Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXXX
We’re Saved! Ecomodernism.
Using the ‘questionnaire’ for evaluating supposed ‘solutions’ to humanity’s various predicaments that I proposed in my previous We’re Saved! Contemplation (see: Website Medium Substack), I thought it might be appropriate to assess the environmental philosophy that tends to lead the way in pushing ‘technological problem-solving’: Ecomodernism.
Let’s delve into what Ecomodernism is before deconstructing its approach through my questions. And I will do this for the most part via a very brief summary of An Ecomodernist Manifesto published in 2015 by a number of scholars.
Keep in mind that as with any philosophy there exists a spectrum of views on it, from both inside and outside of the Ecomodernist ‘school of thought’. Also, it’s important to note that some prominent Ecomodernists–such as Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus–have engaged directly with some of the critiques I will discuss below. This essay, however, addresses the philosophy’s dominant tendencies and core assumptions as presented in the Manifesto and advocated for by the movement. Where engagement has occurred, it tends to be selective and reinforcing of the fundamental commitment to perpetual growth and technological salvation.
This publication begins with the assertion “that the Earth is a human planet…remade by human hands…and has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans.” The Manifesto then states that “As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.” (p. 6)
While recognising that humans need to reduce their impact upon the natural world, they reject the idea that this must be done by harmonising with Nature in order to avoid collapse. Arguing that natural systems cannot be protected so long as humans depend upon them for sustenance and well-being, they suggest that it is only through the intensification of human activities (via socioeconomic and technological processes) that human development can continue to ‘decouple’ from the impacts it has had on the environment to this point in time.
This ‘decoupling’ appears to be the core tenet of Ecomodernism as painted in the Manifesto. Through innovative technology and well-managed socioeconomic systems, the approach aims to intensify those human activities that societies depend upon (e.g., settlement, agriculture, energy), thereby using less land and freeing up areas for Nature to recover from past abuses. This intensification can be accomplished by way of embracing certain aspects of modernity (e.g., urban centres, industrial agriculture, nuclear power, industrialisation, etc.) and liberating technology from current restraints imposed by modern environmentalism.
These shifts will result in a ‘good’ or ‘great’ Anthropocene where human prosperity and a healthy biosphere flourishes. Ecomodernism tends to reject the rather romantic version of environmentalism where humans need to live in harmony with Nature at a small scale. Such a ‘harmonious’ arrangement is viewed as impractical, counterproductive, and imposes a wretched lifestyle.
In essence, Ecomodernism is–according to its advocates–a pro-growth, pro-technology, and pro-human form of environmentalism. It argues that to save Nature, humanity must not just embrace modernity and its technologies but accelerate it–as opposed to vilifying and avoiding it as other environmental movements do.
A ‘great’ Anthropocene where humans can continue to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet while creating utopia for humanity and improving the biosphere’s health.
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While praised by some for its optimism, the approach is criticised by others for its: unfailing faith in human ingenuity and technology to right the cascade of wrongs that have occurred in the wake of human expansion; failing to consider the scale of what it proposes (i.e., a global expansion of modernity and its technologies); ‘cherry-picking’ data to support its arguments; and, avoiding the power and equity issues such an approach would exacerbate.
I will now go through the ‘evaluative questionnaire’ I proposed in my last Contemplation and apply it to Ecomodernism as best I can.
Narrative
Does the proposal discuss the major drawbacks such as environmental and/or social costs, or only its benefits? Is there irrefutable evidence that the ‘solution’ will replace the destructive technology/system it is proposing to, or is it merely adding to total human throughput? Are the benefits of small-scale applications being honestly applied to a global, industrial scale, or are they being disingenuously applied?
Drawbacks
Ecomodernism acknowledges challenges to its approach but downplays the structural issues, such as inequality and power dynamics. It frames many issues as primarily problems with a mismanagement of technologies and resources. Correct the managerial components with progressive approaches and these drawbacks are ‘solved’; they are not considered fundamental flaws.
Its acknowledgement of such ‘problems’ is rather selective, however. For example, high carbon emissions and widespread land misuse are recognised as issues but can be ‘fixed’ by way of low-carbon technologies and agricultural intensification. The issues of corporate power concentration and traditional community disruption tend to be minimised or sidestepped.
Traditional environmental approaches and their focus upon biophysical limits and reduced consumption is characterised as oppositional to human flourishing by Ecomodernists. In fact, some go further and label this ‘miserabilism’ and suggest it stands in stark contrast to their human-centric and optimistic philosophy. By framing alternatives as inherently opposed to the ‘progress’, technological innovation, and advancement suggested by their philosophy, a straw man is created. This oversimplified and misleading characterisation of alternative environmental movements allows Ecomodernists to overhype the benefits of their approach and minimise the drawbacks or avoid them altogether.
