without exactly naming it as such and some interesting visions for a pragmatically, equitable green future. At its worst it's an idealist democratic socialist cybernetics. I really appreciate the Morris adaptation chapter and it could just be its own novella like News From Nowhere. Also it has probably the strongest left critique of nuclear power I've read. However, I think there's a reason Marx cautioned against creating cookbooks for the future.

So ... I have two gripes, and I don't wanna turn this into a real review that could be published somewhere, but here goes.

The first is a discomfort in the lack of critically around the concept of rewilding, which has a very long tradition of critique and it's not even something I study. In turn, the ways in which Indigenous peoples, movements, and theory appear as footnotes, afterthoughts, or rejoinders is also troubling. When positing a diverse future that hopes to address the limits of certain Promethean/orthodox Marxisms by positing a "Half-Earth coalition," one's coalition, frankly, needs to be wider than "animal-rights activists and organic farmers", "as well as socialists, feminists, and scientists." That sounds like a crew you'd find at any XR demo down the street.

As an especially irksome point, the only other time I've read that Indigenous peoples should lead in the plans for their lands (the authors are writing from Massachusetts and Harvard in particular) "wherever possible" is in oil company promotional materials. Who is this conservationist force deciding the conditions of possibility for what's "possible" "wherever"? Here I think some positioning from the authors could go far.

The second is that at a certain level what's being promoted here, a kind of democratic socialist cybernetics, sounds like it follows the same circuitry as the left accelerationism the authors critique, just with the master volume dialled down from 11 to 5 or 3 where low-level tech-bro frequencies somehow cut through the mix.

All that said, it's a well-rounded, crisp intro to tensions within contemporary ecosocialist thought and has interesting, ambitious speculative thinking that has strong pedagogical value, especially with the game that accompanies the book.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want it all

[Toni Bertólez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Llibre DUR. Probablement el llibre més ecowoke que m'he llegit mai, li posaria cinc estrelles però no m'ha semblat fàcil de llegir i una mica pesat en algun moment. En qualsevol cas, la seva manera de veure el món i el futur és la meva, així que molt útil per donar-hi base teòrica.

Dit això, Socialismo de medio planeta és un llibre d'ecosocialisme utòpic, escrit per dos acadèmics (es nota, espereu moltes referències). Es basa en una premisa molt simple: els humans mai no serem capaços de dominar el planeta Terra (vegi's pandèmia, desastres naturals, etc) i, per tant, hem de començar a viure respectant-lo. L'única manera de fer-ho, segons ells argumenten, que la meitat del planeta sigui una reserva natural, i que això sigui gestionat mitjançant una societat socialista.

El que fa vertaderament especial aquest llibre és que és científicament concret. No només argumenta perquè el capital i el neoliberalisme son una merda (això ja ho sabem), sinó que argumenten amb tot luxe de detalls la seva proposta per a aquest tipus de societat, logística a la pràctica inclosa. Ens dibuixa quina és la vida que podríem viure en respecte amb el planeta, i ens demostra que —malgrat allunyada dels luxes— pot arribar a ser molt atractiva.

Com a tal, és un llibre que forma, però sobretot que motiva. Un futur diferent és possible, i tenim les eines per tirar-lo endavant (les matemàtiques), només ens falta la revolució (poca cosa eh).

[Sergey Steblyov · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sympathetic to the overall agenda and especially the critiques described in the first half of the book, so below I will concentrate only on some observations on the chapter 3 ("planning Half-Earth").

1) The emphasis on optimization is somewhat odd. It seems that linear programming attracts authors not so much because of the optimization itself but because of the possibility to describe constraints in natural units, to see real, material and multi-faceted trade-offs. Once this is done, there is a set of possible paths to follow. But why choose between them through finding an extremum of some objective function? I don't think a persuasive case for that has been made. Their case is that a solution to the linear programming problem yields a determinate allocation of inputs between various uses, thereby giving an answer to Mises. That's what maximizing that "objective function" gives you. But so will any other allocation, as long as it remains technically, ecologically, and socially viable, of course. It seems that "pseudo-rationality" that they criticize so much re-surfaces in this uncritical praise of optimization.

What optimization really does, though, is that it removes, very aggressively, the risk of getting lost in choice. But that's not what the authors emphasize.

