An Ecomodernist Manifesto
ecomodernism.org
ecomodernism.org
The fundamental reason why economic growth can continue at a fixed or even shrinking environmental footprint is that economic growth and environmental footprint measure different things. The former measures the creation of economic value while the latter measures the use of land and raw materials necessary to create that value.
More and more economic value of what we consume derives not from land and raw materials but from human inputs like design, creativity, engineering and services. This means that a smaller amount of raw materials is necessary to produce one dollar of GDP than it used to.
At the same time, more and more of the raw materials are reused via down-, re- or even up-cycling. In theory, a very sophisticated economy of a demographically stable society could thrive and grow entirely on a closed cycle of raw materials and fixed amount of land. Even if we don't get there we could still reduce our impact below environment's capacity for self-renewal.
I think we must urgently stop the increase and soon begin shrinking our environmental footprint. The realization that there is no fundamental contradiction between continued economic growth (and all its perks including poverty reduction, scientific progress and continued human development) and the protection of our planet should highlight that this ambition is achievable.
Very much this. It isn't, however, a new insight to economics. That the limits to growth argument is a fallacy based on conflating increased value with increased resource use is standard economics but misunderstood by almost everyone else, hence the trend for physicists to write blog posts calling down derp on econ types. This is explored by Tim Harford in a piece on Freakonomics [0].
I would highly recommend Harford's book The Undercover Economist to anyone with even a passing interest in the field. It's one of those humbling books which demonstrates that everything you thought you knew about a subject was basically wrong.
[0]http://freakonomics.com/2014/01/24/can-economic-growth-conti...
In developing countries, you're most likely to suffer a famine if you're a farmer. We can save the people, save the land, and grow the economy if we do this the right way. But it starts with acknowledging the fact that agriculture/ general "living off the land" as an individual is unsustainable with today's growth rates.
I find it relatively easy to imagine that there is some quantity of material that would allow a group of people to exist in an approximately steady state economy, with economic value being consumed roughly at the rate at which it is produced (i.e. zero growth). However, it is not clear to me that there is fixed quantity above which one can achieve continued (i.e. unbounded) economic growth. This seems to imply that it is possible to come up with infinitely many, increasingly useful, ways of using the same stuff.
Is it possible to achieve continued economic growth in an empty room?
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-gro...
Quite right.
As a side note, that's not the case with e-cigarettes, the health risks are largely unknown and there appears to be a fair amount of variation in the chemical composition of the different brands. Here's a level-headed article about some of the early studies into e-cigarette health risks:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/electronic-cigarettes-hel...
The ecological problem is a bit more complex that blind trust in technology and efficiency progress. Blind faiths, simplifications and master plans have added little (from ecomodernism to primitivism). The problems of democracy, discrimination and redistribution of wealth have a lot to say, but that's too tough for a cute little manifesto.
They speak of technology "applied with wisdom", "with proper management". So I take that, until now, we have just mismanaged technology and applied it in dullest ways. Or I guess they have a secret plan on how to manage technology correctly from now on. Or perhaps they will come to realize that technology has and will always have a good and bad side, and that most of its consequences (good and bad) are often unforeseeable, and as such, hard to steer. Let's not even think of WHO actually controls technology.
What's more, the "decoupling" of human well-being from human impact is a myth. The impact has just been transferred to third world countries where sure none of these ecomodernists live or probably ever visited. Lol when they take "New England" and "France" forests as examples. Any plans to bring up the 80% of undeveloped countries to the pace of the 20% with nice growing forests? None.
This is the typical manifesto which is absolutely nothing new, sounds super nice, but changes nothing, provides nothing, and feels about right in the hands of the rich and ruling elites because it absolutely avoids to question any status-quo whatsoever.
Not even close, but unless you live in mainland China you don't see the pollution.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...
1. Cannot rely on infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources.
2. A better balance between human life and the rest of life on the planet relies on allowing nature to regrow without competing with human development.
You don't need to have all the answers up front, the solution is going to evolve naturally once we agree on what why it's desirable to change and get the discussions going.
Despite frequent assertions starting in the 1970s of fundamental “limits to growth,” there is still remarkably little evidence that human population and economic expansion will outstrip the capacity to grow food or procure critical material resources in the foreseeable future.
We can have an economy based on abundance rather than scarcity, but that's not going to be achieved overnight, the priority for now is to slow down the damage.
To give an example, look at the problem of overfishing. Taking the attitude of the authors you could argue it's not causing us problems in the foreseeable future, but the longer we leave it the worse it gets, and our depletion of fish populations is directly linked to our consumption and growing our economy without addressing this problem is going to cause problems with decreasing the variety of life found in rivers, lakes, seas and oceans.
On a longer timescale this might not even be an issue if efficient technology is developed for interstellar travel and terraforming other planets.
As a side note, I'm all for space exploration, but I also appreciate why the prime directive from Star Trek is worth following.
In the economy of barter, we gave what we had for what we wanted. Money was invented because it allowed us to buy from those we had nothing to sell to, facilitating easier trades. If you consider an economy as an engine, money would be the lubricant, it helps the engine run more smoothly, and just like engine lubricant it only works when it flows.
Using the engine analogy again, what we should realise is that it's the engine that does the work and produces the goods, why do we need ever increasing amounts of lubricant for this engine? Two reasons, the lubricant gets hoarded, taking it out of use, and there's an ever increasing demand on the engine to produce more.
Breaking away from the engine analogy now, whilst some of the increased demands on growth come from increasing population size, the other reason for the increase is extra demands on material wealth. Whilst there are those in poverty that clearly would benefit from increased material wealth, is that universally true? I don't know about you, but I know I've felt a certain amount of emptiness from the whole process, it's rare that I'll be excited about a new item, and yet I'm working a good chunk of my time for items I barely want.
Perhaps material wealth only brings you happiness up to a point, and after that it's a case of diminishing returns. Perhaps you need to have grown up comfortably to see that, though clearly some people are happy with endlessly chasing material wealth so it doesn't appear to be a view held by everyone.
If so you need infinite growth.
I'm glad we're taking this attitude towards Mars at the moment, exploring but being careful not to bring Earth's lifeforms over to Mars to breed.
In any case, my question still stands, what do you/we hope to gain from infinite economic growth?
Sometimes the greatest harm is born out of the most sincere intentions. Anything founded on false, internally inconsistent premises will fail. Often, the longer it takes to fail, the more harm is done. Like it or not, humans cannot completely extricate themselves from "nature", unless we are talking packing up and migrating every last human off Earth to Mars. That's not happening; this won't work. Come to grips with that sooner, not later.
I think it is better to have more fuzzy edges and make ecology an intrinsic part of development that people will want to defends. For example a new development should surrounded by a buffer of woodland/wetlands/grassland that will be valued by residents.