Replacement or Addition
Ecomodernism relies significantly on the concept of ‘decoupling’ whereby improvements in human welfare via technologies and improved systems are separated from any environmental impacts. Advocates promise that technological innovations will permit economic growth and throughput to continue in an environmentally-beneficial manner, while replacing the ecologically-destructive technologies and systems currently in place.
The evidence for such decoupling, be it relative or absolute, is extremely weak however (as I describe in more detail on the subject in a previous Contemplation: Website Medium Substack). Most significantly, the case for current decoupling appears to be primarily a case of statistical chicanery whereby most nations demonstrating decoupling have been able to do so via off-shoring of industries, financialisation of economies, and the importation of carbon- and materially-intensive goods. It would appear that the foundation of their decoupling argument is based upon selective and narrow definitions and evidence, as well as future ‘breakthrough’ technologies.
In addition, Jevons Paradox shows that efficiency gains and additional energy tends to result in more consumption and an increase in total throughput, not a decrease. This is not a replacement of destructive systems as argued by Ecomodernists, but a ‘greenwashing’ of expanded systems and technologies that are adding to human throughput and energy use.
Scale
Ecomodernism tends to impose a Western-biased developmental model that assumes modernisation is a desirable and universal goal. It dismisses alternative knowledge systems and values, especially as they pertain to the concentration of power that occurs with the development and buildout of complex technologies. Within their model is the assumption that scalability is both possible and desirable. Build and intensify it, and the benefits will come.
Human development is presented as an inevitable path towards an industrialised and high-tech global society, while small-scale low-tech systems are viewed as inefficient and backwards. Ecomodernism rarely if ever questions the ownership of these scaled technologies, leading critics to suggest its approach reinforces existing power and wealth structures while marginalising local and indigenous knowledge. It is a rather disingenuous approach to the scaling issue.
Summary
The Ecomodernist narrative is fundamentally one of faith in the idea that human ingenuity correctly directed can and will overcome biogeophysical constraints in a manner that allows material throughput to continue without pause while protecting the biosphere. Standing in contrast are the counter-narratives of ecological justice and degrowth that tend to be about sufficiency and equity in the face of real limits and entrenched power structures. The conflict between these two opposing philosophies tends to be in how ‘progress’ is defined, with Ecomodernism doing so within a perpetual growth paradigm and opposing views pointing out that it is such a paradigm that is the root cause of our predicaments.
Biogeophysical Reality
Is any analysis of the lifecycle of the ‘solution’ and any required supplementary technologies and/or systems including all stages? Raw material extraction? Manufacturing? Transportation? Operation? Maintenance? Byproduct disposal? Decommissioning? Reclamation? End-life disposal and waste management? What is the net energy return over the entire lifecycle, and is it greater than 10-14:1 (societal maintenance) or 3:1 (basic survival)? What finite materials/minerals are required, and are these readily available or have they already encountered supply chain bottlenecks or severe depletion? What are the ecological blind spots? Is it being assessed through carbon tunnel vision or is it taking in a broader consideration of the various planetary boundaries? Can the waste it is generating be safely managed in perpetuity, or are there long-term liabilities being created?
Lifecycle
Ecomodernists tend to make the common error of engaging almost exclusively in partial lifecycle analyses to support their arguments. They focus upon the end-use environmental impacts of many technologies (e.g., nuclear power generation, electric vehicles, ‘renewables’) and downplay or externalise the immense ecologically-destructive upstream (e.g., mining, refining, production) and downstream (e.g., decommissioning, reclamation, disposal) aspects, claiming the technologies are ‘clean’ as a result.
The ‘clean’ image provided by narrow lifecycle analyses is due to this snapshot of the operational phase of technologies that hides the environmental impacts of all the chemical- and hydrocarbon-based industrial processes that created the technology or are required for their decommissioning or disposal. These important lifecycle aspects of production and end-life are treated as externalities or engineering ‘problems’ when they are acknowledged, and not constraining fundamentals.
Net Energy Return
The incomplete lifecycle data used by Ecomodernists to support their arguments also leads to a misuse of net energy return calculations. For example, the energy return of intermittent wind and solar power generation is considered relatively high when backup storage infrastructure is absent in the numbers. The net energy such systems can deliver to society is much lower, however, once these backup systems are included–to say little about the environmental impacts of this additional infrastructure (a consideration that I find many advocates of such power generation tend to avoid or rationalise away).
