Animal exploitation and warming will be stopped by human course-correction. Extinction isn’t required.

But there’s something far more disturbing to me about May’s piece. He thinks that the harm human beings inflict on the world cannot be stopped. It is inevitable. So long as we are here, we will continue to engage in these practices, so the question is whether or not we should be here. This is a little weird to me: To think that “stopping human beings from existing at all” is somehow more of a plausible option than “stopping factory farming and human-made climate change” means an extreme form of pessimism about the possibilities for changing our actions. As he says, the elimination of these wrongs “would likely require the elimination of the species.”

Respectfully, what the fuck? May says this as if it’s a given—there’s not a shred of argumentation offered. He thinks we’ll just nod and agree that it’s impossible to stop climate change, factory farming, and the destruction of ecosystems, that they will only come to an end if we commit civilizational suicide. I’m sorry, but that’s not the sort of proposition you can just state as an uncontroversial fact. Especially because these are all extremely recent phenomena—modern-day industrial animal farming began within the lifetimes of presently-living people. Human beings have been around for 200,000 years and it was only in the last few hundred that we set ourselves on the course toward destroying the earth and the mass destruction of other species’ habitats. Since we lived for many, many millennia without doing any of these things, why would we conclude that it’s totally impossible for us to live sustainably ever again, even with greater knowledge about how to do so than any previous generation of humans ever had?

This kind of pessimism is truly dangerous to me. Nobody should accept these assumptions. Why try to stop industrial animal farming if it would necessarily involve the destruction of humanity itself? The options are suicide or devastation. Since relatively few of us are going to benevolently commit suicide, no matter how persuasively the New York Times philosophy section may encourage it, guess we’ll have to resign ourselves to ruining the earth.

But this is ridiculous. These problems are caused by human actions, and human beings can change their actions. Nothing forces us to have our monstrous factory farm system, or to prize endless growth over sound environmental stewardship. I recently reviewed Jacy Reese’s The End of Animal Farming, which persuasively argues that we could completely end the slaughter of animals within a few hundred years. In the life of humankind, this is no time at all. If we could move toward a more socialistic global economy, one that didn’t ruin the planet for profit, we could stall climate change, too.

Of course, Frederic Jameson was right when he said that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Todd May can’t even conceive of the end of capitalism—he sees only two possible futures, apocalypse now or apocalypse later. I am not surprised that the New York Times ran this bonkers argument without asking May to back up his assertion that a sustainable planet is impossible. After all, a sustainable planet would be a socialistic planet, and to the Times-mind socialism is impossible. Since liberalism has no solutions, it’s not wonder that liberals believe there are no solutions.

People who are alive right now—like me, and presumably you—are both fortunate and unfortunate. We are unfortunate in that we are on Earth at a time when the threats of climate change and global nuclear conflict mean “doom” can seem just around the corner. We are fortunate, however, in that we also happen to have showed up at a moment when it was possible to do something about it. At the moment, the world is still (relatively) at peace and the worst effects of climate change have still not yet set in. Scientists are warning that we only have a decade to act on climate change in order to mitigate its most severe consequences, but a decade is not nothing. It is the job of socialists, and really anyone who cares about their “fellow creatures,” not to fall into despair or conclude that “extinction is the only option.” Hopelessness is what conservatives want, and pessimism means death. Todd May’s thinking is dangerous, suicidal, wrong. Reject it. It’s not only depressing, it’s irrational. Laugh at it. Write it off. And join the fight to build a humane, decent, and nurturing civilization in which we live in harmony with other species. We have the technology, we have the brains. We just need the resolve. A better world is possible. Death is not the only option.