Planetary Politics is politics at planetary scale, and IMHO it's the only politics worth doing. It can come in a caring form or a ruthless, competitive one, and I'm not sure which we'll get.
How the word moved
In Feb 2018 I wanted a politics that invites oceans into the senate. By Jan 2025, after the liberal Leviathan's collapse, it became possible to think of planetary politics as an actuality, and I worried it might be normalized in a ruthless fashion. In Aug 2025 I guessed it'd likely be helmed by two authoritarian complexes, one fossil and one renewable.
In my words
"We aren’t used to inviting oceans into the senate but the survival of the human species depends on a politics that embraces the non-human world."
from Planetarity: the ABCs of our planetary future, 26 Feb 2018
"We need ways to think about both ends of the Bhumic spectrum - planetary concern and planetary competition - from our current interregnum."
from Bhumics Week 2, 28 Jan 2025
Related
- Related Bhumics - Bhumics is planetary politics and culture.
- Related Gaiapolitik - Gaiapolitik is Gardels' term and I'm happy to borrow it.
- Related Electrostate - the renewable authoritarian complex is centred on China.
- Related Planetary Steward - the steward is the governance figure for planetary politics.
- Related Polyconflict - planetary politics is riven with conflict.
Still open
I want to be hyper-Machiavellian, utopian, Smithian, Marxian and Gandhian all at once. I don't know what that means as a fleshed out theory.