Achieving an energy-return-on-investment (EROI) of at least 10:1 is imperiled significantly by the fully-electrified, high-tech complex global society advocated by Ecomodernists. Energy analyst Vaclav Smil has suggested that hydrocarbons have provided a huge subsidy to societal energy needs and made modernity possible by way of significant surplus energy (see: here). Any transition to much lower EROI energy sources (with their additional but necessary infrastructure energy/resource costs) jeopardises the surplus energy needed to maintain let alone grow societal complexities.
The paradox of what Ecomodernists are calling for is clear: the proposed low-impact, technological future requires a very significant up-front use of energy and resources where diminishing returns are already biting hard, as well as massive ecological systems impacts in a world where most planetary boundaries have already been broached.
Material/Mineral Limits
The Ecomodernist vision is highly dependent upon finite materials/minerals that are already facing geo/political, economic, ecological, and depletion challenges. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that a ‘renewable’ energy transition could lead to massive increases in demand for a number of key materials: lithium by 4200%; graphite by 2500%, and cobalt by 1900% (see: here).
Ecomodernists argue that this is entirely feasible with continuing technological innovation and improved efficiency of material/mineral use as well as recycling. According to others, however, this unprecedented scaling is impossible (see: here and here). To scale their technologies up to the global level they are proposing would not only exacerbate supply chain bottlenecks and shortages, but wreak tremendous havoc upon the planet’s biosphere.
Ecological Blind Spots
Ecomodernism is fraught with ecological blind spots, primarily due to its carbon tunnel vision that minimises/avoids the impacts upon various other planetary boundaries (e.g., biodiversity loss, freshwater use, novel entities/pollution) of what it proposes. Critics have been quick to point out that much of what is occurring in the field of ‘carbon-free’ technologies has been a shifting of destruction to both other localities and ecological systems.
Ecomodernists assume that potential crises will be avoided through unproven or unscalable ‘clean’ technologies. For example, the massive buildout of nuclear power generation being called for ignores the dilemmas of fuel finiteness and its radioactive waste accumulation (see my Contemplation on this: Website Medium Substack); and the call for agricultural intensification overlooks the dependency that industrial agriculture has upon synthetic (and hydrocarbon-based) fertilisers, herbicides, and pesticides that–among other negative impacts–result in disruptions to the planet’s nitrogen and phosphorus cycles and leading to the creation of dead zones.
Waste Management
A number of long-term liabilities are created via the Ecomodernist approach, yet they are mostly ignored or rationalised away. As mentioned above, nuclear power generation is the go-to energy source in the Manifesto with its waste requiring perpetual management. In addition, novel waste streams have been created with the production and use of ‘renewables’.
Ecomodernists don’t address these particular aspects directly but argue that a ‘circular economy’ with high recycling rates will ensure ecological devastation is avoided. What they fail to acknowledge is that recycling infrastructure lags significantly behind the extraction and consumption rates of the planet and that circular economies are an aspiration, not a reality–to say little about the energy required for recycling, the products that cannot be or require extensive chemical inputs to be recycled, and/or the additional toxic waste streams created via efforts to recycle many products.
The ‘solutions’ proposed by Ecomodernism to any waste management issues are entirely ‘hoped-for/faith-based’ with no proven scalable infrastructure support, lack of economic viability, and certainly do not reflect current realities.
Summary
The high-tech, low-impact future Ecomodernism envisions encounters a central tension with biophysical reality: a massive materially- and energy-intensive buildout that conflicts with current reality and a concern with already overloaded planetary boundaries. Ecomodernists foresee a dematerialised world by way of a hyper-materialised world. It’s a material dream in a material world where lab-proven technologies (and a lot of unproven ones) are impractical from an ecological and finite limits perspective once scaled up.
Viability
Can the ‘solution’ survive without massive government subsidies, externalised costs, or loan guarantees? Does it require a new, massively complex, and resource-intensive infrastructure to bring it to fruition? Is it dependent upon ‘breakthrough’ technology that has yet to exist?
Subsidies and Externalities
Massive government subsidies, private sector investment and loans, and the externalisation of ecological ‘costs’ are required to achieve the dreams of Ecomodernists. State support is a must for any projects to get off the ground and be attempted. They are not viable any other way, with their economic competitiveness being based almost entirely upon political choices and regulations.
