Brave New Wild

Bad news comes fast: the last decade has been the hottest on record. Venezuela is the first modern country to see its glaciers disappear. One in five migratory species faces extinction.

A band of technoscience enthusiasts – politicians, scientists and tech billionaires like Musk, Bezos, Gates and Thiel – are rushing to solutions. There are promises to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger, to remake the world at the atomic level. Ideas once the stuff of science fiction, such as brightening clouds and shooting sulphur into the stratosphere, are on the environmental agenda. New forms of nuclear power are hyped as ‘clean’ despite uranium having a half-life of thousands of years.

Instead of developing ways to protect nature, we are investing in ways to remake it. In line with the motives of power and profit, hubris has come to define the fight against climate change. But only a form of environmentalism that puts human justice, equity and posterity at its centre can create the conditions to truly avert our disastrous course.

Insightful and urgent, Brave New Wild calls for a radical rethink to bring about a richer and more humane future.