Troy Vettese is an environmental historian who specializes in environmental economics, animal studies, and energy history. In 2019 he completed his doctorate in history at New York University. From 2019 to 2021, he worked at Harvard University as a William Lyon Mackenzie King postdoctoral research fellow. He has collaborated with Drew Pendergrass, an environmental engineer, on numerous projects including their book Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics .
Troy is currently revising his dissertation on neoliberal environmental thought into a book, tentatively titled 'Beyond Externality'. In addition to his academic work, Vettese writes on a wide array of environmental topics for a popular audience, and has had essays published in the Guardian, the New Statesman, Jacobin, N+1, Book Forum, and Boston Review.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:04 Welcome
02:58 Troy's Intro
- Half-Earth Socialism "what does it look like to have an ecologically stable society... a good relationship with other beings on this planet and also to ensure a good life for everyone"
- The Half-Earth Socialism computer game & maybe a future board-game
05:44 What's Real?
- #Ecosocialism and #neoliberalism in conversation with each other
- Growing up in a fairly conservative but non-religious household
- Being a Young Tory, reading Milton Friedman
- In early 20's "a crisis of faith in terms of this conservative worldview" due to the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis
- Reading Marx and New Left Review
- Exploring the environmental crisis
- A sensitive child, then a toxic masculinity phase as a teenager (callous, eating meat, machismo), then, alongside the crisis of faith in conservatism, a wish to return to childhood passion for nature
- Gravitating towards ecosocialism
- Didn't "grow up with red diapers" (being brought up in a left wing family) so feeling inoculated as knows the political right very well as "I came from the right to the left"
- #greenwashing measures "I wanted to understand where these ideas had come from... no one had done an intellectual history of these things"
- Challenging the common leftist view that the right & neoliberalism doesn't have any real intellectual depth "I took it more seriously than most socialists"
- "I thought the left should have more concrete ideas of their own... match the rigour of these conservative ones"
- "'We'll figure it out after the revolution'... that's not enough"
- Mother who ran for the Green party in elections
- Not religious now
- "Sceptical of thinking that there's one true path... one true way of relating to each other or to animals"... relativism, Kuhnian (paradigms)?
- The neoliberal view of the market as the optimal information processor
- Being rational but also appreciating the spiritual/subliminal/subjective? "that's why I'm a big bird watcher"
- The "spark bird" that gets you into #birdwatching
- #deleuze "Becoming animal" vs. #Haraway's notion of "becoming with"
17:50 What Matters?
27:33 Who Matters?
54:15 A Better World?
01:29:55 Follow Troy ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/messageConsciousness Live! - with skateboarding philosopher Richard Brown - Sentientism 195
A Truly Humane Education - Laura Chepner - The Vegan Society's Education Officer - Sentientism Ep:194
Imagining Ethical Schools - Sentientism 193
Is Veganic the Future of Farming? "We grow plants using plants" - Jimmy Videle - Sentientism Ep:192
"Your Neighbour Kills Puppies" - Tom Harris - Activist, Artist & Author - Sentientism Ep:190
"A new world of animal justice" - Sabine Brels of World Animal Justice - Sentientism 189
Talking to Humanists about Sentientism - Cross-post bonus from Podcast for Inquiry - Sentientism 188
"What if we saw ourselves as species diplomats?" - David Peña-Guzmán of Overthink and SFSU - Sentientism 187
Could animal farming be good for the animals? The Logic of the Larder - with Nick Pendergrast - Cross-post bonus episode from 3CR's Freedom of Species radio show and podcast - Sentientism 186
"If you combine rationality and compassion you have the essence" - Jonathan Leighton of OPIS - Sentientism 185
Is veganism a moral obligation? Ghostless Machine cross-post bonus - Sentientism 184
Don't underestimate your influence! - Chris Bryant of Bryant Research - Sentientism 183
160: "Mother Cow, Mother India" - Yamini Narayanan - International Development A/Prof - Sentientism
Waking Cosmos - a cross-post bonus episode - Sentientism 182
Christof Koch & IIT - "Consciousness is not a computation... it's a state of being" - Sentientism 181
S-Risks with Tobias Baumann - "Avoiding the Worst... a moral catastrophe" - Sentientism 180
Melanie Joy - "How to End Injustice Everywhere" - Sentientism 179
178: "A commitment to solidarity and a stubborn commitment to hope" - Defending Animals Author - Kendra Coulter - Sentientism
177: "Vegan Reflections" on animals and systems - with Jordi Casamitjana from Vegan FTA - a cross-post bonus episode
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