liliannkuu's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
3.75
Interesting and thought-provoking book. Going into it, I knew I wouldn't agree with the main concept of Half-Earthism due to its inherent principle of separating humans and nature. Nevertheless, there was a lot new perspectives that I hadn't come across before. The fictional utopia story ending was a fun addition that you rarely see in these types of books. Overall, I got the sense that this was a relatively light-hearted, not quite fully developed, passion project about an ever more crucial topic.
samdalefox's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I loved this book. I'm scoring this book highly because it is ambitious and dares to imagine an alternative way of life. So many leftist books describe the issues, very few actually try to outline solutions to problems. All whilst the status quo insists that There Is No Alternative (TINA) and criticises the left for not being 'realistic'. I think the attempt made here by Vettese and Pendergrass is comendable and we need more work building upon their foundation. The reason I have not scored the book higher is because there are some pretty big outstanding questions that are prompted by the content. Even if this book was not the right space to address them, it was the right space to acknowledge them to prompt further work. I've listed my thoughts on these topics below.
The book is split into four chapters: I recommend reading tgestabrook's review for a greater detail of each chapter: [https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/f954785a-bd17-44cb-a983-a95080146c7e].
The book is split into four chapters: I recommend reading tgestabrook's review for a greater detail of each chapter: [https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/f954785a-bd17-44cb-a983-a95080146c7e].
- Binding Prometheus - explains the underpinning philosophy of half earth socialism's 'ecological humility', and why it is the better option as opposed to Prometheanism or Malthusianism or the current status quo of neoliberal capitalism. My favourite illustrative quote in favour of regulation being: "The market could sell both the poison and its antidote, but it cared little about the right ratio of the two"
- A New Republic - describes practical management of energy technologies to guide politics and action and minimise social change/unrest.
- Planning Half Earth - describes methods of economic planning to support harlf earth socialism focusing on Neurath, Kantorovich, Stafford beer, and 'in natura' democracy.
- News from 2047 - a modern take on William Blake's 'news from nowhere' illustrating the contents of Half Earth Socialism in a fictional experience.
The first chapter is about 31% of the book. Like others have noted in their reviews, my favourite sections where chapters 1 and 3. This is the kind of thinking and action we desparately need on the left. It gave me hope and something tangible to work with and build upon, which is so rare when reading climate crisis literature.
Speaking of,the authors have created a planning earth system model (ESM) that you can use yourself for free: Http://half.earth. This is a REALLY COOL tool/game that brings the concepts of the book to life. I'd recommend playing around there after finishing the book.
Outstanding Questions prompted by Half Earth Socialism:
- How to allocate resources to different sectors e.g., healthcare
- Culturally how do we manage disability, and those with the inability to work
- I found the food production proposal of localised food incongruous with the wider research saying that this is impossible (e.g., read Regenesis) however this limitation does seem to be recognised in the ESM, just not clearly stated in the book
- How will we achieve revolution in such a way to position ourselves to have control of the necessary resources and have world wide planning? The ESM suggests that we would need to achieve no borders, which presents cultural and practical questions. The ESM gives no indication of whether violence will be required or how to educate on a large scale.
- My biggest question is around democracy. Half earth socialism is not clear on what democracy it expects/needs in order to work. The book gives examples of both representative (indirect) democracy and participatory (direct) democracy. If we keep a global model of representative (voting and coalition parliament) democracy, what safeguards do we need to ensure we do not encounter the same issues of power and corruption as we do today?
- How do the arts factor in to this? People require the arts to fully thrive, not just survive.
- I'd like to see more intersectional feminist considerations. These are clearly noted in the ESM, but not called out in the book in detail e.g., indigenous land back, freely available contraception, end the military-industrial complex etc.
