Android Wolves, Electric Sheep
Ecomodernism and The Rise of the Green Technocracy
Having been raised in a household that had an annual subscription to The Ecologist well before Zac Goldsmith joined the Tories, and regularly attended climate-change marches where people would chant embarrassing attempts to rhyme "Kyoto protocol" with "oil", I always felt I had a pretty good sense of what the green movement was about. There were the slightly dowdy Friends of the Earth types, the wacky green-anarchists with unwashed camos, the SWP entryists, the stoner intellectuals, the boozy crusties, and so on. There was a huge amount of Life of Brian-esque factionalism, but I don't recall hearing the elders in my family voice any strong suspicion that nefarious corporate interests were actually guiding the movement in any significant way. This doesn't mean to say that such interests weren't at play (they definitely were), but that back in those halcyon days of the late 90s when political geometry seemed so delightfully Euclidean, the evidence wasn't particularly obvious to anyone that I can remember.
I began to properly reacquaint myself with the state of contemporary green politics in 2016 after becoming involved in anti-fracking activism. While the people I met on the ground were generally solid and practical, in the online sphere the tone of green rhetoric had changed somewhat since the late 90s and early 2000s, and a shiny, optimistic, and highly technocratic vision was emanating from a vocal minority. Pollution was no longer the problem, it was carbon. Genetically modified ecosystems, geoengineered climates, electric cars, synthetic meat, and hydroponically grown vegetables were a part of their rather creepy vision of the future, and old-school ecologists who advocated for downscaling and appropriate technology were regarded as 20th century fuddy-duddies adhering to a naive 'nature knows best' dogma. I was aware of this kind of vision before - science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling coined the rather pretentious term 'viridian green' to describe his techno-optimism, and as a undergraduate student of Comparative Literature, I recall one of the lecturers on a science-fiction module enthusing over a design for some kind of genetically engineered treehouse - but I assumed they were confined to people who had just watched a few too many episodes of Star Trek, and never expected to find them so prominent within the green movement. However, these ideas have spread through intellectual movements like ecomodernism, and as I intend to show in this article, are exerting a strong influence on global environmental policy, via organizations like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and associated groups.
Even George Monbiot, a veteran of the 90s road protest scene and a respected campaigner for ecological issues, has largely jumped ship to this ecomodernist ideology, calling for hydroponically-grown crops and synthetic meat in order to free up vast areas of farmland for conversion to artificially 'rewilded' carbon sinks. In an astonishing display of cognitive dissonance, he recommends globalized industrial soy monoculture as preferable to local meat production: "A kilogramme of soya shipped halfway round the world inflicts much less atmospheric harm than a kilogramme of chicken or pork reared on the farm down the lane." Never mind the rainforest that was cleared to grow that kilo of soy; never mind the indigenous tribes whose entire cultures were destroyed beyond repair; never mind the fact that those soybeans were genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate (AKA Roundup), perhaps one of the most toxic agrochemicals currently in operation. No, that kilo of soybeans is much better for the planet than buying a kilo of chicken or pork from the local farmer, 'cuz greenhouse gases.
Monbiot's tortured logic is easily refuted,1 but it shows how large sections of the green movement have been steered away from holistic thinking - originally the soil from which ecology sprouted - by the myopic focus on a single gas (or set of gases) as the great environmental bête noire. Making enemies out of carbon, or methane, allows for elaborate parlour-tricks disguised as shimmering techno-fix solutions to preserve our failing industrial civilization. The messy reality is that not only does this carbon-hatred direct attention away from the ecocidal practices that currently power global capitalism, most of the 'solutions' offered do absolutely nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; in fact many of them could make greenhouse gases drastically worse (carbon capture and storage, anyone?). The grand organic diversity of the green movement is at risk of turning into a bland, technocratic monoculture. The invasive species responsible are probably too numerous to mention, but a decent enough point at which to begin our exploration would be the Ecomodernist Manifesto.
What If The Anthropocene Is A Good Thing, Not Bad, Like You Thought?
