The Next Generation of Environmentalists

A Response from Evan Twarog, a senior at Keene High School, New Hampshire

More than anything else, thank you for doing truly great work. I’ve had a chance to follow the work that the Breakthrough Institute has done in regards to ecomodernism, and I think that ecomodernism strikes a chord with many people of my generation. My generation is more aware of the injustices of our world than any generation before us, as made apparent by social protests and campaigns that we’ve seen in the past several years. We want to make a difference. We want to end poverty. We want to end climate change. We want to ensure that every person on the planet has opportunities to create the future of their dreams. Perhaps because of this, ecomodernism represents a line of thinking that embraces all of these components. The quote from the manifesto explaining that “We value the liberal principles of democracy, tolerance, and pluralism in themselves, even as we affirm them as keys to achieving a great Anthropocene” unites thinkers across the political spectrum. Environmentalism doesn’t have to be a policy only for liberals. Economic growth doesn’t have to be a policy only for conservatives. By uniting thinkers, ecomodernism will bring about the change that my generation wants to see.

You can find more of Evan's writings at his website.

A Manifesto for Compulsory Programs?

A Response from Kenneth P. Green, Senior Director, Natural Resource Studies, the Fraser Institute

This is an interesting Manifesto, and I agree with a great deal of it, particularly the intensification idea as well as the idea of divorcing the human economy/ecology from the planetary ecology. But then, I have chosen to live as close to an urban core as I can afford for about 20 years now, and gave up car ownership about 10 years ago. I now live about 1 mile south of an urban core: I walk to local markets, shops, and restaurants, and I take public transit to work, and use a car-share service (car2go) and taxis when I need to get around. For me, such a lifestyle is one of choice.

I do have concerns about the "how" of all this: I could easily see people invoking the Manifesto as justification for a whole raft of compulsory programs that I'd oppose. Smart growth advocates in particular will likely use the Manifesto to push for more growth boundaries, and more greenbelts, driving up the costs of living in exactly the way the Manifesto envisions. The same is likely to be true for transit advocates, who will invoke the Manifesto for ever-more restrictions on autonomous transportation, just as we're on the cusp of some really revolutionary transportation options in the sharing economy that might let people lead deep-urban lives while retaining their personal-transport autonomy.

It's one thing to find ways to ease some of the obstacles to having more and more cities grow tall and dense rather than low and suburban, and another thing to impose those preferences on people who might not choose (or be able to afford) such a lifestyle.

I'd like to see some kind of amendment to the Manifesto that makes it explicit that this is not a call for more central planning of cities, more central planning of economic activity, and more compulsory programs to force people to densify more quickly than they are simply through choice and demographic shifts.

An Ecomodernist Manifesto – A Turning Point in the Global Dialogue

A Response from Mark Uhran, NASA International Space Station Director (retired)

This new "Ecomodernist Manifesto" offers the potential to achieve a turning point in the global dialogue on the tension between human growth and environmental preservation. For the first time, a mature and reasoned perspective offers a truly sustainable pathway that can achieve both growth and preservation without resorting to impractical solutions and unfounded claims. Both human economic growth, the key to eradicating poverty and hunger, and environmental protection can, and indeed must, go forward together. The first cannot be constrained, because it originates in the most fundamental of human needs –– survival without suffering, while the latter will forever remain essential to continued human existence.

The manifesto’s declaration that, “Absent profound technological change there is no credible path to meaningful climate mitigation” is a clarion call capable of converging global efforts to achieve the needed change. The recognition that solar photovoltaic, advanced uranium fission, and future hydrogen fusion technologies are all within the grasp of reality should reside at the nexus of the energy-climate debate. And, this debate may well be the defining issue of the 21st century.

Thank you to the authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto for this critical initiative. These technologies are all achievable within our generation, but our political leaders must choose to pursue them with steadfast and encourage each technology to thrive. In fact, nations representing over the half of the world population are already partnered cooperatively to demonstrate clean, safe, carbon-free, and virtually unlimited hydrogen fusion as a future energy source.

Why Ecomodernists Should Embrace Wind Power

A Response from Jesse Jenkins and Robert Wilson, both of whom are researchers and contribute to The Energy Collective. 

"Indeed, wind energy must play a key role in fighting climate change. There is little choice.

In many parts of the world, wind farms are now cost-competitive with or cheaper than nuclear power plants. They are also increasingly competitive with fossil fuels.

