You've probably never read the 2015 Ecomodernism Manifesto. Good for you! This wasted experience leaves you with a little more brain space to remember who won the 1967 World Series, which brothers played sax and drums on “Papa's Got A Brand New Bag” (Macio and Melvin Parker), and who wrote the trilogy, Mawlawi, malone dies, And Unnamed (If you guessed Samuel Beckett, congratulations.) Since I have a limited mind, I only retain a sustainable amount of knowledge.
So why mention a longstanding movement that rarely makes it into the news cycle? Who cares about the statement written at the end of President Barack Obama's last term?
Our political culture rolls the dice on climate change with a strategy of doing nothing at all, and ecomodernism provides the rhetorical inspiration for inaction. We should publish the statement on hot, sweltering days simply to pay tribute to the authors of the document that lifts us up with the rallying cry that “future help is on the way.” If ecomodernists have become the actual architects of environmental policy, shouldn't we spend a few minutes contemplating their virtues?
As the economy grows with clean and safe nuclear energy, carbon capture, GMOs, and desalination, we need a fighting force that keeps pace with the progress — with space lasers, magnifying glasses the size of football fields, solar drones, and clean nuclear weapons.
Ecomodernism is a kind of love child of Ayn Rand and John Muir, or the mutant offspring of Rachel Carson and Tony Robbins, or even, heaven forbid, the living flesh of Emily Dickinson and John D. Rockefeller. If you try to intertwine the most predatory icons of free market thinking with random heroes of pristine forests, you come up with a utopia of unlimited luxury and pristine nature. This is the best “have your cake and eat it too” philosophy ever. Ecomodernists even have a word to describe this unexpected connection between mass consumption and environmentalism – “decoupling.”
Decoupling (take a deep breath) means that economic growth and the fate of the natural world could be completely decoupled – thanks to future technological advances. It is the rabid belief in free markets, the technology of the future, and human expansion that drives the economic fundamentalism of ecomodernists. You could have a bloated economy the size of dreaded Betelgeuse alongside thriving redwood forests and songbirds (carefully planted by human designs) — or so ecologists tell us. It's like thinking you can eat 20,000 calories a day of bacon, butter, and ice cream (while sitting on the couch all day and scrolling through short YouTube videos) and be ripped like Bruce Lee — all you have to do is separate your diet and lifestyle About your diet. health.
This wonderful world emerges from the foundation of three great slogans: clean and safe nuclear energy, water desalination, and carbon capture. Oh, and GMO-based industrial agriculture – four slogans. In the fantasies of environmental modernity, we can keep doing what we are doing – burning coal, fracking, drilling, etc., and be confident that the polluted world can be saved through future innovations. Count it on me! Who wouldn't want a world full of cheap stuff – a mandate for greed divorced from consequences?
The only small issue that ecomodernists have not yet taken into account is the separation of military spending from war. If the economy can be separated from the environment, we also need to envision a future utopia where we can bomb cities and eviscerate enemy civilians while preserving the sanctity of nature. I spent a full 12 minutes on The Breakthrough Institute website and didn't see a single blog comment about green military hardware. I should mention that the Breakthrough Institute is the leader in ecomodernism—the place to read a hundred or so pieces about class. There may have been musings about environmentally responsible weapons of mass destruction in The Breakthrough, and I just failed to find them. You would think that the ecomodernists would have thought about such things, for it is clear that in an economy of infinite growth there would be infinite military spending. Or, should I say, continued endless military spending.
The modernist environmental worldview seems to embrace the idea that any conceivable technological invention will inevitably bear fruit. If this is true, why are ecomodernists unable to envision a future of clean weapons? Even less than bright light – MP. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) – Imagined Jewish space lasers. A weapon that can vaporize people and property from orbit far into space would have to be more environmentally sensitive than conventional bombs dropped by fighter-bombers. In the spirit of separation, we need space lasers from all spiritual denominations, not just Jewish denominations.
Every naughty kid knows the fun of exterminating ants with a magnifying glass. A solar-powered means of mass death should be a natural idea for ecomodernist thinkers. Consider the James Webb Telescope, which was built not to explore distant galaxies shortly after the big bang, but designed to redirect and focus the sun's deadly rays to crush enemy strongholds defending an ideology that stifles growth. Modern warfare since Guernica has centered on bombing civilian populations to the core. In the world of eco-modernism, we have to wipe out unwanted people using the most sustainable technology that money can buy.
What about solar-powered robotic drones equipped with sharp titanium blades? What about clean nuclear bombs? The nuclear industry is rumored to be funding the Breakthrough Institute, making nuclear war a privilege of ecological modernity.
In a world full of free markets, war, and genocide, we cannot continue to destroy human life at industrial levels with old-fashioned armies driven by fossil fuels. The US military uses more fossil fuels annually than Portugal. This is fine for now, but we will need a greater military force in the future – a fighting force with enormous potential to match capitalist expansion. As the economy grows with clean and safe nuclear energy, carbon capture, GMOs, and desalination, we need a fighting force that keeps pace with the progress — with space lasers, magnifying glasses the size of football fields, solar drones, and clean nuclear weapons.
Ecomodernists talk of building a “good Anthropocene”—an Anthropocene teeming with gadgets, fashion, entertainment, 70-hour workweeks, and fast cars. We cannot get all the things we need to make the Anthropocene void unless we can force the Global South to hand over the rare, extracted materials we need to make the Anthropocene. We need the Breakthrough Institute to grow the duo and say the quiet part out loud.