The British comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring had a TV show in the late nineties called This Morning With Richard Not Judy. One sketch was a mockumentary feature on a group of hip postmodern journalists writing for the 'Ironic Review', a satire on Cosmo Landesman and Julie Burchill's short-lived pop-culture zine the Modern Review. One character, portrayed by Richard Herring, turns to the camera and explains how he's writing a piece on 'why eating at McDonalds is a good thing, not bad, like you thought'.
Aside from being a very astute distillation of a particular strain of gratingly 'edgy' journalism, it is also inadvertently prescient about the basic timbre of the Ecomodernist Manifesto. A Slate article entitled 'Manifesto Calls for End to "People Are Bad" Environmentalism' summarises the Manifesto as follows:
The “Ecomodernist Manifesto,” a document championed by the pro-gas, pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute, imagines a different kind of environmentalism that embraces humanity’s growing demand for energy—a sharp deviation from the conventional wisdom of the eco-left. Essentially, the manifesto asks the question: What if the Anthropocene—the age of humans—is actually a good thing for the Earth, too?
If your mind has not been sufficiently blown by the sheer audacity of these cutting-edge pioneers of the New Environmentalism™, you might pick up on the fact that the Breakthrough Institute, champions of the Manifesto, are a 'pro-gas, pro-nuclear' think tank. Ecological pragmatists, who believe in making, ahem, compromises to reduce our carbon emissions. Compromises with industries such as shale.
Look no further than the shale natural gas boom. For almost 30 years the federal government aggressively invested in the research and development of breakthrough drilling techniques and partnered with industry to demonstrate new technologies. The result? Between January and May [2012], U.S. carbon emissions fell to a 20-year low.
Don't Leave Our Clean Energy Choices Up to Environmentalists
A search for 'fracking' on the Breakthrough Institute website reveals a number of articles supporting fracking for its supposed environmental benefits, a view shared by former British Prime Minister David Cameron when he described fracking as 'green energy'. Never mind the permanently contaminated water supplies; never mind the babies screaming as toxic bathwater hits their skin; never mind the earthquakes; never mind the birth defects, cancers, and infertility; never mind the fact that shale sites require the transportation of vast amounts of water, machinery, and chemical treatments; never mind the fact that ERoI (energy return over investment) is often poor to begin with, and gives quickly diminishing returns. No, fracking is good for the environment, 'cuz greenhouse gases.2
Another signatory of the Ecomodernist Manifesto is Stewart Brand, one of the co-founders of the Whole Earth Catalog. Brand's influence on the development of this movement should not be underestimated; his 2009 Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto is very much a precursor to the Ecomodernist Manifesto. Brand is easily one of the most interesting of all the advocates for ecomodernism, not just because of the dubious company he has chosen to keep, but because of the dichotomies that emerge from his career: on the one hand, he was enormously influential in the 'back-to-the-land', appropriate-tech-focused wing of the counterculture through the Catalog, and in the successor magazine to the Catalog, the CoEvolution Quartlerly, he published critics of modernity such as Lewis Mumford and Ivan Illich; on the other, his promotion of personal computers, cybernetics, and the liberatory potential of industrial technology has been enormously influential on the development of Silicon Valley and global tech culture. These dichotomies are raised in an interview conducted by German film-maker Lutz Dammbeck in the 2003 documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet. Dammbeck points out that the Catalog showcased nascent cybernetic technology as well as the plans for a log cabin that Ted Kaczynski, the neo-luddite "Unabomber", used to build his wilderness dwelling.
Stewart Brand admits to a contradiction in his vision, between ecology and computers. He acknowledges that he was eventually forced to choose, and he chose the side of technology. Yet he is still able to see down the road not taken. He describes Kaczynski as a classic counter-cultural figure, who used “vile means” to be sure, but whose legitimate critique of technological society was ultimately heard.
"Filming the World Laboratory: Cybernetic History in Das Netz", Brian Holmes
Brand's views on tech are shared even more stridently by his old friend John Brockman, a literary agent and "cultural impresario" who founded Edge, a salon bankrolled for many years by Jeffrey Epstein, and which has promoted the gleaming and optimistic visions of a benign high-tech capitalism emanating from the likes of Brand and Brockman clients like Steven Pinker. Brand's uncomfortable connections with Brockman and the Edge Foundation are discussed in depth in Jasun Horsley's fascinating article "John Brockman: Eminence Grise for a Globally Dominant Counter-Culture". Epstein was very close to Brockman, and he and his entourage were frequent guests at Edge's annual "billionaires' dinner" events even after Epstein was convicted in 2008. Brand is still listed as a member of Edge, and has responded to its "Annual Question" as recently as 2018.
