An Ecomodernist Mishmash

A Response from Giorgos Kallis, environmental scientist, professor at the Autonomous University, Barcelona, Spain

Philosophical mishmashes

The philosophical and epistemological posture of the text is self-contradictory, perhaps betraying differing views among its authors. The manifesto starts with the recognition that the planet has become a human planet, aka ‘the anthropocene’. There is no wild nature out there, sure. And yet somehow the goal of the manifesto is to ‘make more room for nature’ and ‘re-wild’ and ‘re-green’ the earth.

Section 5 argues that the way we come to know ‘nature’, i.e. through science, is shaped by our own constructions and therefore dependent on our own choices. Correct. Yet the whole manifesto is permeated by a blind belief in the power of science to solve whatever problems may be, while constantly invoking science for proving that this or that technology is better than the other.

The authors suggest that they write ‘out of deep love and emotional connection to the natural world’ (again, presuming that there is such a natural world ‘out there’, which they said there isn’t). ‘To preserve wilderness, biodiversity, and a mosaic of beautiful landscapes [beautiful for whom?] will require a deeper emotional connection to them‘. The manifesto itself undermines the case for preservation in a spirit of connection, since ‘it is the continued dependence of humans on natural environments that is the problem’. It seems that the manifesto calls for less material connection and more ‘emotional’ connection to nature. Yet it is unclear how the latter will come without the former in the urban, genetically modified paradises envisaged. Playing Tarzan video games?

I was reminded by one of the authors that French philosopher Bruno Latour has written in favour of the ‘breakthrough’ of ‘post-environmentalism’. Following Latour could provide more epistemological consistency to the manifesto, but would, however, expose the authors to the risk of alienating the wilderness environmentalists they obviously want to convince.

For Latour there is no nature or wilderness out there from which we can detach ourselves. The separation between the natural and the social is precisely the type of modernism Latour criticizes, calling for a genuine modernity instead, which will finally take responsibility for our transformations of nature and our hybrid products. We should control our technological ‘Frankensteins’, rather than shy away from producing them, Latour claims.

But dare I ask who would take responsibility and how in the case of a nuclear Frankenstein accident or an intervention in the genome gone wrong? Perhaps, this is too concrete a question for a philosopher to answer. And if the project of modernization is to ‘control’ things, why not control and stop the production of Frankensteins? Modernization, so it seems, is about controlling everything other than the controllers themselves.

Reading Latour more carefully also raises questions on whether he is indeed an ‘eco-modernist’. After all, he is the guy who wrote: ‘to modernize or to ecologize– that’s the question’. Indeed Latourargues that the ‘challenge demands more of us than simply embracing technology and innovation. It requires exchanging the modernist notion of modernity for what I have called a “compositionist” [what when younger he called ‘ecologist’] one that sees the process of human development as neither liberation from Nature nor as a fall from it, but rather as a process of becoming ever-more attached to, and intimate with, a panoply of nonhuman natures’. The manifesto is then modernism 1.0, permeated as it is by a spirit of liberating humanity from nature, while stuck to the idea of preserving a separate wilderness. The possibility for such decoupling is not only factually wrong, as I argued above, but also philosophically inconsistent, as it continues to treat nature as an entity outside society, and, against what Latour argues, as a means to an end, exploiting energy and natural resources more intensively ‘here’ to save wilderness ‘there’ (as if the here and the there could so easily be separated).

True, Latour himself suggests that new technologies, such as the ones advocated by the manifesto, are part of connecting to nonhuman natures, and that putting limits to growth is a form of detachment. But he is wrong. Limits do not have to mean detachment. They are a means for allowing different, possibly stronger and qualitatively different forms of connection. There is nothing to suggest that we connect more to a river by damming it and using it to produce electricity, than by walking along its shores or talking to it.

Anyway, these philosophical complications are too much for the manifesto to handle. The authors finally conclude that no matter what ones’ views on nature are (and they are all fine according to them), ‘decoupling’ our economic activity from it will be for the better and full stop.