Maximizing an objective function is actually all about commensurability, while Neurathian program championed non-commensurability. A different (that is, more Neurathian) way would be multi-criteria decision-making. Fashion a few scenarios - all viable and within the constraints - describe them with regard to many criteria, and then choose between them. At the same time, removing the choice-overload could be achieved not through extremum-finding (i.e. optimization) but through specifying more constraints. In one part of the chapter they suggest this "choice between a few possible plans" approach. But why should each of them be constructed via maximizing some objective function? Their implicit answer, if there is any, is that the ecological crisis creates an unequivocal "the more (less) the better" situation when it comes to certain variables.

1.1.) Another interesting idea of theirs is to allow sub-systems (e.g. productive units or regions) to self-organize but within the in-kind constraints and targets set by Gosplant. It's a "parametric treatment" - like in Walrasian models - but it's no longer prices that are treated parametrically. What's valuable about it, they suggest, is that it leaves space for autonomy and self-organization, but without money playing this role of a "delimiter". And of course, self-organization removes the overload from the planners...

2) Their motivation for taking advantage of control theory - namely, reaction to emergencies, shocks, things going off-schedule, etc - is compelling. (It's also interesting that when it comes to control they don't opt for *optimal* control theory.) Their choice of favorite theory is Beer's Viable System Model. But the real exploration of it remains very vague.

For instance, earlier in the chapeter we do get a sense of the kinds of issues that Gosplant will be busy with. And Gosplant, we are told, sits on the level 4. But what about these other levels of the viable system, like the level 2 and 3? Authors' illustrations here look somewhat lacking. For instance, they exemplify level 1 with an "individual group of workers" and "their affairs". If that's another name for a plant - and that's already quite a choice - then all of these level-1 sub-systems need to somehow coordinate their interrelated activities, indeed. How do they do it? That's a question that occupies a good deal of socialist/communist economic theory! But here it is simply un-mentioned, as levels 2 and 3 are not illustrated with economic examples at all - we only hear about "spinal cord" and "brainstem".

Or do authors imply that plants *are* coordinated ex ante, by the plan, after all? And then control is just for managing the day-to-day little divergences and sometimes emergencies? Perhaps; yet their description of planning remains tied to big-picture ecological stuff that describes in-kind trade-offs. Did they imply that behind those calculations lie the calculations of economic viability, i.e. estimations of trade-offs are actually based on viable production plans in the first place? If so, they definitely did not seem to stress this: in fact, often they describe the role of linear programming (and thus of Gosplant) as that of a mere calculator of in-kind costs for reaching certain end-states, not as a creator of real plans, i.e. schedules of actions of various producing actors.

3) Finally, I was somewhat puzzled by what the part about climate science is supposed to contribute to planning theory and practice. The planetary and societal sensors of all kinds are now very developed, allowing for crazy data throughput in real-time. That's helpful and clearly connects with the arguments for control theory / cybernetics. I also understand that those working on local climate science use results from global models as inputs for their local models, which gives a direct analogy to what's described in item 1.1. However, here comes precisely this tension between forecasting and planning that I don't think has been really explored. For one thing, modeling is usually about predicting others' reactions to a set of your governing interventions. Planning, especially democratic, is about collectively delineating collective action(s), not about guessing what some subordinates will do. Sure, when it comes to modeling the environmental consequences, we need forecasting. But for that, there needs to be no re-purposing of anything, those things are already done by climate and earth sciences. Anyway, I will need to think more about that.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm in.

[Trevor Crowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

“While much value must be destroyed by relinquishing the land and sea that has been trawled, mined and razed, there is a new wealth to be gained too. A bounty of beauty, safety and stability will come from the thousands of species that will be protected, the gigatonnes of carbon sequestered, the promise of meaningful work and social security, for Half-Earth socialism will be a rich society too. Even if it means figs and beans for dessert.”

[Andreu Escrivà · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una grandíssima decepció. D'argumentació feble i esbiaixada, cau a tot allò que vol superar. És un excercici utòpic valent, però amb uns fonaments inestables i tramposos.

[Valentin Ackermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

actually 3.5/5

[Dennis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I agree with the authors on some matters—nuclear power and other techno-fixes, diet and other lifestyle changes, neoliberals, capitalism—but overall, I strongly disliked this book and wound up skimming through much of it without missing anything that would have changed my opinion. It’s essentially an academic paper sandwiched between two fictions of the future, one considered bad and one good by the authors.

