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.