Children of a Modest Star

"The clarity in this analysis of the world governance system is truly powerful—it's a major contribution to our shared cognitive map of where we are now, and how we got here. Moving beyond diagnosis in a way that one hopes for but doesn't always see, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman make specific and practical suggestions for action. This fills an urgent need of our time, which is for plans that can be put to use right now. Many books are important—this one is, I think, crucial."—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The High Sierra: A Love Story and The Ministry for the Future

"Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman are willing to face down the challenge of getting specific about planetary governance while avoiding the specter of world government. They offer real ideas for how inhabitants of the planet can govern ourselves at multiple scales, in ways that really could enable us to survive and thrive."—Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, and author of Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics

"Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman have written an extraordinarily important and much needed book. The world faces any number of vexing, potentially catastrophic planetary challenges, which our current governing practices and institutions are ill-suited to meet. Deeply researched and sharply argued, Children of a Modest Star explains why our current institutional architecture is inadequate, and lays out a bold, forward thinking, but plausible agenda to develop a new conceptual lens to generate the governing practices, processes, and policies we desperately need. This book could not be timelier."—Francis J. Gavin, Johns Hopkins University

"As intellectually resourceful as it is ambitious, Children of a Modest Star not only cuts cleanly through the obsolete assumptions that stultify much thinking about the present and future. It also offers, in our paralyzing moment of polycrisis, a bold and bracing account of what we can still do."—Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present

"What would governance look like if our planetary condition was central rather than ancillary to our culture and politics? This is the question posed by the thought-provoking Children of a Modest Star. Our current systems of governance, premised on sovereign states, are fundamentally misaligned with the scale of the planetary problems we face. The solution, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman suggest, is to develop a set of content-specific, task-oriented institutions at a variety of levels of governance, and to do this quickly, before it is too late."—Naomi Oreskes, co-author of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

"As an Earth scientist, I've been frustrated by the world's inability to prevent climate catastrophe. National governments cannot handle threats that transcend their boundaries, and existing international bodies lack the power to compel change. Children of a Modest Star defines institutions that can deal with the problems we face that, like climate change, require governance from local to planetary scales. This book is a great conversation starter."—Kate Marvel, senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown

"Blake and Gilman confront the [global] crises of our own time—led by global warming but compounded by other potentially catastrophic and interconnected planetary challenges—and explain why our contemporary institutional and governing practices are woefully ill-suited to the moment. They lay out a bold but plausible conceptual and political agenda to reform and reinvent governance to avoid planetary ruin."—War on the Rocks