‘Anthropogenic choices’

The authors repeatedly refer to ‘anthropogenic choices’ about how to transform landscapes or what to conserve and what not. But what is their choice then, their politics? These are never articulated explicitly. Modernization for modernization’s sake I would say. ‘Pursuing what can be pursued’, without limits, as philosopher of technology Jacques Ellul used to put it.

And they do like their modern technologies big. Dams, but not windmills. Nuclear, but not solar. Why so is never clear. We hear that ‘most forms of renewable energy are, unfortunately’ not up to the task, because of their ‘scale of land use’. Yet somehow, hydroelectric dams are nice ‘even though their land … footprint is very large’. Their ‘anthropogenic choices’ here are disguised as objective science. And a bad science, that is. The decisions of Germany, Japan or California to shutter nuclear power plants are ‘counterproductive’. Why? Because somehow nuclear is ‘clean’. And what about all the carbon and energy necessary for extracting and transporting uranium, constructing, operating and dismantling nuclear plants or handling their waste? Calculated over the lifetime of a plant, this makes nuclear far from ‘clean’ and far from clear whether it produces any energy surplus to begin with. But these are too specific details for a manifesto.

I am comfortable with the fact that the preference for nuclear energy, dams or GMOs is the ‘anthropogenic choice’ of the authors, although I would prefer them not to hide it with semi-scientific reasoning or allusions to preserving ‘wilderness’. Even so, they owe an answer ‘why’. Why do they desire a planet populated by nuclear plants and bunkers with radioactive waste? Why do they desire becoming ever more attached to nonhuman radioactivity? What is it that excites them with a nuclear future, so as to make them blindly confident to the eternal capacity of our civilization to have the resources to handle nuclear plants and nuclear wastes? Are earthquakes or civilization downturns ruled out in the eco-modernist future?

…

For Degrowth and the Commons

Which brings me to my own ‘anthropogenic choice’. If we want to reduce the footprint of the economy, then let’s downscale the economy as a whole, and find ways to make the transition socially sustainable: to prosper without growth, as Tim Jackson put it. If we are to leave land aside, then let’s organize for making land a commons, leaving some of it aside for non-productive purposes.

This call for ‘degrowth’ is neither a call for a harmonious co-existence with nature, nor one of leaving ‘nature’ in peace. Fully aware of our capacity to keep pursuing what can be pursued, the choice is ‘not to’. We do not want to produce new Frankensteins. This ‘not to’ is a choice for the world we want to produce, a world where we live a simpler life, in common, i.e. with more and direct connections among humans and between humans and non-humans. This is an ecological vision. It seeks to connect rather than disconnect, couple rather than decouple, approach rather than distance, engage rather than disengage. It is not about succumbing to external limits to growth. It is about limiting growth because we dislike the detached world produced by growth; a world controlled by others for our sake.

The conscious and collective decision of a society to limit itself, without recourse to spirits and totems, gods and kings, charts or graphs, is the essence of what Cornelius Castoriadis called ‘democracy’. It is the necessary next civilizational step.

To modernize or to ecologize, then? That was, and still is, the question. Eco-modernization is an oxymoron.

Read the full response here.

A Degrowth Response to An Ecomodernist Manifesto

A Response from Jeremy Caradonna, Iris Borowy, Tom Green, Peter A. Victor, Maurie Cohen, Andrew Gow, Anna Ignatyeva, Matthias Schmelzer, Philip Vergragt, Josefin Wangel, Jessica Dempsey, Robert Orzanna, Sylvia Lorek, Julian Axmann, Rob Duncan, Richard B. Norgaard, Halina S. Brown, Richard Heinberg 

The Manifesto has already received strong criticism from an array of commentators, but none of these assessments has yet critiqued it from the perspective of “degrowth,” which is an approach that sees the transition to sustainability occurring through less environmentally impactful economic activities and a voluntary contraction of material throughput of the economy, to reduce humanity’s aggregate resource demands on the biosphere. From a degrowth perspective, technology is not viewed as a magical savior since many technologies actually accelerate environmental decline.

