Intro to Climate and Sustainability

Ecomodernism and its critics

Misha Velthuis

m.velthuis@uva.nl

Thu 10 Oct 2024

Last week

Different ideas fit differently with different interests

Justification and performativity

Whenever someone claims "This is simply how the world works", be wary:

What world does it justify as inevitable?

What world does it create?

Who benefits from the idea that …

… people are ultimately self-interested *ssholes?

… ethical behaviour is self-defeating?

… it does not matter that much if the allocation is just, as long as the allocation happens?

… the only choice we have is full collectivization or full privatization

Today: ecomodernism and its critics

Ecomodernism and its critics

The case for ecomodernism

The case against ecomodernism

The case for ecomodernism

Decoupling

Absolute decoupling

The P of IPAT

Uncontroversial: population will stop growing

Demographic transition

4-Crude birth rate and crude death rate.png

1-Total population.png

In the long run population decline?

The A and the T of IPAT

Controversial: absolute decoupling

The environmental kuznets curve

Growth is solution: we can't stop now

Absolute decoupling for CO2

The declining T

Works for deforestation

Forest transition model

From https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation (classical "Environmental Kuznets curve"-story):

Why do countries lose and then regain forests?

Many countries have followed this classic U-shaped pattern. What explains this?

There are two reasons that we cut down forests:

Forest resources: we want the resources that they provide — the wood for fuel, building materials, or paper;

Land: We want to use the land they occupy for something else, such as farmland to grow crops, pasture to raise livestock or land to build roads and cities.

Our demand for both of these initially increases as populations grow and poor people get richer. We need more fuelwood to cook, more houses to live in, and, importantly, more food to eat.

But, as countries continue to get richer, this demand slows. The rate of population growth tends to slow down. Instead of using wood for fuel, we switch to fossil fuels, or hopefully, more renewables and nuclear energy. Our crop yields improve, so we need less land for agriculture.

This demand for resources and land is not always driven by domestic markets. As I mentioned earlier, 14% of deforestation today is driven by consumers in rich countries.

The Forest Transition, therefore, tends to follow a ‘development’ pathway. As a country achieves economic growth, it moves through each of the four stages. This explains the historical trends we see in countries across the world today. Rich countries — such as the USA, France, and the United Kingdom — have had a long history of deforestation but have now passed the transition point. Most deforestation today occurs in low-to-middle-income countries.

Forest transition model

Works for wild life?

Ecomodernist: optimism

But conditional optimism

Where to live:

urban areas

How to produce food

intensive agriculture

How to generate energy

high EROI, such as nuclear

Where not to live

sub-urban, rural areas

How not to produce food

low yielding farming

How not to generate energy

low EROI sources

Say no to Rousseau and Thoreau

Make the anthropocene great again

Case against ecomodernism

It's not feasible.

It's not desirable.

There are alternatives.

Not feasible #1: Jevons paradox

Not feasible #2: trade

“Domestic material use in some developed OECD economies has reached a plateau, but this is because of globalization and trade. If we take into account imported goods, then the material requirements of products and services consumed in OECD countries have grown hand in hand with GDP, with no decoupling”

(Kallis et al., 2018)

Yes, absolute decoupling in CO2…

But it is not enough…

The decoupling rates achieved in high-income countries are inadequate for meeting the climate and equity commitments of the Paris Agreement and cannot legitimately be considered green. If green is to be consistent with the Paris Agreement, then high-income countries have not achieved green growth, and are very unlikely to be able to achieve it in the future. To achieve Paris-compliant emission reductions, high-income countries will need to pursue post-growth demand-reduction strategies, reorienting the economy towards sufficiency, equity, and human wellbeing, while also accelerating technological change and efficiency improvements.

Vogel, J., & Hickel, J. (2023). Is green growth happening? An empirical analysis of achieved versus Paris-compliant CO2–GDP decoupling in high-income countries. The Lancet Planetary Health, 7(9), e759-e769.

It's not enough

…Globally annual CO2 emissions are still rising

… and also, the problem is not just CO2

“At the global level, GDP and material use have increased approximately 1:1”

(Kallis, 2018, p. 297).

“Just as increases in labor productivity lead to growth and new jobs, not to less employment, increases in resource productivity increase output and resource use”

(Kallis et al., 2018, p. 296)

It's capitalism stupid

Capitalism, in its essence, requires growth.

To prevent climate catastrophe, we cannot keep growing.

The problem is capitalism.

Case against ecomodernism

It's not feasible.

It's not desirable.

There are alternatives.

Not desirable: social/political

What exactly are we sustaining? What do we want to conserve?

From this book.

Power, inequality

The current system is highly unequal.
The current system will escalate this even further.
More dependence on capital, more dependence on technocratic elite will increase this inequality.
The more you depend on centralized infrastructure, controlled, understood and operated by a minority, the more democracy is turned into a technocracy.

'Al Gore called climate change "an inconvenient truth", which he defined as an inescapable fact that we would prefer to ignore. Yet the truth about climate change is inconvenient only if we are satisfied with the status quo except for the small matter of warming temperatures. If however, we see the need for transformation quite apart from those warming temperatures, then the fact that our current road is headed toward a cliff is, in an odd way, convenient - because it tells us that we had better start making that sweeping turn, and fast.'

Klein, N. (2015). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. Simon and Schuster.

Not desirable: philosophical/political

The modern divide

Nature

Human