I was repulsed in the introduction (and later in the book, when people I respect were insulted by name) by the use of quotation marks around the word overpopulation as if it doesn’t exist. I wonder if it’s because they’re young, so they haven’t noticed how the planet has changed, much as each generation doesn’t see the ecological destruction their parents and grandparents witnessed happening. During my lifetime, the U.S. population has almost doubled and world population has almost tripled, and the destruction of the natural habitats and population declines of other species are direct results of human population and industrialism, regardless of economic system. The authors’ proposed half-earth socialist utopia has two billion more people than the current population, in presumably much less space. Not a planet I’d have any interest in living on, but we clearly have different values.

Perhaps the authors are urban people who don’t really need the wild except as a prop for humanity (Aldo Leopold quotes come to mind). One is an environmental engineering student concerned with supercomputers, and the other an environmental historian writing about economics and energy. I prefer the thoughts of people who have spent a lot more time outdoors.

Obviously, there’s no chance that the authors’ ideas about massive societal changes will actually happen in a world where violence occurs even when people are asked to wear masks, and think their “freedom” is more important than anything else. The authors surely know this even as they scoff at other’s proposed futures and condemn the assumption that the haves won’t reduce their consumption; they just believe utopian imagination is necessary. I think it’s an academic exercise for people too removed from the natural/real world.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Half-Earth Socialism takes a utopian look of what could be possible if we approached climate change by ideally rewilding 50% of habitable lands as well as refocusing efforts in building up renewable energy infrastructure. The book goes into the history of ecosocialism, including those who inspired the theory. It also features a nice chapter that puts all the research into a fictional picture as to what an ecosocialist future could look and feel like. There is, finally, a browser-based game where you can put your ideas and visions to practice by setting policies and goals for the future and see how they pan out.

I found the book is well researched and critiqued as seen in the Acknowledgements and Appendix sections, not to mention the extensive Notes section.

I try not to read to many utopian texts; but every once in a while, I find it refreshing in order to instill some vision and hope. This book surpassed all expectations in that respect.

10/10 would recommend

[Dayton Martindale · Rating 4 out of 5]

An invigorating read – it left me excited to chew on and discuss these ideas, and ready to get started in planning an ecosocialist future with all of you. It’s also a fascinating mix of philosophy, engineering, ecology, economics, and other disciplines, a lot packed into a relatively short book.

[Bunbun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not exactly convincing, but a fair starting point for further discussion. However, it does come with a game, which is 10/10

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️ When your boyfriend (who doesn’t read) asks you to read something, you do, even if it’s 2 or 3 years later. A very thoroughly and well researched monograph on Half-Earth (the idea that half the Earth should be allowed to re-wild to combat climate change) as a solution for climate change and how this approach would benefit from socialism. The authors do a very good job of anticipating and responding to potential critiques from sceptics, and they themselves explain how their proposal of half-Earth socialism helps address many of the other more mainstream approaches to fighting climate change and collapse (eg, BECCS, nuclear energy). It is based on the premise (which I agree) that capitalism has led us to a point of no return and that we need drastic measures to ensure that Earth is inhabitable in the future and so that we prevent environmental collapse. If capitalism got us into this mess, it cannot get us out, and we need to start thinking and imagining outside of a realist or neoliberal standpoint to create solutions.

My qualms: the book only mentions Indigenous ways of knowing as part of the solution of re-wilding half the Earth in its Epilogue (a fictional short story about a man who wakes up in a world where the half Earth socialist revolution has taken place), and briefly in ch 2 when they say that something must be done to ensure that this rewilding and growing local/endemic crops not be too draining or onerous on Indigenous Peoples. Which okay, is a valid and fair take, but also feels a little bit dismissive when Indigenous scholars and storytellers have published research on combatting climate change and revitalizing traditional knowledges on the land.

I wish as well that they would have, at least briefly, discussed how in this proposal they aim to address socioeconomic hierarchies and inequalities, not only within a country, but also among countries. Despite the climate crisis being the most urgent issue of our time, most country leaders do not recognize this and rather, geopolitical interests dictate global agendas — how do the authors propose that we move past this so that the multilateral org/council/parliament they argue would set global standards and regulations, is actually socialist, equitative and able to respond to existing or shifting global dynamics?

Half-Earth, however, will only be achievable following a socialist revolution, according to the authors, which I am all here for, and I would like to hear more about especially as this is a revolution envisioned at the global scale. I commend the authors for building out a solid proposal for responses to global warming and climate change, which is arguably very hard. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it’s always a good sign when you’re left with more questions about what else we need to that, than with dreadful scepticism.

Would have ranked it four stars had it not been for the repeated insistence that we should all be vegan, which I actually think is the most unreal and most difficult to achieve part of the book.