With these disagreements in mind, a group of over fifteen researchers from the degrowth scholarship community has written a detailed refutation of the Ecomodernist Manifesto, which can be read here. The following is a summary of the seven main points made by the authors of this critique:

1. The Manifesto assumes that growth is a given. The ecological economists associated with degrowth assume that growth is not a given, and that population growth, inequalities, and the decline of cheap and abundant fossil fuels, which spurred the unprecedented growth of the global economy over the past century, means that the limits to growth are either being reached or will be reached in the very near future. The ecomodernists, by contrast, scoff at the idea of limits to growth, arguing that technology will always find a way to overcome those limits. Graham Turner, Ugo Bardi, and numerous others have shown through empirical research that many of the modeled scenarios, and the fundamental thesis, of the Club of Rome remain as relevant as ever—that is, that the human endeavor is bumping up against natural limits. Richard Heinberg has shown that the production of conventional oil, natural gas, and heavy oil all peaked around 2010, despite, but also due to, continued global reliance on fossil fuels, which still make up over 80% of the world’s primary source of energy. The history of industrialism to date suggests that more growth will be coupled with increasing environmental costs. Thus the Manifesto does nothing to question and rethink the growth fetish that has preoccupied (and negatively impacted) the world since at least the 1940s. 

2. Ecomodernists believe in the myth of decoupling growth from impacts. Long the fantasy of neoclassical economists, industrialists, and many futurists decoupling is the idea that one can have more of the “good stuff” (economic growth, increased population, more consumption) without any of the “bad stuff” (declines in energy stocks, environmental degradation, pollution, and so forth). Yet to date, there has been no known society that has simultaneously expanded economic activity while reducing absolute energy consumption and environmental impacts. In terms of carbon-dioxide emissions, the only periods over the past century in which global or regional emissions have actually declined absolutely have occurred during periods of decreased economic activity (usually a political crisis, war, or a recession). While it is true that many countries have reduced their carbon intensity in recent decades, meaning that they get more bang for their energy buck, efforts to decouple GDP-growth from environmental degradation through technological innovations and renewable energies have failed to achieve the absolute emissions reductions and reductions in aggregate environmental impacts necessary for a livable planet. In short, absolute decoupling has not occurred and has not solved our problems.

3.  Is technology the problem or the solution? The ecomodernists cannot decide. The Manifesto is open and honest about the impact that modern technologies have had on the natural world, and especially emissions from fossil-fueled machines. However, as an act of desperation, the ecomodernists retreat to the belief that risky, costly, and underachieving technologies, such as nuclear power and carbon capture and storage, will solve the climate crisis and energize the sustainable society of the future. The reality, however, is that nuclear power provides less than 6 percent of the world’s energy needs while creating long-term storage nightmares and present-day environmental hazards. We cite Chernobyl and Fukushima as obvious examples. From the point of view of degrowth, more technology is not (necessarily) the solution. The energy crisis can be addressed only by reductions in throughput, economic activity, and consumption, which could then (and only then) create the possibility of powering global society via renewables.

4. Ecomodernism is not very “eco.” Ecomodernism violates everything we know about ecosystems, energy, population, and natural resources. Fatally, it ignores the lessons of ecology and thermodynamics, which teach us that species (and societies) have natural limits to growth. The ecomodernists, by contrast, brazenly claim that the limits to growth is a myth, and that human population and the economy could continue to grow almost indefinitely. Moreover, the ecomodernists ignore or downplay many of the ecological ramifications of growth. The Manifesto has nothing to say about the impacts of conventional farming, monoculture, pesticide-resistant insects, GMOs, and the increasing privatization of seeds and genetic material. It is silent on the decline of global fisheries or the accumulation of microplastic pollution in the oceans, reductions in biodiversity, threats to ecosystem services, and the extinction of species. Nor does it really question our reliance on fossil fuels. It does argue that societies need to “decarbonize,” but theManifesto also tacitly supports coal, oil and natural gas by advocating for carbon capture and storage. Far from being an ecological statement of principles, theManifesto merely rehashes the naïve belief that technology will save us and that human ingenuity can never fail. One fears, too, that the ecomodernists support geoengineering. 

