A-Infos (en) UK, ACG: A Trojan Horse: Ecomodernism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Ecomodernism is an idea meant to subvert environmental movements that 
have profound criticisms of continuing growth and productivism, 
genetically modified organism (GMO) agriculture and nuclear power. It 
also sails under the colours of 'eco-pragmatism' and 
'post-environmentalism'. These views are now gaining more circulation as 
can be seen in the decision of the Green Party of Finland to reverse its 
opposition to nuclear power on 21st May 2022.
Ecomodernism emerged in April 2015 with the publishing of An 
Ecomodernist Manifesto with 18 signatories. These included Michael 
Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute, founded by 
them in 2007. Shellenberger has connections with the Nuclear Energy 
Institute (NEI) which self-describes as the policy organisation of the 
nuclear energy industry. Others associated with the Breakthrough 
Institute include Roger Pielke Jr. who derides any connection between 
extreme weather and climate change. Writing for Forbes magazine, 
Shellenberger claimed to be speaking for environmentalists when he 
declared: "On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to 
formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 
years. Climate change is happening. It's just not the end of the world. 
It's not even our most serious environmental problem." He is a 
persistent and consistent denier of climate change. 1

The funding of the Breakthrough Institute remains opaque. Others 
associated with the Breakthrough Institute include: the journalist Will 
Boisvert who wrote "How bad will climate change be? Not very", in an 
essay entitled The Conquest of Climate, Julie Kelly, married to a 
lobbyist for the agribusiness ADM, and described by the French daily 
newspaper Le Monde as a propagandist for Monsanto, and Tamar Haspel, an 
enthusiast of GMO agriculture with close links to Ketchum PR, the public 
relations firm for the agrichemical industry and the Russian oil giant 
Gazprom. She has defended use of the pesticide glyphosate after it was 
condemned by IARC, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency, as a 
likely cause of cancer in humans.

Recently, Damien Gayle, environment correspondent for the Guardian, 
wrote favourably on ecomodernism, saying that "Ecomodernism may not, 
yet, be the most popular idea among those who are campaigning for a 
solution to planetary crises created by humanity. But it increasingly 
looks as though it may be the one we will get." As already mentioned the 
Finnish Greens reversed their opposition to nuclear energy, thanks to 
the efforts of ecomodernists like Tea Törmänen. She and others are in 
the group Finnish Greens for Science and Technology, which has long 
argued for the use of nuclear power, and she is also chair of Finland's 
Ecomodernist Society. The Finnish Greens are now committed to extending 
the life of current nuclear reactors as well as the addition of new 
nuclear power plants, which they call "sustainable energy". In addition, 
the Greens' party council agreed to reversing its opposition to GMO crops.

RePlanet

Törmänen recently met up in London with other ecomodernists in the group 
RePlanet, of which she is the International Coordinator. This 
organisation as well as enthusiastically supporting nuclear power, is 
strongly in favour of GMO agriculture. George Monbiot, who originally 
took a highly critical stance against ecomodernism, introduced a video 
by RePlanet which called for animal products to be replaced by fake meat 
produced in genetically modified microbial soup.

In Britain, Replanet is headed up by Joel Scott-Halkes and Emma Smart, 
who have backgrounds in Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion and 
Insulate Britain. Alongside them is Mark Lynas, who allegedly reversed 
his original opposition to GMO crops (which some have questioned) and is 
one of the co-signatories of An Ecomodernist Manifesto. In a letter 
signed by GMO experts and campaigners, Lynas's involvement in anti-GMO 
activity was questioned: "These claims of Mark Lynas's importance in GM 
campaigns are not true. Many of those who were involved substantially in 
the environment movement or GM campaigns during the 1980s, 1990s and 
2000s, both before and after Lynas's engagement in some anti-GM activism 
including actions to remove GM crops, have confirmed this. They do not 
recognise Lynas's contribution as being significant in the ways it is 
being represented and want to put the record straight on this point of 
factual accuracy so that there is no further misunderstanding."2 Lynas 
writes for the Cornell Alliance for Science, a group that advocates for 
GMO and pesticides. Lynas has defended the agrochemical giant Monsanto, 
describing it as a victim of a witch hunt.

RePlanet reveals its adherence to the preservation of capitalism with 
their advocacy of development and belief in "the power of the democratic 
state to take control of technologies, to develop technologies." George 
Monbiot, who seems to have become a useful idiot to front Replanet, 
originally criticised the ecomodernists for their opposition to organic 
farming and "would wish away almost the entire rural population of the 
developing world", and quoted the Ecomodernist Manifesto which stated 
"roughly half the US population worked the land in 1880. Today, less 
than 2 percent does."