While I find Brand's continued association with Edge to reflect badly on his own judgement, it must be stressed does not necessarily reflect badly on his behaviour. Very probably, the worst crime that one could accuse him of is naïveté. The reason I feel it is relevant in this context is to highlight the ways in which the techno-utopian visions of society promoted by these individuals and institutions are masking the wanton abuse of power, wittingly or unwittingly. Whether it is the Breakthrough Institute making apologies for fracking, Brand making the ecological case for geoengineering, or the Edge Foundation helping Epstein market himself as a 'science philanthropist', the common thread I'm seeing here is that they are all effectively acting as PR agents for those who trade in exploitation. In other words, helping android wolves appear to be electric sheep.
No Future In Android's Dreaming?
Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 expands the intensely urbanized and ecologically devastated world of Ridley Scott's original film by going into a little bit more detail about how food production actually works in a society that has effectively destroyed Nature, however implausible that concept that may be. The character of Niander Wallace, convincingly portrayed by Jared Leto (easily one of the creepiest actors in Hollywood history), is a psychopathic corporate CEO who averts global famine by introducing a new method of genetically engineered insect farming. The film even depicts concentrated solar thermal plants (pictured above), of the sort revealed in Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs's recent documentary Planet of the Humans as environmentally disastrous and totally dependent on the fossil-fuel infrastructure, to the outrage and embarrassment of the renewable industry.
This hyper-urbanized society dependent on high-tech intensive farming is an only slightly bleaker version of the world promoted by the Ecomodernist Manifesto. The signatories believe that the only way to heal the ecological damage we have done as a species is to become less dependent on natural processes:
Intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts. These socioeconomic and technological processes are central to economic modernization and environmental protection. Together they allow people to mitigate climate change, to spare nature, and to alleviate global poverty.
A rather bold claim, and one that rests on a fallacy - that technology has made humanity "less reliant upon the many ecosystems that once provided their only sustenance." This is factually incorrect - at the very best, what our technology has done is mask the true extent of our reliance on the environment. When civilization is going well, it's easy to feel that all of these abundant crops introduced from overseas and elaborate irrigation systems are independent of the surrounding ecosystem, but it takes little more than a cursory glance at the history of human civilization to realise how resource depletion, soil erosion, or drought can very quickly send the whole project on a scenic ride up shit creek. Unless the authors of the Manifesto have a very weird and specific definition of the word 'ecosystem', there is no aspect of human life that is not ultimately reliant on the ecosystem. No amount of shiny plastic things with flashing lights will change that fact, because every single material that we use has to come from somewhere in nature. In fact, the more technological intermediaries we develop, the harder the inevitable collapse will be when we inevitably hit a natural break on the availability of resources.
"Humankind cannot bear very much reality," says the bird in T.S. Eliot's poem Burnt Norton, and the fundamental reality that natural resources are finite certainly seems too much for the ecomodernists to bear.
To the degree to which there are fixed physical boundaries to human consumption, they are so theoretical as to be functionally irrelevant. The amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth, for instance, is ultimately finite but represents no meaningful constraint upon human endeavors. Human civilization can flourish for centuries and millennia on energy delivered from a closed uranium or thorium fuel cycle, or from hydrogen-deuterium fusion.