5. The Manifesto has a narrow, inaccurate, and whitewashed view of both “modernity” and “development.” The Manifesto’s assertions rest on the belief that industrialized modernity has been an undivided blessing. Those who support degrowth have a more complex view of history since the 18th century. The “progress” of modernity has come at a heavy cost, and is more of a mixed blessing. The ecomodernists do not acknowledge that growth in greenhouse gas emissions parallels the development of industry. The core assumption is that “development” has only one true definition, and that is to “modernize” along the lines of the already industrialized countries. The hugely destructive development path of European and Neo-European societies is the measuring stick of Progress.

6. Ecomodernism is condescending toward pre-industrial, agrarian, non-industrialized societies, and the Global South. The issue of condescension is particularly stark in the Manifesto. There is not a word about religion, spirituality, or indigenous ecological practices, even though the authors throw a bone to the “cultural preferences” for development. Pre-industrial and indigenous peoples are seen as backwards and undeveloped. The authors go so far as to say that humans need to be “liberated” from agricultural labor, as though the production of food, and small-scale farming, were not inherent goods. There is no adoration for simple living, the small scale, or bottom up approaches to development.

7. The Manifesto suffers from factual errors and misleading statements. TheManifesto is particularly greenwashed when it comes to global deforestation rates. It suggests that there is currently a “net reforestation” occurring at the international scale, which contradicts the 2014 Millennium Development Report that shows that afforestation and reforestation have, in fact, slowed deforestation rates, but that the world still suffered a net loss of forested land between 2000 and 2010 by many millions of hectares. Research by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Wide Fund for Nature confirms the reality of net forest losses. Further, the Manifesto makes dubious claims about net reductions in “servitude” over the past few centuries, and the role played by pre-historical native peoples in driving the megafauna to extinction.

The above is a summary of the full-length rebuttal, which can be found here.

Manifesto Coauthor David Keith on CBC Radio

Manifesto coauthor David Keith was interviewed on CBC Radio's 'The 180' with host Jim Brown. The segment opens with what Keith describes as the main takeaway of An Ecomodernist Manifesto:

The main argument of the manifesto is to point out, in a sense, what ought to be obvious: that technology really can be part of the solution to many environmental problems that people care about. That’s not to say that technology without any regulation or that untrammeled capitalism will solve everything; I don’t believe that at all. But that much of the places we’ve actually made progress on environmental problems has been fundamentally by technological change. 

Click here to listen to the full radio segment.

Can We Leave Nature Behind?

by Mark Buchanan

I'll admit that I find this view of “leaving nature behind” somewhat alarming. Living with nature has more direct emotional appeal to me. Even so, there's an undeniable coherence to the Ecomodermist arguments.  Preserving nature, while also ensuring that people thrive, would seem to require some kind of separation. Short of moving humans into outer space, it's hard to see how that can happen without human activities becoming more concentrated, intensive and contained.

On the other hand, I wonder if the Ecomodernists overstate the possibilities for leaving nature behind. Even if we do flock into cities, find unlimited, clean sources of energy, and learn to use energy more efficiently than ever, our total energy consumption may well keep growing as we find new ways to use it. Basic physics demands that more energy use always means more waste dissipated to the environment in one form or another -- heat, pollution, environmental damage.

So leaving nature behind, in the sense of freeing it from our impacts, might not be so easy. Can we really sequester all the damaging aspects of our activities, collecting them up like trash and neutralizing them in a set of small repositories, out of sight, and even outside of nature? That would be great. It also seems a little fantastic.

Read the full article here.

An Ecomodernist Manifesto: Truth and Confusion in the Same Breath

A Response from Kurt Cobb, author of Prelude and blogger at Resource Insights

I really do want to applaud the Breakthrough Institute's recently released paper called "An Ecomodernist Manifesto." It speaks with candor about the possible catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change. It recognizes the large footprint of humankind in the biosphere. It wants to address both, and it wants to do so in a way that offers a positive vision for the human future that will attract support and, above all, action.

But, I can't applaud it because of its underlying assumption: that humans are in one category and nature in another. The key paragraph starts with the key sentence:

Humans will always materially depend on nature to some degree. Even if a fully synthetic world were possible, many of us might still choose to continue to live more coupled with nature than human sustenance and technologies require. What decoupling offers is the possibility that humanity’s material dependence upon nature might be less destructive.