Rejecting wind farms will almost certainly increase the costs of reducing carbon emissions. This is already happening in Britain and New England, where we each live, and where rejection of wind farms is resulting in the expansion of more expensive forms of low carbon energy.

Furthermore, unavoidable political realities must be recognized, especially by anyone who claims to be an ecopragmatist. All of Europe, most of the United States, as well as China, Brazil, and several other emerging powers have firmly embraced wind and other renewable energy sources.

At the same time, several nations have cooled to nuclear power, or outright banned it. Consider Germany. We fundamentally disagree with that nation’s decision to phase out nuclear power plants while building new coal power plants. This was an undeniable mistake. But this mistake will not be undone any time soon, and even if it is, there is no reason to expect Germany’s support for wind and solar energy to end with it.

Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, and it appears Sweden and France, have also effectively banned any future expansion of nuclear energy. New nuclear reactor construction in the United States has stalled and virtually the entirety of the existing American, Japanese, and European reactor fleets will have be retired over the next thirty years.

Nuclear power can and should play a central role in global decarbonization, but it is just as foolish to think nuclear alone (or nuclear and solar alone) will power the planet any time soon."

Read the full response here.

Meet Ecomodernism – The New Face of 21st Century Environmentalism

A Response from Steve Hayward, contributor at Powerline blog and Ronald Reagan Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Public Policy

"This is an environmentalism that is hopeful, confident, pro-human, and pro-technology.  It is more open-ended about the future, skeptical of Malthusian doomsday claims and attitudes, and scornful of the dogmatism that hobbles the “mainstream” environmental establishment today. It is also realistic about the energy needs of the developing world, and not buying the energy romanticism of the climate campaign that the world’s energy needs can be met with sunbeams, wishful thinking, and unicorn flop sweat.  (Hence the embrace of nuclear power.)

...

Having watching this effort unfold over the last few years, I can report first hand that the environmental establishment — the Sierra Club in particular, but also other organizations I can name — have reacted viscerally against the early expressions of ecomodernism, chiefly on account of their intellectual and organizational corruption."

Read the full response here.

“Ecomodernists” Envision Utopia — But What about War?

by John Horgan

For an in-class exercise, I like asking students: “What’s your utopia?” I tell them that utopias aren’t fashionable these days; “utopian” is generally employed in a derogatory sense, meaning naively optimistic. Some cynics, notably philosopher John Gray, insist that our utopian yearnings invariably lead to disaster. 

That conclusion is far too pessimistic. We humans, in spite of our flaws, have achieved real progress, which makes it realistic to hope for more. Whenever you imagine, however fuzzily, a better world, that’s your utopia. Swapping ideas about our utopias can help us find solutions to our problems.

And that brings me to “An Ecomodernist Manifesto,” just published on the website of the Breakthrough Institute by almost a score of self-described “scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens.” The authors include Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus and several other members of the Breakthrough Institute, a non-profit think tank that reconsiders traditional environmentalism. 

The manifesto picks up on the notion – floated by journalist Andrew Revkin and others – of a “good Anthropocene.” “Anthropocene” has become an increasingly popular descriptor of the modern era of massive human transformation of the biosphere. To many greens, “good Anthropocene” is an oxymoron.

Click here to read the full article.

Ecomodernism: A Call for More Technology to Address Climate Change

A Response from Rick McGahey, Director, Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management, Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, The New School for Public Engagement

"Agree or not, the manifesto will stir up debate among progressives devoted to stopping and reversing climate change. The explicit embrace of technological solutions to climate change and the endorsement of a higher global standard of living challenges environmentalists who believe reducing economic growth and fostering subsistence and rural modes of living must be part of saving the planet.

I agree with the ecomodernists that if we pose the battle that way, the climate and the planet will lose. A higher economic standard of living can be compatible with a greener planet. But the ecomodernists need to analyze power and exploitation to understand why we have the technologies and economic arrangements we do. The solution is not reducing economic growth, but the movement needs an analysis of economic and political power to understand why we have the technologies we do, and what it will take to transform them."

Click here to read the full response.

An Environmentalist Call to Look Past Sustainable Development

by Eduardo Porter

On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Joyashree Roy and Professor Barry Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., are set to issue what they are calling the “Ecomodernist Manifesto.”

The “ecomodernists” propose economic development as an indispensable precondition to preserving the environment. Achieving it requires dropping the goal of “sustainable development,” supposedly in harmonious interaction with nature, and replacing it with a strategy to shrink humanity’s footprint by using nature more intensively.

Click here to read the full article