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

"Empowers readers to write their own recipes for a future in peril: an exercise in democracy few books have dared to undertake."
–Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

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 must:

• 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.

Troy Vettese is an environmental historian and a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute, where he is affiliated with the ECOINT project. He studies the history of environmental economics, energy-systems, and animal life under capitalism. His writing has appeared in Bookforum, New Left Review, the Guardian, n+1 and many other popular and scholarly publications.

Drew Pendergrass is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering at Harvard University. His current research uses satellite, aircraft and surface observations of the environment to correct supercomputer models of the atmosphere. His environmental writing has been published in Harper’s, the Guardian, Jacobin, and Current Affairs.