Half-Earth

I first encountered E. O. Wilson's "Half-Earth" proposal in an interview with Troy Vettese about his own article, "To freeze the Thames". I was intrigued, but immediately also could see some fairly large problems with the concept of setting aside 50% of the planet for wildlife conservation. Who decides which 50%? What happens to the humans who currently live there? Which bits?

Brian Napoletano contends that Half-Earth is "a 'solution' that solves nothing", and it's difficult to disagree with this headline. But Napoletano seems, to me, to be yet another over-reaching Marxist, insisting that the "ecological Marxist" position is "most important". Apparently there is a bizarre academic debate between "New Conservation" and uh, old conservation. On the former side, a group who quite rightly point out that untouched wilderness is a non-existent fantasy, but seem to think capitalism can be used as a positive force for "managing nature", and on the other side, old guard conservationists who are living in denial of the fact their strategy has been an abject failure and is premised on racist fantasies. The former are categorised as "anthropocentric", the latter as "eco-centric".

None of this makes a great deal of sense to me. Napoletano's main complaint seems to be that the "ecological Marxists" of which he claims to be a member "consider human welfare the primary objective, but oppose equating it with capital accumulation". But everyone referenced here seems to take a nature/humans dichotomy for granted. Sigh, I thought we had moved past this. The obvious reason "Half-Earth" is a stupid idea, other than the genocide and global authoritarianism that would be required, is that humans are part of "nature". But the same objection applies to Napoletano's idea that "nature" should be managed with "human welfare the primary objective". I mean, I'm not advocating that humanity somehow agree to "take one for the team" and remove ourselves from the planet altogether, but you simply can't separate human welfare from the health of the rest of the biosphere. This kind of thinking is exactly why we're in the mess we're in.

Uneven Earth's most recent newsletter had a remind of this with an article about North American forest garden producing bountifully 150 years after their creators were "displaced" (😒). I immediately thought of the Amazon rainforest's Terra Preta, the rich black soil that only exists because humans created it.

Proposals like Half-Earth are technocratic parlour games. The fact it's being debated in any kind of serious way in academic circles simply indicates what a sideshow academia often is. Once they've finally completed the perfect plan, how do these northern hemisphere "eco-centric" time wasters proposed to implement their vision? Drone strikes? Nerve gas? A Half-Earth would look like the last decade in Syria and its surrounds - an orgy of violence disgorging millions of refugees nobody wants to deal with. Mathew Huber's "Revenge of the plans" looks at a similar, if perhaps less genocidal (though I guess that's debatable) phenomenon around the "Green New Deal" movement and US federal politics. He charts how (in his telling) the GND was originally conceived as a way to mobilise a mass of — in particular — working class people to make the radical adjustments to economies that are the bare minimum required to avoid the worst of climate chaos. But the wonks have taken it over and turned it into just another "policy" discussion, about how the Very Serious People should position the levers to Deliver Policy upon the heads of everyone else. Nothing too threatening to the status quo power arrangements, you understand.

I'm not convinced about the GND generally — it still looks like a massive increase in resource use to me, and I'm probably influenced by the fact it seems to be yet another American term and concept that has uncritically been taken up in Australian politics, which hasn't had an original idea since the 1970s at the latest. Nevertheless, this was a perceptive piece I think. There are many ways to de-radicalise. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish isn't just a strategy for software companies.

=> To freeze the Thames | Half-Earth: A biodiversity ‘solution’ that solves nothing | Understanding conservationists’ perspectives on the new-conservation debate | Ancient Indigenous forest gardens still yield bounty 150 years later | Terra Preta | Revenge of the plans | Embrace, extend and extinguish