Infrastructure Needs
The technologies to bring Ecomodernism to fruition require extensive, complex, and resource-intensive new infrastructures. The electrical grid must be completely rebuilt and massively expanded. Global supply chains and their extraction and refinement facilities need to be significantly expanded, along with their infrastructure needs. Hydrogen-based energy is a prime example of this need for huge infrastructure construction (see my Contemplation focussed on this ‘solution’: Website Medium Substack).
Reliance on Breakthroughs
There exists significant reliance upon ‘breakthrough’ technologies within the Ecomodernist philosophy. This is especially true for 4th-generation nuclear power generation (see my Contemplation on Thorium-based and molten salt reactors: Website Medium Substack), green hydrogen energy (see my Contemplation on this, mentioned above), and carbon capture (target for a future We’re Saved! Contemplation perhaps).
Summary
The dependencies discussed directly above are interconnected in terms of the viability issue for Ecomodernism. A ‘clean’ grid based upon ‘renewables’, for example, depends greatly on technological innovations in multi-day energy storage. Without such a ‘breakthrough’, the power generation and current-reality battery storage infrastructure must be massively overbuilt to account for intermittent generation. This prospect is even more expensive and resource-/energy-intensive than the already overstretched Ecomodernist vision. The financial costs for this are externalised by advocates to the State and/or future generations, which in turn means the economics of this approach relies greatly on political stability–domestically and geopolitically. Such fragility stands in contrast to the robust, market-driven transition Ecomodernists speak about.
Here lies perhaps one of the more significant contradictions in the Ecomodernist philosophy: the deregulated and innovation-driven market that advocates propose is fundamentally important to the approach would actually be one of the most coordinated and state-run enterprises in human history given its reliance on state-directed subsidies and regulations. While arguing against the choosing of marketplace ‘winners’, it depends entirely upon such a choice for perhaps decades until its favoured technologies can ‘compete’ in an open and free market.
The technological viability of Ecomodernity is as fragile and uncertain as its political and economic viability given it assumes massive upfront capital mobilisation as well as global cooperation and policy stability for the long-term–a hope-filled faith with no historical precedent.
Social Aspects
Does the ‘solution’ challenge the infinite economic growth paradigm or enable its continuation? Who is promoting it and who profits from it? Will it help to further concentrate wealth/power or help to distribute it? Does it challenge or reinforce status quo wealth and power structures? Does it promote relocalisation and community resilience, or does it require globalised, centralised, and fragile supply chains? Does it shut down discussion of more fundamental changes (e.g., degrowth), or is it presented as the only alternative within the current system?
Growth Paradigm
Ecomodernism supports and enables continued pursuit of the perpetual growth chalice. In fact, it explicitly argues in favour of continuing and intensifying growth suggesting that such growth can and will–via technology and human ingenuity–be decoupled from ecological systems impacts. With this approach it defends the growth imperative that status quo power and wealth structures depend upon, rather than challenge it.
Promotion and Profit
The Ecomodernist philosophy is very much supported and promoted by sectors, investors, technocratic think-tanks, and systems that stand to ‘profit’ from it. Big tech. Venture capitalists. Big energy. The State. Large-scale deployment of capital-intensive, centralized technologies will make certain industries and sectors massive profits/funding and provide governing institutions with increased control/power.
Wealth and Power Concentration
The system being advocated for by Ecomodernists is very expensive, centralised, and expert-dependent. It is concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the State, multinational corporations, and technical elites. There has been no redistribution of benefits or control to date, and history suggests none will ever occur.
Rather than discuss inequalities, Ecomodernism frames poverty as primarily a lack of modernisation that can be ‘solved’ through intensified growth. This growth can be directed in a way that liberates humanity and meets everyone’s needs. This ignores history and how modernisation has led to poverty by way of dispossession, land appropriation, and the creation of a complex array of dependencies. Critics also point out that the entire enterprise is one of global value transfers where resource extraction from peripheral nations benefits the few in the core nations that control everything.
Relocalisation or Centralised Globalisation
Ecomodernism requires centrally-controlled but globalised supply chains, which is the opposite of relocalisation. Some infrastructure systems may help to raise community resilience depending upon one’s perspective (e.g., rooftop solar), but for the most part the systems being proposed are dependent on centralised globalist systems. Large-scale but land-sparing intensive agriculture, for example, depends upon complex and long global supply chains for the industrial inputs needed (e.g., machinery, fertilisers). This contrasts quite starkly with other movements that emphasise community control and resilient local communities.
