Ecomodernism: Technology, Politics and The Climate Crisis

by Jonathan Symons

Is climate catastrophe inevitable? In a world of extreme inequality, rising nationalism and mounting carbon emissions, the future looks gloomy. Yet one group of environmentalists, the 'ecomodernists', are optimistic. They argue that technological innovation and universal human development hold the keys to an ecologically vibrant future. However, this perspective, which advocates fighting climate change with all available technologies - including nuclear power, synthetic biology and others not yet invented - is deeply controversial because it rejects the Green movement's calls for greater harmony with nature.

In this book, Jonathan Symons offers a qualified defence of the ecomodernist vision. Ecomodernism, he explains, is neither as radical or reactionary as its critics claim, but belongs in the social democratic tradition, promoting a third way between laissez-faire and anti-capitalism. Critiquing and extending ecomodernist ideas, Symons argues that states should defend against climate threats through transformative investments in technological innovation. A good Anthropocene is still possible - but only if we double down on science and humanism to push beyond the limits to growth.

Genres: Politics, Environment, Climate Change, Economics, Nonfiction

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 9, 2019

Reviews

[Laurent Franckx · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first time I have read a book because I have seen so many people speaking ill about its topic. If you would believe some comments on Twitter, ecomodernism is some combination of Darth Vader and Voldemort, and worse than outright climate denialism.
Well, this was a sobering read. In essence, Symons summarizes ecomodernism as a school of thought about global environmental problems that starts from the premise that, with current technologies, it will not be feasible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero, and that strong government lead research and development efforts will be needed to keep global warming within acceptable limits - hardly denialism, thus. One important difference between ecomodernism and other strands of environmentalist thought is the emphasis on technology rather than on behavioural change - which may explain the strong aversion to ecomodernism in some quarters.
Symons' book is an accessible and short introduction to ecomodernist thinking (even if I feel that some sections are more nitpicking about conceptual issues than substantial), and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in global environmental problems (if only to get rid of some prejudices on the topic).
Of course, it is not because I think the book is worthwhile reading that I agree with all points.
In particular, I think the economics hasn't been very well developed.
Economists working in the field of climate change will usually recommend (a) generalised carbon taxes (to incite the most cost efficient reduction in CO2 emissions that are possible with current technologies) (b) public support for RD to deal with market imperfections in the field of innovation (one point where they are mostly in line with ecomodernism).
However, Symons barely discusses economic instruments (to the extent he does, it is mostly to express skepticism).
More importantly, the chapter discussing innovation is not very concrete in terms of policy problems (but maybe that would exceed the scope of the book). There is some reference to the work of Mazzucato, but, as I have written before, it is not as if there are no issues with her view https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
There certainly is much more to say on innovation policy than what is in the book, and this is definitely a topic on which there is an extensive economic literature (full disclosure: I am myself the lead author of a rather old report for the European Commission that contains a chapter on promoting innovation in waste policy - even ten years ago, there was more to say in the topic than what you can find in the book).
Maybe an idea for future work?

[Judd Street · Rating 5 out of 5]

It takes talent to write a book that better distils and encapsulates someone else's view than they do. I don't mean this as a slight against ecomodernists, who have written a large amount of important, clear, and thoughtful material. But, most of this material is very narrowly focused: an analysis of the costing of nuclear reactors, or an investigation into rhetoric and ideology in environmental studies. In "Ecomodernism," Symons puts this material together into a clear, contextualized, and balanced overview of the field that makes the core debates more obvious to the reader. Indeed, I'd recommend it as a starting point - even over other books like "Break Through" - for someone seeking to better understand the big picture of ecomodernism as a movement and intellectual community.

Symons' core task is to map the contours of ecomodernism as an intellectual community and to position it vis a vis traditional environmentalism. In doing so, he both shores up parts of ecomodernist thought by clarifying places where others have misrepresented it, and offers challenges to places where ecomodernist ideals may have shifted over time or misrepresent the views of others (e.g., he quite clearly holds ecomodernists to account for being insufficiently aware and thoughtful in sweeping statements about how life has improved over the past decades, giving not nearly enough air-time or analysis to the way these improvements are inequitably spread). In other words, while he writes as an ecomodernist, the book is a contextualized description and incisive synthesis, rather than an impassioned or ideological defence.

