Green Thinking: Unlearning Outdated Ideas in Science, Economics and Politics

Green Thinking seeks to "compost" the views of dead white men (Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Norman Borlaugh) and of some not white or dead (Francis Fukuyama, Richard Dawkins, Richard Thaler), and to explore the flowering of Green thinking in the 21st century, growing from the nutrients that microbes and their kin are generating from the wreckage.

This book understands the foundation of life is cooperation, not competition; that diversity is essential to resilience and health of systems; that humans are just one more species of animal or rather holobiont; that reductionism has to be replaced by relational thinking; that financialising society has destroyed - as it was meant to do - relationships essential to wellbeing; and, perhaps most crucially at all, that we have to draw on the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous societies that have maintained themselves and their environments in healthy balance for thousands or tens of thousands of years. That means acknowledging the time, energy and talents of all life, human and non-human, must contribute to a new way for humans to live in balance with the more-than-human world.

This book will appeal to fans of David Graeber, Kate Raworth, Tyson Yunkaporta, Jason Hickel, Anna Tsing, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula Le Guin, Bruno Latour, Wangarii Maathai, Merlin Sheldrake, Vandana Shiva, Lynn Margulis, Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as listeners to the New Books Network, Past Present and Future, and HPS podcasts.