In 2004, two writers sat down to craft an essay. A manifesto of sorts. After honing in on an argument
and spilling it on the page they released their brainchild into the world. What followed was a
firestorm of conversation and debate. Their words reached the front page of the New York Times,
The Economist and Salon, sparking a conversation around the direction of climate action. The essay,
provocatively titled The Death of Environmentalism, outlined
the beginnings of a burgeoning line of thought among some environmentalists. One that proposed
technological innovation and hyper-urbanization as the most effective solution to curbing greenhouse
gas emissions. Since 2004, this ideology has seeped into mainstream climate action and has
crystallized under the term “eco-modernism.” Today we’re going to dive deep into the arguments of
eco-modernism and reveal why the solutions it proposes are not adequate for crises we face,
and might actually lock in dangerous industrial emissions and extraction for decades to come.
What is Eco-Modernism? Right before they wrote Death of
Environmentalism, authors Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger founded the Breakthrough Institute
in 2003. A California-based think tank that has driven eco-modernism to prominence. Although
essays forming the outlines of the eco-modernist philosophy can be found as early as the 1990s,
it wasn’t until 2015 that thought leaders from the Breakthrough Institute and other think tanks
clearly laid out the contours of their ideology in the Ecomodernist Manifesto. In this piece,
the authors assert that eco-modernism can remedy the climate crisis through the advancement of
technologies that divorce our lifestyles from emissions and any environmental impact while
still maintaining economic growth. This idea has come to be known as decoupling. Decoupling
not only in terms of using technologies like wind, solar, and nuclear to separate
emissions output from economic growth, but also decoupling in terms of hyper-urbanization,
megacities, and high-tech farming that create dense populations so that much of the earth
can turn back to so-called pristine wilderness. Eco-modernists valorize the supposed progress
of modernization. In their manifesto, the authors point to rises in life expectancy, reforestation
rates in New England, and global food security, as indicators that the march of progress and
technology smoothly and immaculately trend towards the better. In the eyes of the eco-modernists,
the solution to emissions is technological innovation built on free markets. Which,
if we look at the history of modernization theory, has always been neoliberal capitalism’s answer
to the threat of Communism. As we’ll soon see, however, eco-modernism is not only unfeasible,
but also its philosophy is built on ahistorical and shaky foundations that reveal a reluctance
to face the reality of a highly unequal and environmentally devastated world under capitalism.
The Myth of Modernization In the eyes of eco-modernists and modernization
theory in general, the history of progress is a steady path, a rising tide of technology
and increased well-being that lifts all ships. In their manifesto, the eco-modernist authors write
that “humanity has flourished over the past two centuries.” Citing that “average life expectancy
has increased from 30 to 70 years,” civil liberties have expanded globally, and even women’s
liberation has taken root in many countries. According to modernists, these advancements
didn’t arise from revolutionary pressure from below, or mass movements demanding more, but
instead from the introduction of new technologies that alleviated individuals from their hardships.
It’s a rose-tinted, ahistorical vision that edits out the reality of abrupt revolutionary
ruptures in history that actually caused change, and replaces them with an idea that the slow march
of technology over the last two centuries has brought peace and prosperity to all. The unspoken
subtext of this theory is that free market capitalism enables these advancements to flourish.
But all is not as rosy as eco-modernism would like us to believe. As writer and farmer Chris Smaje
notes in a critique of eco-modernism, “two hundred years ago the global human population was around a
billion; today, it’s seven billion and counting, but a billion are clinically undernourished – as
many as existed two hundred years previously. Is that flourishing?” He then goes on to point
out that inequality is rarely mentioned in an eco-modernist world. Life expectancy
may have risen, but if you dig into the data most of that rise is due to a decrease in child
and infant mortality. In addition there are still vast differences in life expectancies
even within the imperial core. In the US, the average life-expectancy of one of the richest
neighborhoods in Boston, Back Bay, is 91.9 years old, while four miles away in Roxbury,
a predominantly poor neighborhood, life expectancy is 58.9 years old. Modernization
has lifted some ships and left others to drown, because modernization, with its reliance on
technological innovation and the relentless churn of capitalism, needs to push on the throats of the
many in order for the few to enjoy the fruits of so-called progress. Our shirts are cheap because
of certain technological advancements, yes, but they are also cheap because of flagrant worker
and environmental exploitation in countries in the periphery. From life-threatening mining practices
that pull raw materials out of the ground for assembly line machines to inhumane work conditions
in sweatshops all the way back to the genesis of settler colonialism and chattel slavery,
the road to progress is far from pristine. It’s built on a foundation of inequality and unequal
exchange. Modernization is not the force for good that eco-modernists want to believe it is,
yet on this shaky foundation they argue for the environmentally dubious idea of decoupling that
could mean locking in catastrophic climate change for decades if we are not careful.
