A surfeit of -isms? Eco-modernism, new environmentalism, pragmatic environmentalism

This week saw the launch of ‘Eco-modernism’ the brainchild of Mark Lynas and a host of other green thinkers. It pretty much fills the same space as BusinessGreen editor James Murray’s New Environmentalism concept and my own, completely ignored, idea of Pragmatic Environmentalism – viz we need to reclaim the environmental movement from leftwing politics and place it square in the centre so people of left, right and middle can relate to it and not fear it is creeping communism in disguise (the old ‘watermelon’ trope).

Under eco-modernism/new/pragmatic environmentalism, the anti-science of parts of the green movement (GM, fracking, nuclear are all EVIL*) are challenged as hard as the anti-science of right-wing neoliberalism (climate change denial). We do what works, what science indicates, what technology and society permits, not what dogma dictates.

The seeds of my pragmatic environmentalism were sown when I was part of a political team bringing in a new recycling system here in Newcastle. We proposed moving from a source separated system to a semi-mixed collection of recyclates to make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to participate. The local green movement went apeshit, to put it mildly, accusing us of betraying our principles and screaming that the whole thing was doomed to failure. We decided to ignore them, and rightly so, as the already good recycling rate jumped by 50% overnight.

You could argue that most of the big wins in sustainability have come from pragmatic environmentalism. Last quarter the UK produced a record 25.3% of power from renewables, up from 16.9% last year and beating down coal for the first time. Add in nuclear and low carbon sources produced just short of 50%. That’s been achieved by harnessing rather than smashing capitalism, using market levers to create a virtuous cycle of volume and economies of scale (sorry, Naomi, but that’s how it is). Despite the UK Government sending out all the wrong signals, this rise is likely to continue for a few years at least.

My only worry about eco-modernism was the strange bedfellows at its launch. Ex-environmental minister Owen Patterson and shamed banker Matt Ridley used the event to explain that everything was alright really. That’s not the point. The threats are real and they are coming thick and fast. We have no time for either neoliberal complacency or anticapitalist utopianism – we’ve just got to knuckle down and get the job done.

* Note: I have reservations about all 3 technologies, but I try to base those on science rather than gut instinct. This annoys the antis more than it annoys the pros.

Robert I. Ellison

September 30, 2015 at 8:58 AM

The Ecomodernist neologism seems little more than brand marketing for unrelated consumer products. Did they research their product placement? I’ve suggested Iriai instead – a Japanese word meaning to enter into the joint use of resources.

I am a bit dubious about these mooted technologies as well. I read a recent study on GMO corn. Large – controlled – double blind – on pigs. Or on a pig model as they say – an analogue to people. They found not much difference except for stomach inflammation in GMO exposed pigs. We have insect resistant corn and soy bean – and forgive me for being naive – but shouldn’t we expect this from something that can stop a weevil in its tracks? I am not convinced either that you can eat high level nuclear waste for breakfast – or isolate it for millennia. There are ways around this – but it is not old fashioned nuclear.

I’d be cautious about making easy assumptions about climate science. ‘Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.’ Marcia Wyatt

Marcia is of course a denier from way back. I ignore that and find a great wonder here and much uncertainty – and both sides do a great disservice to natural sciences by gross oversimplification, false certainties, entrenched positions and virulent attacks on anything that smacks of heresy.

There is another way of looking at climate – one where powerful internal mechanisms of climate variability change randomly and chaotically according to the rules of the class of dynamic and complex systems. The most telling of these rules for climate is abrupt change. Climate data at all scales show abrupt changes. Complexity theory suggests an explanation. Small changes push the system past a threshold – at which stage the system transitions to a new state at a rate determined by the internal dynamics of the system itself. Disentangling anthropogenic climate change from these chaotic and random shifts – if these indeed feature in Earth’s climate – would be an intractable problem. The implications are profound – unpredictable shifts in temperature and hydrology every 20 to 30 years and the potential for major climate shifts in as little as a decade being just two.

http://watertechbyrie.com/2015/06/06/climate-chaos-the-once-and-future-dragon-king/

The bottom line is deceptively simple. We are changing the atmospheric composition with unpredictable consequences. The responses from the usual suspects seem utterly inadequate – but we can cobble together a sound response with a solid founding in the three elements of the Iriai.

1. Enlightenment underpinning – democracy and capitalism to be frank. I understood there is some antipathy to these novel ideas – but those people are not worth talking to. We may as well vote and get on with it – or in extremis go to the barricades.

2. A theory of institutional design for managing global commons. I am not sure anyone understands this.

http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1223

3. Effective use of a broad range of technologies. This is the easy and fun bit.

http://watertechbyrie.com/2015/09/28/a-classic-liberal-utopia/

A surfeit of -isms? Eco-modernism, new environmentalism, pragmatic environmentalism

A surfeit of -isms? Eco-modernism, new environmentalism, pragmatic environmentalism

1 Comment

Leave your reply.

Leave a Reply

Your email is safe with us.

Subscribe to The Low Carbon Agenda – your free monthly guide to implementing Sustainability