Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass argues a plan to save the future from extinction based on some really radical changes in peoples' lifestyle, specifically of 1st world countries but no realness in how to persuade this change
in the give up meat and dairy, cars, reducing carbon footprint and electrification portion of architectural engineering.
The stage was brilliantly set with a dystopian tale outlining the now real effects of climate change.
A compelling read.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

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.

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.