The Myth of Decoupling While eco-modernists praise the technological
advancements of the last two centuries as saviors from the dark ages of primitivism,
they also recognize the toll that mechanization, fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers and other
inventions have had on the environment. The solution for an eco-modernist, however,
is not to recognize the destructive underside of the march of technologies, consumption,
capitalism or intensification, but instead do more of the same but better. This is a fundamental
tenet of ecomodernist thought. The climate crisis can be solved with “modern technologies,
[that use] natural ecosystem flows and services more efficiently, offer[ing] a real chance of
reducing the totality of human impacts on the biosphere.” In short, ecomodernist solutions rely
heavily on using technology to separate humanity from any impact they might have on the natural
world. But there are a number of problems with decoupling. Most importantly, it doesn’t work.
In the Ecomodernist Manifesto the authors point towards the slow decarbonization of rich nations
over the “last three centuries” as an indicator that separating emissions from economic growth is
possible. Unfortunately the decarbonization they point to is merely a trick of the numbers. A 2012
paper looked at the emissions associated with both domestic and imported materials for 186 countries.
The authors found that while nations in the imperial core seemed to have decoupled their
GDP from domestic raw material consumption, when imported materials are included they observe “no
improvements in resource productivity at all.” None at all. This means that the
decarbonization that ecomodernists point to is just another product of unequal exchange.
The imperial core are dumping their ecological burden on the periphery in the form of factories
and extraction. In addition, the technologies that ecomodernists propose as tools to achieve
decoupling have still yet to be tested in the real world. The largest direct air capture plant,
for example, only sucks up the equivalent of 790 passenger cars worth of CO2 every year,
while next-generation nuclear power is still just an idea yet to be tested. But ecomodernism also
champions another form of decoupling. One that seeks to separate humanity from nature itself.
This is exemplified in their ideas for megacities and agricultural intensification. According to
ecomodernists both the mechanization of farming and creating dense cities means less impact on
the land while still maintaining similar food production and quality of life. But the reality
is that industrialized farming uses more land per yield than small-scale agriculture, which has the
added bonus of connecting people with the land so that they actually care about it. Even vertical
farming requires extensive electricity to power, which is unfeasible in an era when we need to be
sharply decreasing demand. As for megacities, the dream is that cities are more efficient,
which in some respects they are, but once they grow too large their efficiency drops. According
to one analysis of material flows in megacities, “the 7% of the world’s population living in
[megacities] consumes 9% of its electricity and 10% of its petrol and produces nearly 13% of
the world’s waste.” In short, decoupling from the land will not only not work, but it will
divorce us from a world that grounds us, makes us happy, and gives us life. Ultimately, ecomodernism
presents technological pipedreams wrapped in myths of decoupling and modernization. If we are serious
about climate change, if we are serious about action, eco-modernism is not the path forward.
Why does this matter? Ecomodernist thought is a spectre
that pervades both left and right climate action. If left unchecked, an ecomodernist climate plan
could mean the locking in of capitalist inequality and imperialist agendas under the guise of
technological progress. Holding out for untested technologies like direct carbon capture and
thorium reactors instead of focusing on degrowth in sectors like the military and fossil fuels,
could mean that 40 years down the road we will be in an even worse position than we
are right now. Eco-modernism, now championed by ultra-rich billionaires like Elon Musk
and Bill Gates, is an insidious response to climate change that greenwashes capitalism
and imperialism. To truly address the climate crisis we can’t just do more of
the same as eco-modernism suggests. We must break abruptly from our current systems of
imperialist extraction and fossil fuel-driven capitalist destruction, and embrace new
ecological ways of living that champion climate reparations for Global South, connection to
and stewardship of the natural world, and the liberation of all people and planet.
If you want to learn a bit more how Elon Musk perpetuates the views of ecomodernism,
I made a section all about his ecomodernist endeavors but it didn’t make the final cut
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