- What is the solution to Jevon's paradox of efficiency with respect to consumption?
tgestabrook's review
4.0
Uneven but ambitious and provocative. Overall I agree with its program but it has some major shortcomings. The book is a bit of a chimera and each chapter warrants attention in turn:
Chapter 1 makes an argument for 'ecological humility' in the grounds that we don't understand ecology nearly as well as we like to think. From this, two conclusions: 1) geoengineering (e.g. solar radiation management) is extremely dangerous and 2) the neoliberal argument that the economy is too mysterious to control is subverted by the higher-order mysteriousness of life. If we have to regulate one, let it be the economy. 'Ecological humility' is set against Marxist prometheanism and right-wing Malthusianism, and attention is drawn to holistic concerns of mass extinction and zoonotic disease alongside climate change.
Chapter 2 takes aim at 'demi-utopias' proposed for managing the environmental crisis with minimal social change (e.g. carbon capture, nuclear energy, colonial conservation). Ultimately, the argument is made for socialist implementation of massive rewilding, veganism, energy quotas and solar/wind power.
Chapter 3 shifts to a discussion of economic planning with Otto Neurath, Leonid Kantorovich, and Cybersyn as primary touchstones. Being a math nerd, I wish they had delved deeper in to the specifics, but the main takeaways are: 1) there exist mathematical techniques for optimizing supply chains and production without the need for monetary price signals, 2) advances in down-scaling and up-scaling complex meteorological models used for studying climate change could provide a framework for multi-scale democratic planning that preserves regional autonomy.
Chapter 4 is a fictional short story riffing on William Morris' News From Nowhere in which a young man in 2023 awakens in an eco-socialist 2047. It's good leftist literature insofar as it is mostly tedious and didactic. There's an element of 'doth protest too much' in that all the characters seem overly happy about their intensely energy-restricted lives spent tilling bean fields and sharing washing machines; the only character to complain about not eating meat is dismissed as a grouchy crank. To be clear, I share the authors belief that the grotesque energy consumption of a modern American middle-class consumer is not necessary to the good life, but their presentation of socialism has the pasted-on smiles reminiscent of an account of being toured around North Korea or something. Despite citing Ursula K. LeGuin as an inspiration, they missed the part in The Dispossessed where she honestly portrayed the complaints of communal life *while still making them seem better than capitalism*.
In general, I found Chapters 1 and 3 the most rewarding and original. The ecological humility argument in Ch. 1 is the strongest case against certain strains of optimistic prometheanism I have found, and I love that it also provides a basis for rejecting neoliberalism. I wish Chapter 3 was its own book, because it was provocative and inspiring and made me want to study in-natura economic modeling.
The weakness of the book comes through in Chapters 2 and 4, which oddly work at cross-purposes with 1 and 3. The thrust of 1 and 3 is something like: "we are up against hard ecological limits and need a non-Malthusian way to constrain human activity (1) and we have powerful tools for managing human activity by democratically choosing between many different planning scenarios at different scales (3)". There is an open-endedness here where the planning tools enable optimizing for many different concerns. But then Chapters 2 and 4 veer off by promoting a highly specific program. In particular, the authors have taken a lot of criticism about their anti-nuclear stance (something I'm currently agnostic about) and their commitment to specifically ethical veganism (something I'm loosely sympathetic to but do not share). These underlying dogmas muddle what I see as the really interesting contributions in HES.
All told, HES packs more provocation and originality into 150 pages than any other eco-socialist book I have read, and despite its shortcomings is definitely an extremely worthwhile read.
Chapter 1 makes an argument for 'ecological humility' in the grounds that we don't understand ecology nearly as well as we like to think. From this, two conclusions: 1) geoengineering (e.g. solar radiation management) is extremely dangerous and 2) the neoliberal argument that the economy is too mysterious to control is subverted by the higher-order mysteriousness of life. If we have to regulate one, let it be the economy. 'Ecological humility' is set against Marxist prometheanism and right-wing Malthusianism, and attention is drawn to holistic concerns of mass extinction and zoonotic disease alongside climate change.