[TomHenry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Half-Earth Socialism is a creative, inspiring work of utopian socialist world-building. Pendergrass and Vettese begin with a brief history and taxonomy of environmentalism spanning Promethean, Malthusian, and Jennerian trends (though I think the latter may of their own coining). They lay out a case for re-wilding half of the earth, and turning the other half into a centrally-planned eco-socialist society. Using arguments drawing from mathematical modeling, climate science, sociology, history, and (my favorite) Chilean cyber-socialism, they spend the third chapter of the book using short fiction to envision what their proposed world might actually look like.

I found the book to be wholesome, well-crafted, and engaging throughout. I found their choice to include a work of short fiction as part of their argument in a political book to be refreshing, compelling, and inspiring. I was particularly impressed with the prose, as well -- simple in construction, rife with historical and literary allusions, never pedantic or condescending.

One nitpicking point I have with this book is its treatment of past environmental movements. I felt that the arguments made against alternative possibilities were much weaker than arguments made for their own views. I especially felt that the arguments against Malthusianism and nuclear energy were somewhat lacking. I felt that the conversation about Malthusianism could have benefited from at least acknowledging current trends in birth rates, and could have drawn a stronger distinction in its condemnation of people concerned about overcrowding and unapologetic eco-fascists. The section on nuclear energy seemed like an accurate and compelling rebuttal... if it had been written in 1985. I felt that section was not very well researched, since it justifies the unilateral dismissal of nuclear power as a viable energy source due to concerns about nuclear meltdowns and nuclear waste, without acknowledging that modern reactor designs (e.g. thorium MSRs) are incapable of meltdown and require less extractive processing than light water uranium reactors. It also does not meaningfully rebut nuclear fusion as a possible energy source for practical reasons, despite itself being a work of utopian socialist ideation, which was a confusing discrepancy to me.

Don't let me riff forever on the two things I disliked about this book though. In general, I thought it was an extremely well-written, inspiring, and refreshing take on eco-socialism. It updates Bookchin's vision of a 'liberatory technology' to modern day ecological issues and technological advancements, and makes a compelling use of short fiction to push its argument. Would recommend.

I should, at this point, also note that I may be biased as a reviewer because I am a union sibling of one of the authors.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read this for a few years and have finally got around to it. I thought it was a very interesting and enjoyable book. It is a thought experiment, grounded in some real scientific principals, proposing a utopian solution to the environmental crisis; half-earth socialism. E.O. Wilson, the famous Biologist, proposed that in order to return the Earth to some kind of healthy state we need human beings to withdraw from half the planet and allow it to return to its natural state. The problem is that this would be a top down process governed by the rich and powerful and imposed upon the people in a colonial style. Troy Vitesse and Drew Pendergrass have a socialist version of this vision to propose.

They offer fictional portraits of what will likely happen to the planet in a few decades if we carry on our current trajectory, and what could happen if we implement this vision instead. They also run through a potted history of ideas of economic planning, focusing upon a few different thinkers. I found this very interesting and useful.

They critique Marxism as much as Capitalism for holding a belief that nature is there to be moulded for human use, and that it is infinitely pliable in the Promethean hands of humanity. I think this is a fair critique, and it is a notion that I have nodded along with before. They also critique Marxism for abandoning Utopian thinking in favour of Scientific Socialism, and argue that we need Utopian visions of what we are aiming for to motivate us towards the future. There is some truth in this, but I think that Scientific Socialism is more useful and more practical as a motivation that Utopian thinking.

I have come across some critiques of this book in other books I have read on the climate crisis. As far as I remember Matthew Huber criticised this book for the total absence of any mention of the working class as the actors who could take us towards socialism. They only talk about experts, economists, mathematicians and scientists. Who is the protagonist that is going to lead us to their vision? Max Ajl criticised them in A People's Green New Deal because they are imposing a vision of the future in a top down way, without considering or learning from the agricultural workers and peasants who make up the vast majority of humanity. It is a Western Imperialist vision, despite their stated aim of avoiding that. Both of these critiques have substance, but I still enjoyed reading it and considering their ideas.

