Cohabiting Earth: Maintaining Optimism via Global Rewilding

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While many humans have done all they can to overcome the prevailing gloom and doom about Earth’s current and future well-being, we also are in a crisis in which the Anthropocene, often called "the age of humanity," has morphed into an era more aptly labeled "the rage of inhumanity." We all need something more positive to maintain the collective optimism that is essential for compensating for the plethora of widespread harms, and Joe Gray and Eileen Crist's new collection of essays in their book Cohabiting Earth: Seeking a Bright Future for All Life is just what we need, right now, to change the course of present and future trends that clearly will have dire consequences for current and future generations. Global rewilding, rewilding our hearts, and connecting with other humans and all sorts of other nature are essential and means we need to get over ourselves.

Here's what Joe and Eileen had to say about their important, forward-looking, and deeply inspirational new book.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you co-edit Cohabiting Earth?

Joe Gray and Eileen Crist: We co-edited this anthology because we felt there is a need for an ecocentric volume that advocates strongly for Earth’s entire living community, humans included. From different angles, the book’s contributors agree that our moribund plight reveals the utter bankruptcy of nature’s domination by modern humans. Our plight also exposes the profound entanglement of Earth’s and humanity’s fate: The only options are mutual well-being or an interlocked and devastating decline. To exit the death spiral instigated by anthropocentric civilization, humanity must become a loving planetary presence. This change of heart demands a revolution in how we inhabit and comport ourselves on Earth.¹

MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

JG/EC: The idea of the Anthropocene, and how to make a human-dominated planet sustainable, is a frequent theme of environmental writing these days. The reformist approach of this way of thinking is not remotely viable, for it refuses to face the root of our predicament: that humanity and the technosphere have overrun the planet and are destroying Earth’s magnificent diversity, abundance, and complexity of lifeforms and living systems. We must honestly acknowledge the totalitarianism of Earth’s humanization—the tyranny it exercises over nonhumans, the wanton destruction it heralds for ecologies, and the inevitable human inequities and suffering that result when Earth’s luminous being is downgraded to (increasingly scarce) “resources.”

Source: SUNY Press, used with permission

We advocate for an awakening to the dismal reality of our situation, which boils down to the human-supremacist notion that Earth is humanity’s backyard to do with as it pleases. We invite discovering another way of living—the beauty way—on the sacred ground of restraint, respect, and reverence. Choosing the beauty way means that all human systems and institutions will be voluntarily subject to profound shrinkages and transformations.

MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?

JG/EC: We envisioned this book as a coedited collection precisely so we could include in-depth analyses, by expert authors, of the major issues relevant to the polycrisis. Our subject matter includes analyses of disastrous economic expansionism, unjust pronatalism forcing population growth, and the ecological and public health disaster known as industrial food. We also include chapters on how technology and consumption can be re-envisioned in forging a bright future for all life. Other authors focus on robust approaches to nature conservation and rewilding, reviving the bounteous beauty of the global ocean, and creating a covenant of coexistence with Earth’s large carnivores. Additionally, we include philosophical treatments of moral law, enchantment, aesthetics, and gratitude as lenses for a new relationship with the planet. Also offered is a rethinking of the scourge of nature deficit disorder and deep ecological advice on how to recreate mindfully in nature.

Briefly stated, we endeavored to cover many of the most urgent issues, from how to revamp large-scale systems that are bludgeoning the planet to fostering inspiring ideas that can free the human mind from vile ruts of domination to a cosmic view of inclusive justice.

MB: Who do you hope to reach through your interesting and important book?

JG/EC: We hope that Cohabiting Earth will reach a broad audience, including concerned citizens, activists, NGO leaders, policymakers, and journalists, as well as scholars and students in environmental studies, environmental humanities, and global studies. We purposefully encouraged the anthology’s writing style to be accessible but without sacrificing the robustness of solid scholarship and valid reasoning. We have endeavored to create a book that is convincing in the vital arguments it sets forth and engaging for diverse readers worldwide.

MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about the importance of peaceful coexistence for the well-being of humans, nonhumans, and Earth, they will work harder to make this happen?

JG/EC: Much of what we read in the news these days can engender a despondent outlook. Our book in no way denies the perilous position in which life finds itself, nor do we promote phony optimism. We feel that our moment calls for neither hope nor hopelessness but rather for a heroic spirit grounded in a new imagination of who we are in our humanity and how we should inhabit Earth. The time we are living through calls for a forward path for humanity that is so much different from “green technologies,” mega-engineering projects, and damage-control policies. What’s more, no benefit will come from delusive notions of extraterrestrial inhabitation and the horrendously massive extractivism such pseudo-dreams fuel.

What is needed is turning the very course of history by means of deracinating civilization’s founding idea: that Earth is Mangod’s planet to own, colonize, and use. Can humanity choose such a profound transformation? Well, one way or another this transformation will perforce unfold. For we cannot destabilize every Earth system under the sun, and keep up endless wars and the building of arsenals for wars, without seeing history’s course collect a grand slam in return.

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We must step down from our domineering position, sacrifice excessive consumption, voluntarily shrink our numbers and planetary sprawl, relinquish militarism, and embrace our shared Earthling identity. Only through the inspiration for a deeply meaningful and virtuous human life, on a planet second to none in the universe, can we cut through the anthropocentric dross of entitlement, extractivism, conflict, and bigotry. If humanity cannot recognize that choice now (for whatever reasons), a bitter harvest of understanding will make it self-evident in the future. One way or another, the only choice we have that is real is turning to live with restraint, respect, and reverence toward all life.