Discussions
In framing alternatives as radically unrealistic and anti-human approaches that would create a most miserable existence for our species, and itself as an optimistic and pragmatic philosophy that leads to continued prosperity for all and a healthy biosphere, Ecomodernism presents itself as the best and only option to pursue. Such a simplistic characterisation of alternative pathways to mitigating our polycrisis assists Ecomodernists in positioning different approaches as dangerous and radical, and thus not worthy of any further discussion or consideration.
This is, of course, the straw man logical fallacy where competing narratives are distorted to make them easier to refute and serves to elevate one’s own story. Rather than address the minutia of degrowth, for example, it oversimplifies it thereby making Ecomodernism more convincing and avoiding critical engagement with the fundamental issues. Ecomodernists argue from the perspective that theirs is the only worthwhile path to pursue as it alone can repair the biosphere and establish well-being and prosperity for all of humanity.
Summary
The Ecomodernist’s approach has significant implications for human societies given it is not a socially-neutral, technology-oriented project but one that reinforces centralised control and uncritically celebrates modernisation and its array of complex energy- and resource-intensive technologies. By insisting that its high-tech global world is the only reasonable path to pursue, it denigrates and marginalises far less consumptive and ecologically-destructive alternatives.
Conclusion
Ecomodernism’s high‑tech, low‑impact future is compelling on the surface. Under the questionnaire’s lens, however, it emerges as a flawed, largely faith‑based philosophy.
It hinges on speculative technologies, absolute decoupling, and global scalability—none of which current evidence supports. Its lifecycle analyses are incomplete; its energy‑return calculations, selective. The proposed buildout would be resource‑intensive, ecologically destructive, and dependent on precisely the hydrocarbon economy Ecomodernists claim to leave behind. Planetary boundaries already breached, material supply chains under strain, and long‑lived waste streams without management pathways are treated as engineering problems, not fundamental constraints.
The social implications are equally stark. Ecomodernism reinforces centralised power, globalised supply chains, and the very growth paradigm that has driven ecological overshoot. It requires state‑directed subsidies and long‑term political stability while presenting itself as a market‑driven, deregulatory project. It frames alternative pathways—degrowth, sufficiency, relocalisation—as miserabilist or anti‑human, a straw man that forecloses genuine debate. Its ‘great Anthropocene’ is not a break from the status quo but its acceleration.
Ultimately, Ecomodernism functions not as a solution to our predicaments but as a narrative tool: one that manages societal anxiety, legitimises perpetual growth, and sustains the power and wealth structures from which it emerges and which it serves.
Recent and relevant articles of interest:
Ecomodernism: Modernity Without Ecology.
#319: The end of growth | Surplus Energy Economics
Reprise: Volcano-Powered Data Centers
U.S. Push for Greenland’s Minerals Faces Harsh Arctic Realities - Yale E360
Ronald Wright - Seeing the Future in the Ruins of the Past
The Green Belt Was a Firewall, Not a Garden
The Dirty Work of Clean Energy with Robert Friedland - YouTube
Our Civilization is a Junkie - by Matt Orsagh
A Million Miles of Transmission Lines?
“Is AI more important than climate?” - by Jeni Miles
Complexity’s Revenge - by Arthur Berman
2026 Is the Year of Balance Sheet Engineering in the Battery Storage Market | OilPrice.com
Global Energy Transition Threatened by Critical Transformer Shortages | OilPrice.com
Technology and Wealth: The Straw, the Siphon, and the Sieve (Essay)
Physical Realities - by Ian Sutton - Net Zero by 2050
Why Complex Societies Collapse | Joseph Tainter
Why “Solutions” Fail | Dave Snowden
I’m Sorry to Burst Your Bubble: You Are Being Fooled About AI, and You Will Soon Feel Really Stupid
Shell Names the Risks and Discounts Them to Zero | Art Berman
SASOL, the Nazis, and the Thermodynamics of Defeat
What is going to be my standard WARNING/ADVICE going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:
“Only time will tell how this all unfolds but there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by ‘collapsing now to avoid the rush’ and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better. Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There’s no guarantee it will ensure ‘recovery’ after a significant societal stressor/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can ‘hope’ for from its pursuit.”
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You are like those bummer dudes who lack enthusiasm for the communist revolution. Gosh. ***Wink*** Nicely organized and chords struck with pleasant reverb.
Right-on. Thank You for sharing this "elephant"-naming. It intrinsicly concurs with nobel prize research summarized in the book "Thinking Fast and Slow"(Kahneman) about how the human brain unconsciously/intuitively conveniently reverts to its previously experienced norms and biases.