Chapter 2 takes aim at 'demi-utopias' proposed for managing the environmental crisis with minimal social change (e.g. carbon capture, nuclear energy, colonial conservation). Ultimately, the argument is made for socialist implementation of massive rewilding, veganism, energy quotas and solar/wind power.
Chapter 3 shifts to a discussion of economic planning with Otto Neurath, Leonid Kantorovich, and Cybersyn as primary touchstones. Being a math nerd, I wish they had delved deeper in to the specifics, but the main takeaways are: 1) there exist mathematical techniques for optimizing supply chains and production without the need for monetary price signals, 2) advances in down-scaling and up-scaling complex meteorological models used for studying climate change could provide a framework for multi-scale democratic planning that preserves regional autonomy.
Chapter 4 is a fictional short story riffing on William Morris' News From Nowhere in which a young man in 2023 awakens in an eco-socialist 2047. It's good leftist literature insofar as it is mostly tedious and didactic. There's an element of 'doth protest too much' in that all the characters seem overly happy about their intensely energy-restricted lives spent tilling bean fields and sharing washing machines; the only character to complain about not eating meat is dismissed as a grouchy crank. To be clear, I share the authors belief that the grotesque energy consumption of a modern American middle-class consumer is not necessary to the good life, but their presentation of socialism has the pasted-on smiles reminiscent of an account of being toured around North Korea or something. Despite citing Ursula K. LeGuin as an inspiration, they missed the part in The Dispossessed where she honestly portrayed the complaints of communal life *while still making them seem better than capitalism*.
In general, I found Chapters 1 and 3 the most rewarding and original. The ecological humility argument in Ch. 1 is the strongest case against certain strains of optimistic prometheanism I have found, and I love that it also provides a basis for rejecting neoliberalism. I wish Chapter 3 was its own book, because it was provocative and inspiring and made me want to study in-natura economic modeling.
The weakness of the book comes through in Chapters 2 and 4, which oddly work at cross-purposes with 1 and 3. The thrust of 1 and 3 is something like: "we are up against hard ecological limits and need a non-Malthusian way to constrain human activity (1) and we have powerful tools for managing human activity by democratically choosing between many different planning scenarios at different scales (3)". There is an open-endedness here where the planning tools enable optimizing for many different concerns. But then Chapters 2 and 4 veer off by promoting a highly specific program. In particular, the authors have taken a lot of criticism about their anti-nuclear stance (something I'm currently agnostic about) and their commitment to specifically ethical veganism (something I'm loosely sympathetic to but do not share). These underlying dogmas muddle what I see as the really interesting contributions in HES.
All told, HES packs more provocation and originality into 150 pages than any other eco-socialist book I have read, and despite its shortcomings is definitely an extremely worthwhile read.
nanikeeva's review
4.0
4 stars for idealism which i really do want to agree with, 2 stars for remaining engaged with the real world - people will not go vegan and reduce energy consumption. i really with i could discuss this with people on the same wavelength. a more philosophical/ethical take on Ministry for the Future
chartgerink's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
A concrete plan for the future as there is. Not one to accept willy nilly, but a fantastic and concrete starting point. It'll be on my mind for a long time to come and part of how i will shape my life.
dean_'s review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Although I have plenty of criticism for the way it presents the majority of its information (very dense, perhaps too deeply stuck into the weeds to help someone convert to the cause) I can't help but give this a full hearty recommendation as the recommended theory and the information given inside have provided more hope and vision than I have felt in years. I can't wait for the distillations of the contents of this book, and I would adore the possibility of seeing it implemented in my lifetime.
weemadando's review
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Just finished Half Earth Socialism. What a fucken book.
The first time I have been presented with an actual climate change solution that feels both realistic and aspirational.
Genuinely utopian stuff and now I just need to figure out how to have a global socialist revolution.
The first time I have been presented with an actual climate change solution that feels both realistic and aspirational.
Genuinely utopian stuff and now I just need to figure out how to have a global socialist revolution.
subdue_provide75's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.25
I liked this one! Fits well with Ministry for the Future and Less is More.