Dear George Monbiot, What makes you certain that Earth is a living planet?
Is the “living planet” an unecological and epistemically violent ideology?
Dear George Monbiot,
I’m writing to reflect on your latest book, , which you co-authored with Peter Hutchison. I admire your work. Feral remains one of the finest pieces of nature writing I’ve read, equaling, in my opinion, the works of John Muir and the Leopolds. I also appreciate how you engage in both hands-on ecological practice and theoretical discourse, working to bridge the gap between natural and political ecology. That said, one question keeps surfacing as I read your work: What make you certain that Earth is a living planet?
In The Invisible Doctrine, you demonstrate how neoliberalism, the “belief that competition is the defining feature of humankind”, is a strategically constructed ideology. You argue that this ideology has become so deeply ingrained in us that we now perceive it as a “kind of natural law.” This, you explain, has two terrible consequences: the self-censorship of its multitude of opponents (why fight a natural law?) and the unchecked power of the few neoliberalists (who believe they have natural law on their side). You are absolutely right. Trump’s so-called “revolution of common sense” is nothing more than a global coup disguised as a natural epiphany.
However, the same critique applies to The Invisible Doctrine’s counter-proposal. It, too, calls for a “new common sense.” You argue that this common sense should be directed toward protecting our “living planet,” you too asserting that living planet is “”. But how certain are you of that? Have you verified this core argument? If I am correct, the expression “living planet” has a history strikingly similar to, and intertwined with, that of neoliberalism. It is unecological and epistemically violent. If what I just wrote sounds utterly absurd, it is only because, in just two generations since its promotion, the idea of the living planet has succeeded, exactly like neoliberalism, in presenting itself as a completely natural concept.
Yet, semantically speaking, living planet, which conflates the notion of life with that of our planet, is a stretch, as only living beings are alive. This expression holds, through the magic of language, whether as a metaphor or a metonymy, only if, scientifically speaking, life and Earth were somehow working toward the same goal of livability. But they are not. Since Darwin, even though he did not explicitly question the position of life on Earth but only the position of life relative to life, we have known that life struggles with its environment. And since Lovelock, we have understood that it is life that actively modifies Earth to make it habitable. The current expression living planet only emerged here as an ideological spin. Lovelock’s discovery should have brought new definition of life and not new definition of Earth. Unfortunately, the latter happened, and went on to influence — “” — the Earth system science you constantly refer to.
I am not disputing here the dire predictions of Earth System Science. Not at all. But ESS saying that, due to human interference, life is losing its continuous battle against the planet is not at all the same as ESS saying that, due to human interference, humans are losing their living planet. The latter distances the multitude of us from reality. This misinformation deprives us of our agency and imagination, thus weakening democracy. If we are to resist destructive ideologies, we must first recognize them, even when they appear in our language of environmentalism. I know changing the myth of a “living planet” is a “big ask” but if it has to change, it may start with one small question: “What make you certain that Earth is a living planet?”.
