---
title: "Planetary Realism"
description: "Jerry Brown's 1976 coinage, revived by Nathan Gardels as the conclusion of The Planetary: foreign-policy realism (Morgenthau, Kissinger) joined to \"a dose of humanism,\" and now the successor to…"
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/planetary-realism"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/planetary-realism"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Planetary Realism

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/planetary-realism), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Jerry Brown's 1976 coinage, revived by [Nathan Gardels](https://antikythera.wiki/people/nathan-gardels) as the conclusion of *The Planetary*: foreign-policy realism (Morgenthau, Kissinger) joined to "a dose of humanism," and now the successor to realpolitik, which Gardels also calls "Gaiapolitik." It has a double meaning: realistic recognition of planetary interdependence, and a realistic grasp of a world still made of sovereign states, in which climate mitigation has become "the province of renewed nationalism" and faces a greenlash. In practice it means a US–China "partnership of rivals" on climate, subnational deals such as California's with Beijing, and governance distributed like natural systems rather than centered globally. Gardels pairs it with planetary reason (a non-human-centric logos disclosed by computation) and planetary time (Mbembe's simultaneity).

## Appears in

- [The Planetary](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/the-planetary) (2024-11-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._