Of course, I have to acknowledge my bias here as self-avowed ecomodernist. Coming from that vantage, I thought Symons did a really effective job in distilling some of the core beliefs and tenants (e.g., everyone, no matter where they were born, has a right to energy access and the ability to fulfil their dreams and ambitions; the state has a major role to play in guiding energy and conservation transitions, not just through free-market mechanisms). He also did a nice job of pointing out places where criticisms of ecomodernism end up becoming problematic, such as conservative and paternalistic kinds of views taken on by traditional environmentalists with respect to equitable energy access for those outside of the 'global north.'

I was left challenged/uncertain on one point. Towards the end of the book, Symons returns to his arguments that ecomodernism is, in essence, a social democratic project. I couldn't agree more, and think that ecomodernism is actually rooted in collectivism and egalitarian models much more so than its critics allege (and, at times, much more so than traditional environmental thought!). But, this seems to abut uneasily with his critique of traditional environmentalists for focusing too much on achieving agreement of values. If we see ecomodernism as, ultimately, a values-motivated project concerned with issues like access, equity, and socially collective approaches... how do we avoid falling in the same traps as old-school environmentalists? It's not to say there isn't a solution (in fact, I think pragmatism provides part of it, and wish Symons had returned to that initial debate here), but it's left sub-surface in the analysis.

In any event, I think this book will become my new recommendation for introducing ecomodernism to those who are curious. It does such a nice job of sketching out the contours of the field and community, while adopting an approach that focuses on clarifying arguments rather than blindly defending one side or another. Would highly recommend if you have any interest in how environmental thought is evolving and being challenged nowadays.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'd think a book title Ecomodernism would either be a straightforward position statement or a neutral academic summary but this is a strange hybrid of both, through the lens of Symons' personal predilections. It often takes a detached tone, summarizing what other more enthusiastically self-professed ecomodernists have staked out as the position associated with the word, then how other factions have responded to or characterized them, and how likely those positions are to be successful. It's also almost exclusively about climate change mitigation and adaptation. Most of the actual content on every front is familiar to me, nothing is really dug deep enough to be provocative. It's informed, nuanced, and distinct enough from what I usually see to be provocative, but it's still mostly position-taking.

Per Symons, eco-modernists disagree with degrowth Greens not because they're "techno-optimists" or (obv) corporate shills but because they're pessimists about current technology. They see claims that current renewable tech can provide a reasonable standard of living for the whole world, if only emissions are redistributed from the top to the masses, as wildly overstated. No mass redistributive movement, no matter how successfully it disempowers the rich West and how generously it pushes cash into renewable investment in the developing world, can give 10 billion people a global-middle-class lifestyle without increasing emissions, given current technology. We need better technology, or we're not going to make it. And while solar and nuclear tech do exist to make this happen, they're not sufficient or plausible on their own. We need a half dozen other technologies that have been developing much more slowly--carbon capture, storage, grid integration, etc. And the fact that those haven't developed on their own means the market is failing to provide them. We need explicit government innovation policy to get them off the ground.

That's all more or less where I'm at myself, so I have no objection to what Symons is saying. It's fun and satisfying to see him dissecting and rejecting positions taken by people I used to follow--Naomi Klein, EF Schumacher, degrowth socialists, etc--and now find unsatisfying for similar reasons. His discussion of the relationship between Greens and eco-modernists as environmentalists is welcome but, because the book is so focused on climate, doesn't get into the tough problems much at all (climate change is something we all agree needs to be urgently addressed and all solutions boil down to the one variable). He makes a more level-headed and reasonable version of the take Josh Storrs Hall made in Where's My Flying Car: that Greenism is a conservative ideology based on a quasi-religious notion of nature. It struggles to form a positive vision of an industrial society with evolving technological capacity and a beneficial relationship with nature. That's more to unpack than I want to get into here; Symons really only touches on it to point out that where you might expect solar-and-wind Greens to be behind his ecomodernist agenda, they aren't, for ideological reasons that end up putting them substantively at odds with their professed values (as the case studies of GMO crops and nuclear energy make very tragically clear).