[M]

A very ambitious book which, of course, ought to have missing parts simply because of its scope, “Half-Earth Socialism” by Troy Vettese & Drew Pendergrass aims to go for solutions to the climate crisis that aren’t partial or insufficient, but which promise everything - everything possible, that is. I really enjoyed that they tried to ‘keep it real’ by refusing the luxury accelerationist ideals and underlining that some cuts must be made: notably, feeding the world on a plant-based (vegan) diet, diminishing energy consumption (for the rich, while upping it for the poor) and planetary rewilding. How these cuts are to be made, they contend, is a matter of democrating debate, but this can only be done in a non-capitalist future (which for them, is a socialist one), because in capitalism it’s impossible to put a stop on growth. Their Half Earth refuses colonialism and neo-malthusianism, yet still advocates for rewilding to halt species extinction, because it has a role in averting the climate crisis and keeping within planetary boundaries, and also because non-human animals matter. Their four-part sections aim to (1) refuse the idea that we can control & entirely humanize nature, accept its unknowability while also accepting responsibility for what we have done, (2) argue against carbon capture, nuclear power & colonialist conservation practices, (3) explore mathematical models as possible ideas for central planning, (4) make you live in that Half Earth future with a speculative fabulation that’s very explanatory yet very sweet.

If you can’t find the time to read it, do play the online game they co-created!

[Dominik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a few points:

1. Utopian imaginary and boldness in going for it is nothing but a thing for admiration.
2. The critique of prometheanism, understood as mastery over nature, is very good. It got it's role in history, and we have became promethean, since the industrial revolution. It was for good, it was needed and necessary, but we don't need to go further from here.
3. This book is somewhat technophobic (altought contrary declaration is stated). It is against carbon capture and storage, BECCS and nuclear power for many questionable reasons. The first two are taken as 'capitalist resolution' which is somewhat right, but it doesn't mean that it couldn’t be used. Naturally, we can't see them as absolute solution under capitalistic regime, but they are still worth reaserching. Arguments against nuclear power are to my knowledge false and strawmans. The fact of disasters in Fukushima or Chernobyl, because they were under bad managment in (soviet) capitalism doesn't equate them with being bad.
4. The last part, written as applied utopian fiction is somewhat interesting, but I think we've got fiction for it, especially since this book lacks some important parts.
5. It doesn't tells how to achieve this utopia. It presents shyly a vegan/animal liberationist/feminist/anticolonial coalition, but how to get it? It is not stated. Probably through Mouffe/Laclau thought, but it is guessing.

[Lauren Huff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, listen, as someone who is extremely sympathetic to ecosocialist ideals, I should have been the target audience for this book, right? While there are some kernels of great ideas here, the whole thing had such a goofy tone that all I could feel while reading it was secondhand embarrassment.

The premise is that everyone should go vegan and we should rewild the land that is dedicated to animal agriculture, a great idea that has been better expressed elsewhere.

[Dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conflicting to read in some ways as it always is when reading climate policy pieces. Obviously there is some level of large scale change that needs to occur to at least blunt the blow of climate change. However there is simply no way to make myself believe these large scale changes are down the road.

I think the important takeaway is just that there are many options (some better than others) and we have to work for something. Idk i’m just trying to maintain hope

[Vítor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Excellent book when arguing about the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis, terrible when it comes about pointing out solutions. I started the reading with some optimism and ended it with total fatalism. The solutions proposed will never be embraced (unreliable, undoable, unpopular), the solutions others proposed are efficiently trashed on this book. No hope is left.

[Belen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro resumen de la charla (y no al revés) de tres horas a la que arrastré a Álvaro y Jaime, y que daba un tío muy guapete al que le habría pedido el número si no fuera porque no tenía teléfono móvil.

Me ha gustado bastante. Los autores ofrecen una buena radiografía de distintas teorías ecologistas y sus limitaciones (aunque tengo que revisar bien las referencias porque creo que hay alguna afirmación que no se sustenta, especialmente en la parte sobre la energía nuclear, donde cita blogs ecologistas que contradicen informes de Naciones Unidas).

Después, presentan su propia utopía, que resulta rellenar los huecos que dejan todas las otras y que está basada en limitar la producción y el consumo, meterle el turbo a las renovables y renaturalizar la mitad del planeta (esto último inferido de no sé qué fórmula logarítmica que parece sacada del reverso de una servilleta y que dice que así podremos conservar el 85% de las especies). El tío te defiende a capa y espada que su utopía es completamente factible y que claro que podremos consumir tres o cuatro veces menos energía de lo que lo hacemos ahora porque seremos todos veganos y no pasaremos el día con aparatos electrónicos, sino cavando en una zanja.

En general, bien. En la página 180 decae un poco, pero el grueso del libro me ha parecido muy interesante.

Comprado con Jaime.