Read and print it here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dan-fischer-let-nature-play. Originally published in the journal Green Theory & Praxis.
Combining anti-work and total-liberation themes, the article advocates liberating all species from compulsory work. Such a pathway could stabilize the Earth without relying on risky technologies like nuclear power, bioenergy, geoengineering, or inadequate “new deals” with capitalism. It would also mean a much better life full of leisure and play, an abundance of free time, and re-established relations with our human and nonhuman neighbors.
Mainstream solutions to climate change often involve ongoing economic growth, through promises of full-time “green jobs” and high-tech geoengineering, and are unlikely to stop the present apocalypses of alienation and annihilation. By contrast, the Total Liberation Pathway proposes letting nature play, ourselves included. We need to step off the fast-paced “treadmill of production” and instead take a leisurely walk. We need to seize the “social factory” and turn it into a playground. We need to see and treat the world as fundamentally playful and our everyday lives as sacred and wild.