The bottom line is that for Symons, ecomodernism is a pessimistic ideology that takes significant climate change as inevitable and targeted innovation policy by states as the only viable path to mitigation. It's an approach that sits comfortably within the twitter socdem/GND/neoliberal path, though at odds with the historical Neoliberal approach that has criticized proactive state intervention. The thing I found less clear was his attempt to link this to "global social democracy." He does this primarily in a chapter otherwise focused on the idea of independent geo-engineering, an aggressive approach in which developing countries choose to engage in risky geo-engineering to protect themselves from climate change without global consensus for it. I just don't grasp the connection, and it feels a bit like Symons is simply signalling his commitments to political positions ecomodernists are broadly seen to ignore or disagree simply as a matter of dispelling those concerns. Nonetheless, I think he's obviously right that ecomodernists have the high ground here on environmental justice. The degrowth position might feel more righteous, but Symons makes the insightful point that Paul Ehrlich and the global Neo-Malthusians were self-righteous too. The third world was clearly correct to resist those policies as counter to their own interests, and if they see degrowth the same way, that should give serious pause.

The big outstanding question here, for me, is really how I feel about the neoliberal question of state solutions v market solutions. Symons makes a case for state intervention, I have no real objections, but to be entirely honest I don't think I can make up my mind on the merits and don't really see that I need to. It's easy for me to imagine there's some range of policies that would solve this problem from either angle, and I wish we were in the position to be making that choice rather than desperately hoping for anything close to either. A serious global carbon tax or a serious global innovation policy or some combination the two are necessary to create the innovations that get us out of this bind and neither seem particularly likely to emerge soon. The possibility of unilateral geo-engineering thus becomes more salient. It's vaguely analogous to the barbed wire that enabled ranchers to defend property rights, in that it allows victims to invest in things that protect their rights without requiring any consideration from the polluter (it's not analogous in that unlike barbed wire, geo-engineering imposes symmetric rights violations on the Global North).

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed overview of environmentalism- with index.

Symons seems to have read widely & deeply on the socio-political aspects of environmentalist opinion.

While staying relatively neutral, he shares the many ideas put forth in the past few decades and does quite well at identifying various underlying factors which influence today's popular arguments. In short, this is not a book to skim through.

Though I don't always agree with the emphasis placed on some topics, Symons does challenge his readers to understand how various ideals have come to prominence and how most proposals are good ones - from a specific viewpoint advanced within a certain situation. The trick is to cobble together quasi-coherent strategies which will complement each other with the goal of minimizing stress on the planet, human society & it's other inhabitants.

"Zero-carbon innovation may simply be too abstract an idea. It seems that anyone who has heard of ecomodernism remembers that these are ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’. Yet fewer recall ecomodernism's most urgent, practical argument – that state-directed low-carbon innovation must be at the heart of our climate response. Perhaps this perspective is too dull to gain attention." -Conclusion section from the book Ecomodernism

[Bram · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book left me hungry for more (in a good way: I ordered a dozen titles from the list of references).

Two quotes:

“[I]t is not productive to view climate harms as a consequence of elite corruption, societal hubris or alienation from nature. Rather, climate change should, ideally, come to be seen simply as an unintended consequence of human activities, and we should aspire to a response that is as scientifically informed, as democratic and as attentive to global scales as possible.”

And:

“A home with vegetables growing in the yard and solar panels on the roof will feel Green (even if the solar panels are backed up by a diesel generator) in ways that a societal choice to construct a zero-carbon nuclear grid, to develop synthetic milk and meat, or invest in synthesizing jet fuel might not. Yet, it is the deliberate choice of collective zero-emissions technologies, rather than the aesthetic of rustic self-sufficiency, that will minimize climate harms.”