"Humans will always materially depend on nature to some degree." This statement seems reasonable only if humans and nature are in different categories. But, they aren't--a concept that is distressingly NOT clear to most everyone who styles himself or herself as an environmentalist. Humans and their creations are as much a part of nature as everything else. Humans don't "materially depend on nature to some degree." Humans are entirely and completely dependent on nature (of which they are a part) for EVERYTHING. Even every synthetic substance uses feedstocks and energy from the natural world.

It may seem to other readers of this manifesto that it acknowledges these facts in some of its statements such as "humans are completely dependent on the living biosphere." That's where the confusion comes in. Because, while there appears to be such an acknowledgement, the authors' conclusions belie such an understanding.

The distinction I am making is not merely a semantic one. Here's how I know that the authors of "An Ecomodernist Manifesto" will agree. The following is from the introduction:

In this, we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse.

Humans actually cannot avoid harmonizing with nature. All our insights about how to extract an ever-increasing material prosperity from the biosphere and the crust of the Earth DEPEND on us harmonizing our thinking with the laws of nature. We exploit our understanding to increase our access to energy and other resources in order to obtain higher levels of what we regard as security and well-being.

The key question is HOW we will harmonize our thinking and actions with the nature that we are a part of. The authors call for "decoupling human development from environmental impacts." By this they mean that we should find ways to do less damage to the environment while seeking the well-being we crave. And, few who are devoted to creating a more sustainable world would argue with this. But it is when we get into the details that confusion arises.

Read the full response here. 

A New Environmental Politics

A Response from Iddo Wernick, research associate at the Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University. He is also a Breakthrough Senior Fellow (2015). 

America, and the world, are ripe for a new, balanced way to consider how government manages natural resources and oversees environmental quality. A political philosophy not laden with the orthodoxies of the past, one that has the ability to embrace hope about the future and is not resigned to bleak prospects.

‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto’ forms another brick in the foundation of a revised environmental politics. Once again, the people at the Breakthrough Institute have done an excellent job of synthesizing intellectual strains, ostensibly disparate, to form a new policy approach to natural resources and environmental quality. 

Finding the solution that represents the “golden mean” in all cases may remain elusive, the Manifesto frames the questions essential to thinking about future resource use and environmental quality in a fresh way. On balance, the evidence brought to support the arguments in the Manifesto injects less dogma into the discussion, not more. This is vital in a political environment where misinformation of all kinds continue to hijack the debate.

A few comments, some on tone, some on content:

·       The Manifesto endorses the notion that humans should “stabilize the climate.” Can humans do that? Can we stabilize the climate? The climate is a system shaped by a range of natural and human processes. Humans can inject less greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by making energy systems emit less carbon. We can influence that but we cannot control it. Why concede the point that humans influence climate so directly, implying that each gram of CO2 emitted by human activity influences the global temperature to rise in lockstep fashion, independent of other factors? Moreover, would there not be value in shifting the discussion from "preventing climate change" to the functionally identical "shifting to a low- or no-carbon energy system." This would shift the debate to solutions and away from nefarious oil company executives and cute polar bears. 

·       In making the argument that greater density is always favorable to greater resource efficiency, I would distinguish between the density of production and the density of human settlement (consumption). The approach to concentrating humans as we concentrate livestock and fast-growing trees seems to rely on a man/woman-as-economic-animal argument. He or she is also a political animal, and as such he or she may resist being placed in conditions of ever greater density for the purposes of some greater social goal like economic efficiency or even environmental quality. Must government policies always favor city folk and promote denser agglomerations of human settlements? To me, a less economic view of humans is part of the rejection of misanthropy that is inherent in ecomodernism.