The ecomodernists are opposed to small scale farming which they regard 
as unproductive. Yet Amartya Sen in her study of agriculture in 1962 
revealed that small scale farms have a much higher yield than large 
farms. The ecomodernists believe that "a growing manufacturing base has 
long been a crucial way to integrate a large, low skilled population 
into the formal economy, and increase labour productivity. To grow more 
food on less land, farming becomes mechanised, relieving agricultural 
workers of a lifetime of hard physical labour." In fact, the uprooting 
of rural populations has resulted in many living a precarious and 
marginal existence based around informal economies.

Monbiot is not the only pundit to join the rush to climb on the 
ecomodernist bandwagon. We also have James Hansen, the NASA climate 
scientist, and Eric Holthaus, the meteorologist and climate journalist, 
as new champions of the use of nuclear power.

Support for Nuclear Power

As Dr Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace has pointed out, what is 
needed is clean and alternative sources of energy, quick and cheap to 
deploy and that "Nuclear is the opposite...The new plant at Hinkley C is 
over a decade behind schedule and billions over budget. The next one in 
line, at Sizewell C, may not even start generating energy until today's 
newborns turn teenagers. Crucially, we don't need new nuclear. Solar and 
wind technologies are a much cheaper and quicker way to cut carbon 
emissions, and studies show we can keep the lights on with a wholly 
renewable energy system. All we need is the political will to make it 
happen." The French power company which owns Hinkley has agreed to sell 
the electricity produced there at £92.50 per megawatt. Meanwhile, 
alternative energies like wind and solar are becoming more efficient and 
are cheaper.

The most antiquated nuclear power stations are in the UK. It would cost 
£100 billion of investment to upgrade them. The grid network system is 
as antiquated and nuclear power plants and coal power plants are being 
decommissioned and shut down. The ecomodernists, rather than arguing for 
energy efficiency schemes to be realised mainly through a massive 
insulation scheme, adhere to the idea of nuclear power, which is archaic 
and dangerous, as we can see from the examples of Chernobyl and 
Fukushima. Nuclear power requires a centralised power grid and experts 
to manage them. They require a round the clock security regime, and 
above all a centralised maximum-security state. This is to say nothing 
of the problems of disposing of nuclear waste which has a life span of 
at least 10,000 years. Do we want a world full of nuclear power stations 
which is a world of centralised power?

Decoupling People from Nature

One of the obsessions of the ecomodernists is the decoupling of humanity 
from nature via substitution and intensification. That means in the case 
of substitution, moving to fully synthetic production. In the case of 
intensification it means denser human settlement and greater 
agricultural yields. Environmentalists when they talk about decoupling 
from nature mean that material living standards can be increased whilst 
environmental impact is lowered at the same time. For the ecomodernists 
however it means an actual physical decoupling from nature. Such a 
divorce, in their eyes, would save nature. This takes no account of the 
great mental and physical benefits of being in nature as was illustrated 
by the recent pandemic and lockdown.

The Ecomodernist Manifesto envisages an increase in production which 
will benefit all the world's populations, so that consumption is equal 
throughout the world, both in the North and South, before it peaks and 
falls. But can the life systems of Earth take such a change before such 
a transition is reached? It seems very doubtful.

Humans should be decoupled from nature via a rapid urbanisation, 
according to the Ecomodernist Manifesto. They weep crocodile tears over 
this saying: "We write this document out of deep love and emotional 
connection to the natural world. By appreciating, exploring, seeking to 
understand, and cultivating nature, many people get outside themselves. 
They connect with their deep evolutionary history. Even when people 
never experience these wild natures directly, they affirm their 
existence as important for their psychological and spiritual well-being. 
Humans will always materially depend on nature to some degree." So the 
ecomodernists, whilst mourning for people having to break from nature, 
insist we are impelled to do so for the sake of modernisation and 
progress. Nature must be saved by not relating to it.

So ecomodernists deny the fact that humans are inextricably linked with 
the web of life, with nature itself of which they are a part.

Another obsession of the ecomodernists is with the very concepts of 
modernisation and modernity. For them, modernisation means "The 
long-term evolution of social, economic, political, and technological 
arrangements in human societies toward vastly improved material 
well-being, public health, resource productivity, economic integration, 
shared infrastructure, and personal freedom." However, the development 
of capitalism indicates that in the real world this is not the case, 
with immiseration, the widening of the gap between rich and poor, the 
increasing authoritarianism and development of surveillance societies 
and increasing environmental devastation. Modernisation has increased 
the gaps between rich and poor, so that billions are disenfranchised.

