Half-Earth Socialism: The Game
play.half.earth
Play as a planetary planner and decide what we should do about the climate, biodiversity, and human welfare. Can you bring the world safely to a better place?

A video game about socialism and climate change based on the book of the same name

  • cilantrofellow [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I’ll have to look at this but unless I’m mistaking the source, I’m assuming rewilding half the earth comes from EO Wilson’s Half Earth proposal. It is a deeply problematic idea.

    When it was published, Wilson’s book was criticized for disenfranchising millions of people, many of whom have no agency or influence to decide these things. It’s akin to forcing Native Americans or Maasai off of newly created National Parks. It’s a great way to anger local communities who often are using the earth sustainably (wtf does it mean to re-wild an area that has been balanced by human societies?), and also make sure people on the other half never gain much of an appreciation for nature since they are forbidden from that land.

    Because then you have an idea that it’s fine to go hog on the other half, destroying endemic fauna and massive resource extraction. Many animals migrate great distances, so what happens when they migrate into our territory?

    Recent evidence of Wilson’s frequent and warm correspondence with race scientists only backs this up. When I see the idea of Half Earth proposed, I have to ask which or who’s half?

    Do we really think we’re going to abandon highly productive places New York harbor, also a major hub for bird migration a former biodiversity hot spot? Or are we giving the Sahara to the wild half and keeping all the good stuff.

    Sorry for being little Lisa Simpson - Hexbear’s answer to a question no one asked, but here are some readings for those interested.

    Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605316001228

    Article on EO Wilson’s letters https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/online/the-last-refuge-of-scoundrels/

    • WalterBongjammin [they/them,comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yeah, no, you're correct. I haven't actually read the book, although I'd quite like to. But I've heard its authors talking about the project and they discuss the issues with Wilson's work that you rightly bring up. As far as I understanding it, the book it a critique of the neoliberal approach to environmentalism/climate change and the dependence of its 'solutions' on precisely the kinds of practices you identify

      Don't feel bad about picking up on sus sounding ideas/references, it's what I appreciate about people on this site :af-heart:

      • cilantrofellow [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The game was super fun, regardless! Ousted by popular revolutionaries in 2080 🥲

        Very cool to see Verso do something like this, will probably give the book a look over as a result.

    • Poison_Ivy [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Recent evidence of Wilson’s frequent and warm correspondence with race scientists only backs this up.

      wait what

      • cilantrofellow [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh yeah it’s almost as if Lewontin and Gould were saying this about him for decades.

        But he wrote Half Earth, not Half Earth Socialism

        • Poison_Ivy [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          My dream endgame scenario for the human race, is that thousands of years in the future we all decide collectively that we have achieved fully automated gay space communism so well and so amazingly that we simply abandon earth and turn it into one massive planet-spanning national park to protect the biosphere, that people can visit and learn about the ecosystems of the planet that originated all humankind.