·       It seems that calls emanate from many quarters today celebrating the accomplishments of modernity. The rejection of “the good ole days” as sentimental claptrap, comes from both left and right. Market libertarians revel in how human well-being, measured in economic and demographic terms, continues to improve. At the same time, liberals search for evidence of the triumph of enlightenment values, trying to find examples showing that the quality of human life has improved over the last centuries in their wake. The Manifesto seems to embrace all of these propositions indicating that humans are better off today in ways that go beyond their material well-being. Is this essential? Does accepting the argument that resources are sufficient to meet future human material needs mean that one accepts that human fulfillment also improves as a result of material progress? Must the Manifesto tie itself to a position that relies more on social science than humanism in defining what human well-being is. For example, while Pinker may make a self-consistent argument, do his conclusions not hide a bevy of hidden social science assumptions? The data he uses show what can be measured. What cannot be measured about the human condition remains conjecture. Might people experience violence today vicariously, like they experience everything else? Is it true that the human anxiety that stems from violence has lessened so much today around the world? Is accepting this notion requisite for our cause? Might it not alienate potential adherents?

·       One of the many nice things about the Manifesto is its reliance on factual trends rather than anecdote. I appreciate the use of the many data-rich arguments showing the "decoupling" of environmental harm from societal resource use. The arguments made presume that greater efficiency in resource extraction will always benefit the natural environment. A qualification must be inserted, that greater efficiency must not be concomitant with the degradation of underlying natural systems. Explicit mention must be made of the fact that it is ultimately information that allows for greater efficiency. Using fewer resources by using them smarter is ultimately the best path to protecting the underlying natural systems as well.

·       The Manifesto seems little concerned with the Jevons's Paradox, the notion that greater efficiency, in production or in end use, serves to increase, rather than decrease, demand. Alternatively, the phenomenon is referred to as the rebound effect. The challenge remains for those that champion technology to improve efficiency (and thus benefit the future environment) to confront this problem. The drive for greater efficiency does restrain the environmental footprint of the system.  However, when examining the dynamics, it appears that the environmental footprint grows as markets do, just slower. Still needed is evidence that greater efficiency will actual shrink the environmental footprint in aggregate.

·       How can the ecomodernist approach move into the mainstream? How does the assertions made in the Manifesto align with the current political party platforms in the United States? Abroad? What federal policy recommendations do these arguments suggest? What constituencies or demographics do these ideas resonate with? What strategies allow for this approach gain market share in the psyche of the average voter? 

The Manifesto speaks to me because it fundamentally rejects the nihilism and defeatism so prevalent today in the West, and instead embraces an attitude of hope for the future and belief in human capacity. I offer these comments as a partisan who is himself coming to grips with the issues mentioned above. The Manifesto marks an important step in creating a space to discuss these questions with a focus on finding solutions rather than emphasizing the severity of problems. 

Math Is Not on the Ecomodernists' Side

A Response from Jeremy Williams, cofounder of Make Wealth History

There’s a lot to like in [the Manifesto’s] vision. They rightly point out how far we’ve come, and how many of the fears of previous generations of environmentalists have not panned out in the doom and gloomed predicted – the population bomb among them. Technology, urbanization and the peaking of population growth offer a far more optimistic possibility.
…

There are lots of hopeful statements here, but many dubious ones too. The assertion that “the use of many material resource inputs such as nitrogen, timber, and land are beginning to peak” sounds premature, given how many people remain in poverty. So do the generalizations about how liberal values are becoming globally universal. The dismissal of any concept of planetary boundaries seems rather hasty. The fact that they are largely negative about renewable energy is also a problem, and puts them out of step with the trend towards decentralized power.

The ecomodernist vision also leans very heavily on one idea: decoupling. Decoupling is the disconnecting of human activity and economic growth from environmental impact, carbon emissions and resource use. They argue that there are existing trends to build upon, and that “decoupling human well-being from the destruction of nature requires the conscious acceleration of emergent decoupling processes.”

Like James Wallman’s ideas about postmaterialism, for example, that demand for goods may be peaking in developed countries. That may be true, or it may not be – it’s pretty early to call. There aren’t many examples of absolute decoupling and good news stories like Britain’s recent drop in carbon emissions are pretty rare.

It is possible to decouple economic growth and environmental impact. The key factor, and the main reason why I remain convinced by the need for postgrowth solutions, is time. It is theoretically possible to create infinite economic growth. It’s the urgency of climate change that complicates matters. Can it be done fast enough? That’s the real question, and the maths is not on the ecomodernists’ side.