Capitalism and class society is not even remarked upon by the so-called 
ecomodernists. As Chris Smaje noted in an essay, "A word you won't find 
in the Ecomodernist Manifesto is inequality. So there is no mention here 
of the vast literatures on the changing and varied economic fortunes of 
the many civilisations that have come and gone, or the changing and 
varied ideas they've had about themselves. There is no sense that 
processes of modernisation cause any poverty. The ecomodernist solution 
to poverty is simply more modernisation. And you then begin to 
understand why the improvement in material wellbeing needs to be 'vast'. 
Every year, for example, US citizens each eat 100 kg of meat on average, 
whereas the rest of the world makes do with 31 kg. Since ecomodernism 
lacks any critique of consumption, instead choosing to equate increased 
consumption with increased wellbeing, its only feasible solution to this 
maldistribution of meat must be to raise up global meat consumption. If 
global levels equated with US levels, we would need to conjure something 
like another half billion tonnes of meat from global agriculture 
annually, and that probably would require the impressive breakthroughs 
in technology and resource use efficiency that the ecomodernists crave."

There is a 'left' version of ecomodernism which can be found in the 
writings of people like Matt Huber, author of Climate Change as Class 
War. He attacks the idea of limits and of degrowth as "almost as austere 
as Pol Pot's". He bases his ideas on 19th century ideas of progress as 
promoted by Engels and Marx. It can also be found in the ideas of the 
group around Novara Media, whose concept of Fully Automated Luxury 
Communism owes much to the ideas of ecomodernism. It can also be found 
in writers associated with the US left magazine Jacobin, for example 
with Christian Parenti, who calls for increased use of energy, and with 
Angela Nagle, who sees the environmental concern with limits as "green 
austerity".

There is little that is ecological in ecomodernism. Technology that has 
emerged in the present system isn't neutral, as the ecomodernists 
believe. Andreas Malm, in How to Blow Up a Pipeline, showed that 
capitalism was built on coal and oil, and is intimately connected with 
them, as is the use of nuclear power. Technology is not just a tool, it 
is inextricably linked to the systems of hierarchy and exploitation 
developed under capitalism. Sticking on 'eco' in front of 'modernism' 
does not change that.

As Aaron Vansintjan notes in his article Where's the 'eco' in 
ecomodernism?: "Being an ecologist today certainly doesn't mean refusing 
to improve humanity's lot, but it also means having a real conversation 
about the limits we face. And if an alternative system is to be at all 
ecological, it would mean democratically weighing the costs and benefits 
of different technologies: which ones we want, and which ones we don't. 
That's not anti-modern, that's a basic requirement for a better world."

Chris Smaje's trenchant criticisms of ecomodernism brought angry replies 
from Michael Shellenberger and others. In one of his ripostes Smaje wrote:

"I tweeted to Mike that I see ecomodernism as neoliberalism with a green 
veneer. No doubt there are different shades of opinion within the 
movement, but I've not yet seen anything to persuade me otherwise. 
Ecomodernists offer no solutions to contemporary problems other than 
technical innovation and further integration into private markets which 
are structured systematically by centralized state power in favour of 
the wealthy, in the vain if undoubtedly often sincere belief that this 
will somehow help alleviate global poverty. They profess to love 
humanity, and perhaps they do, but the love seems to curdle towards 
those who don't fit with its narratives of economic, technological and 
urban progress. And, more than humanity, what they seem to love most of 
all is certain favoured technologies, such as nuclear power."

Further reading:

Damien Gayle. A long overdue moment? The UK Greens pushing for the 
nuclear option: 
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/a-long-overdue-moment-the-uk-greens-pushing-for-the-nuclear-option

Matt Huber. Mish-mash ecologism: 
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/mish-mash-ecologism

Timothée Parrique. A response to Matt Huber: facts and logic in support 
of degrowth: 
https://timotheeparrique.com/a-response-to-matt-huber-facts-and-logic-in-support-of-degrowth/

Chris Smaje. Dark Thoughts on Ecomodernism: 
https://dark-mountain.net/dark-thoughts-on-ecomodernism-2/

Chris Smaje. Ecomodernism. A response to critics: 
https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/p=854

Aaron Vantsintjan. Where's the 'eco' in ecomodernism?: 
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/04/16/wheres-the-eco-in-ecomodernism/
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1 see here for a detailed record of Shellenberger's statements: 
https//www.desmog.com/michael-shellenberger/.

2 
https://www.gmwatch.org/en/background-briefing-mark-lynas-and-the-gm-movement-in-the-uk

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/
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