In the Productivore’s Dilemma three overarching claims are explored in a manuscript of chapters split into two parts: First, that human and more-than-human life is not only threatened by extinction but is more importantly threatened by systemic extermination. Second, utilizing the coast redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) as an object for analysis, I seek to show that one of the largest known plant species is not only threatened by extinction, but by negative production of space, a concept theorized throughout the manuscript. The coast redwood tree is a remarkable example of the fact that there are important differences between extinction caused by natural processes and extinction caused by Anthropogenic systems. Third, using the analytical apparatus of systemic extermination helps to clarify a long-unfolding and intensifying species-level crisis, which I identify as the Long Extermination, an historical event – highly stretchable in its temporal coordinates. At the center of this critical re-framing of the debate about the so-called sixth mass extinction and its epochal designation the Anthropocene, is what I refer to as the Productivore’s Dilemma: born of the realization that the main difference between the human species and all other species on the planet is not merely that we can consume and use for fuel a wide variety of plants, fibers, and animals, due to our omnivorous nature, but that we can consciously produce our habitats and our food. Hence, we are productivores. A dilemma then arises: are humans destroying the planet or are the systems that direct our productive capacities destroying the planet? If it is the latter, then we are witnessing systemic extermination. If it is the former, we are causing a mass extinction. The answer will please nobody, and thus it is a dilemma. That said, there is an answer. In providing an answer, this manuscript, while broad and synthetic in its structure and scope, takes aim at a set of ideas and historical processes that deserve to be critically interrogated. Critiques of the Anthropocene and the sixth mass extinction move freely between the internal and external, leading to one central counterpoint: That we are not witnessing the sixth mass extinction, but the maturation of a long-term extermination event that is systemic much more than it is species oriented.