Read the full response here.

A Response to Clive Hamilton's Critique

A response from Matthew Nisbet, associate professor of communication studies and affiliate associate professor of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University

Read Clive Hamilton's critique.

I was glad to see Australian philosopher Clive Hamilton weigh in with his thoughts on the recent Ecomodernist Manifesto (link above), but his critique reflects two widely repeated mischaracterizations of the ecomodernist argument. These are the following:

1. Ecomodernists are neoliberal, techno-optimists.

There is a tendency like Hamilton does to equate ecomodernist thinking to a blind belief in the market and technology to drive social change, a "Silicon Valley" mindset as Hamilton argues.

But ecomodernists in fact are strongly critical of the belief that carbon pricing, venture capital, and other market-based instruments can drive social change or innovation.

Instead, they argue the need for big government in the form of strategic planning and spending on research, development, and deployment.

Rather than Silicon Valley thinking, ecomodernists are espousing Tennessee Valley Authority thinking. They advocate big government-funded clean energy projects that have the ability to modernize whole regions of the world, lifting millions out of poverty, and reducing society's environmental footprint in the process.

Techno-optimism is also a relative term, subjective in its application.

Who is more of a techno-optimist: Greens who argue that solar, wind, and efficiency are all the technologies we need to address the problem, or ecomodernists who argue that other energy sources are required as part of our arsenal?

2. Ecomodernists don't acknowledge the reality of climate change politics.

In this case, Hamilton faults ecomodernists for not devoting a substantial portion of their Manifesto to the efforts of the fossil fuel industry and "deniers" to block action.

But rather than ignore politics, ecomodernists have a different theory of politics than Hamilton.

For ecomodernists, social change starts through critical self-reflection and challenging of our assumptions. Rather than insisting that everyone sign on to the same outlook and strategies, they argue for engaging with a diversity of viewpoints and seeking the best ideas available.

Second, they believe that by widening the options available to policy makers and publics; and by investing in technologies that reduce the costs of action, opposition will soften and the debate over uncertainty subside.

History suggests that policy makers and their publics are far more likely to spare nature if options are available that allow them to meet their social development goals, than for any sacred, moral, or ideological reasons.

Politics, argue ecomodernists, is about getting a diversity of people to act on behalf of the same goal but for different reasons. Politics is not about getting everyone to share the same belief, or vanquishing from politics those who disagree.

On "An Ecomodernist Manifesto" and Mannsplaining

A Response from Blair King, chemist

Unlike many of [Michael Mann’s] peers, more often than not his negative comments center around personalities and issues of policy rather than the underlying science of which he is an acknowledged expert. I cannot count the number of times he has used the word “denier” in a tweet and his opinions about people like Dr. Judith Curry and many of her peers are legendary. Besides the area of policy, where he might have some limited expertise, he also appears willing to expound on areas where his expertise would appear to be lacking. An example of this happened yesterday when Dr. Mann made the following tweet: 

Now there is a pretty robust literature in the fields of Conservation Ecology and Environmental Econometrics and more than a few books have been written on the topics. Areas of research include the Environmental Kuznet Curve hypothesis, the IPAT identity (and its many sister/daughter variants) and many others. While I am certainly not an expert in those fields, my original training (prior to chemistry) was in population and conservation ecology and I have experience working in the field of ecosystem restoration. In my studies I was taught about a few simple premises that underlie human and societal development:

• as societies become more affluent, their birth rates tend to decrease
• as societies become more affluent, populations tend to become more urban as specialization and improved  technologies allow for a reduction in need for human labour in food production and increased per hectare crop yields
• as societies become more affluent, their willingness to devote more resources for environmental protection increases as does their desires for improved environmental health outcomes.

I will not pretend to do this topic justice but I will point out that there is a very strong consensus in the field regarding these topics. Moreover, I am pretty sure that the authors of the Manifesto, who represent a pretty reasonable group of experts in the field, are more familiar with the intricacies of the academic literature in their fields than Dr. Mann. This is where the irony blindness comes in. As I discussed earlier, in the field of climate change non-specialists in the field are continually lectured about their lack of applicable academic credentials. However, as in the case above, these same individuals do not hesitate to step outside their areas of expertise to lecture us in fields in which they would appear to lack any applicable expertise. 

