John Davis, editor of The Rewilding Institute‘s most recent anthology, Rewilding Earth: Best of 2019, sums up Eileen Crist’s essay, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, in startlingly clear terms:
“Ecocentric author Eileen Crist warns in her essay on Deep-Sea Mining that wickedness on an unfathomable scale will be perpetrated if we do not halt the exploitation of the two-thirds of Earth’s surface that is the bottom of the oceans.”
In the video below Eileen Crist reads a portion of her essay, as it was featured as one of several readings during The Rewilding Institute‘s June 22, 2020, virtual book launch for Rewilding Earth: Best of 2019.
Eileen Crist reads from her essay “Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Menance of Deep Sea Mining,” which is published in Rewilding Earth: Best of 2019.
The second annual Rewilding Earth anthology, published in partnership with Essex Editions, features essays, poems, and art by leading advocates for the natural world. This elegant volume inspires from first glance with a joyful rewilding vision gracing the cover by Essex, NY-based author/illustrator Steven Kellogg. Within this user-friendly collection, you will discover chronicles of heroes restoring wild places and saving endangered species; features on people adopting positive, healing roles in the desperate work of abating the extinction and climate crises; common-sense suggestions for how to peacefully relax human numbers (in terms of population and consumption) to levels that allow a renewed flourishing of biological diversity; and the ingredients and recipes for preventing future pandemics.
Eileen Crist Essay: “Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Menance of Deep Sea Mining”
“According to official discourse—and apparent consensus—it is not about whether the deep sea will be mined, but about how, by whom, and when. In fact, deep-sea mining has already started, with the industrial-scale commercial show coming soon to a theatre far away from you. Same as it ever was.” —Eillen Crist
During the Rewilding Earth‘s virtual book launch, Eillen Crist recited an excerpt from her essay “Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Menance of Deep Sea Mining” which was featured in the Rewilding Earth: Best of 2019 anthology and online at Rewilding Earth. You can read the full essay in the book or find it here.
About Eileen Crist
Eileen Crist received her Bachelor’s from Haverford College and her Ph.D. from Boston University, in sociology with specialization in life sciences and society. She is recently retired from Virginia Tech where she taught for 22 years. Her work focuses on the extinction crisis and destruction of wild places, pathways to halt these trends, and how to create an ecological civilization within a rewilded Earth. She is coeditor of a number of books, including Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis; Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation;and Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. She has published many academic papers as well popular writings, and is Associate Editor of the online ecocentric journal The Ecological Citizen. Her most recent book, Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2019. For more information and publications, visit her website www.eileencrist.com.
Rewilding Earth: Best of 2019

Rewilding is restoring natural processes and species, then stepping back so that nature can express its own will. In essence, rewilding means giving the land back to wildlife and wildlife back to the land.
Recalling the late great Wild Earth journal, this provocative anthology, edited by Susan Morgan and John Davis, showcases the most notable original articles and art published by Rewilding Earth (rewilding.org) in 2019. Rewilding Earth is an inspiring, informative, and user-friendly manual for how to protect and restore wild places and their residents.
Learn more and order the book here.