In the last several years, a new term has entered the vernacular “Mansplaining.” Mansplaining has been defined as “explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman” (ref). Based on what I have observed in the field of climate change science I would like to propose a variation on this term: “Mannsplaining.” Mannsplaining can be used to describe situations where climate scientists, who brook no outside comment on their field, subsequently feel free to lecture other experts without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer about the field under discussion.

Read the full response here.

Often Sensible, But with Large Doses of Utopian

A Response from Dan Turello, literary critic and cultural historian

There is a fair amount the "Manifesto" gets right, so I'm going to mention at least one of these facets, before pointing to three of its major shortcomings. First and foremost, and this is where it is refreshing, the "Ecomodernist Manifesto" is a declaration of war on all forms of nostalgia. The past should not be the standard of reference, say the authors. In the past, our lives were shorter and our quality of life lower. No one in their right mind should wish to return to a way of life in which disease was more prominent, nutrition less available, and leisure time more scarce. There is no going back, only forward, they argue, and future prospects for humanity and for the planet depend on our creativity in developing more advanced forms of technology. Right they are, and rest assured, this point of view will surely draw outcries from misty-eyed Heideggerians everywhere. Heidegger, a major influence on a swath of the present day environmental movement, had famously claimed that modern technology was "challenging" to the earth, whereas more primitive forms of machinery had been in greater harmony with the flows of nature. The Heideggerian point of view, which remains prominent, deserves to be challenged.

However, at least three major points in the document deserve serious critique. The first is a certain level of ethical sloppiness. "Climate change and other global ecological challenges," claim the authors, "are not the most immediate concerns for the majority of the world's people. Nor should they be." Really? This statement deserves more nuance than currently granted to it. There is a tremendous difference between claiming to understand why some of the "world's people" might rather have access to consistent energy than be concerned about climate change, versus the normative pronouncement, "nor should they be." The latter is a leap to conclusions. Perhaps they should, and we should too, given that continuing reliance on fossil fuels will significantly alter life on earth as we know it. At the very least there is a significant counterbalance missing here, one which would create a tension between the "should" of granting energy resources to those who need them versus the "should" of ensuring the stability of the ecosystem for the generations to come.

The second shortcoming is a blurring of narrative categories. The document, at points, verges into science-fiction. "Looking forward," it claims, "modern energy may allow the capture of carbon from the atmosphere to reduce the accumulated carbon that drives global warning." Even with the perfunctory "may," the statement is misleading. Geo-engineering solutions are far from being a get-out-of-jail-free card. Presenting them as realistic possibility is surely no grounds on the basis of which to make policy now.

The third major flaw of the "Manifesto" is a lack of regard for historical nuance. Of course, as a genre (think Communist, Futurist, etc.) manifestos typically seek to up-end the status-quo. The ecomodernist authors are no exception. In their drive to move ahead, they mention history in only the most casual of ways, in the context of what they describe as its general trajectory. What is missing is a profound sense of irony, along with a deeper understanding of costs.

It's not immediately clear to me why the authors chose the name "ecomodernist." The "modernist" part of the title, however, is apt, because modernist thinkers, unlike the relentless uncertainty of post-modern philosophers, were still committed to notions of improvement and progress. What is lacking in the "Ecomodernist Manifesto" is a comprehensive acknowledgement of the deep contradictions of Modernity, and the unintended consequences of technological developments. Unintended consequences are mentioned, but only in passing. References to myth are nowhere to be found, and this too should be seen as a serious omission. From the Prometheus of Greek mythology to the Tower of Babel of Biblical fame, our Western heritage is rich with admonitions about the dangers of unchecked technological optimism. Allowing for a degree of humility is not a concession to the politics of nostalgia the manifesto wishes to disavow. Rather, it would be a move inspired by caution, away from the quasi-Utopian tone of the document –– a concession to the tragic and unpredictable facets of life that give daily texture to our existence, no matter the technology we develop.

Read the full response here.