The idea that fixed physical boundaries to human consumption are "functionally irrelevant" is an exquisite distillation of the hubris borne from several generations accustomed to cheap oil. A closed nuclear fuel cycle, while preferable in some ways to the open fuel cycle due to its extraction of reusable material from spent nuclear waste, still presents all of the problems outlined in footnote 3. This quote from advocacy website Nuclear-power.net is revealing: "Recovered uranium and plutonium can, if economic and institutional conditions permit, be recycled for use as nuclear fuel" (emphasis mine). These "economic and institutional conditions" can only be provided within a prosperous industrial economy with abundant cheap oil. Reprocessing spent nuclear material depends on the production and transportation of external materials, such as concrete, steel, and water; none of the techno-optimists have been able to present any viable means by which these infrastructural needs can be met in the absence of fossil-fuels. Even a relatively minor breakdown of infrastructure could lead to disastrous consequences, as Ozzie Zehner points out in Green Illusions:
If those people don't show up to work some day, perhaps due to a disease pandemic, economic depression, political turmoil, or a natural disaster, the infrastructures established to maintain fissile material in a stable state could deteriorate or even tumble into chaos. With nuclear energy, we risk not only our own well-being but also the contamination of many, if not all humans, who occupy this planet after us.
2012, p.96.
As for 'hydrogen-deuterium fusion', there's a nice little gag quoted in James Howard Kunstler's latest book Living in the Long Emergency that sums it up: "fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be."3
Given the Icarusian level of hubris displayed in the Manifesto, it seems rather appropriate that the authors are pinning their hopes for the perpetuation of industrial society on the forlorn hope that we can replicate the fusion reaction at the core of the Sun. If this religious faith in the salvific power of technology was confined to the ivory towers of academia and pop-science literature, it may not be quite so concerning, but a look at the UN's 'Sustainable Development Goals' reveals that ecomodernist ideals are highly influential on transnational politics. Between the SDGs, the WEF's calls for a "Fourth Industrial Revolution", and the rise of carbon-markets and 'natural capital', it's clear that ecomodernism is not just a buzzword for naive ex-hippies and dodgy PR agents; it is the ideological framework for an emerging green technocracy. A conservation-industrial complex, if you will.
For instance, UN SDG 11, "Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure", laments that "an estimated 3.8 billion people still do not have access to the Internet" before mentioning that "3 billion people worldwide lack access to basic sanitation and 3 in 10 people lack access to safely managed drinking water", giving you an idea of where the UN's priorities really are in this game. Personally, I would feel more comfortable if clean drinking water and sanitation were ranked higher than the Internet, but for the ecomodernist cheerleaders of the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution', living outside the global grid of controlled information must seem like a fate worse than death, or at the very least an outbreak of cholera.
The pamphlet for Goal 7, "Affordable and Clean Energy", displays three wind turbines in its heading image, and suggests that countries can meet this goal by "investing in renewable energy resources, prioritizing energy efficient practices, and adopting clean energy technologies and infrastructure". Not mentioned is the fact that each of the those turbines will have used approximately 1200 tons of concrete, 300 tons of steel, 3 tons of aluminium, and 2 tons of rare earth minerals in its production, nor is there any indication that those behind the SDGs are aware of the inevitable crisis of global energy infrastructure as peak oil really starts to bite, and the alt.energy 'solutions' fail to deliver. "Nearly 9 out of 10 people now have access to electricity, but reaching the unserved will require increased efforts," efforts that may serve to be as fruitful as the frenzied beating of Icarus's wings as the air becomes thinner, and the wax melts beneath the blazing heat of the Sun. At the time of writing, my society is in the shadow of a mysterious new virus which, in severe cases, seems to produce symptoms akin to altitude sickness. At the risk of overextending my poetic license, might I propose that Mother Nature is sending us a message: that our civilization has gone as high as it can, and that a sharp descent back down to Earth is now unavoidable?
Ironically, given that the Manifesto was billed as an alternative to "People are Bad Environmentalism", the underlying assumption of the ecomodernists and their allies in the technocratic establishment is that human activity is so intrinsically destructive to the natural environment that all we can possibly do to preserve civilization is to create technological closed loops to reduce our apparent dependence on the ecosystem. Thankfully, we live in a universe in which that is impossible, and the technocratic fantasy of a Blade Runner 2049-style metropolis surrounded by acres of artificially 'rewilded' no-go areas will never actually come to pass.
However, many of those attempting to realize this cybernetic daydream are extremely well-funded, and if left to their own devices could cause a great deal of havoc on human societies and the ecosystems upon which they depend. A good case in point is the 'New Deal for Nature' currently being hyped by an assortment of NGOs and transnational institutions such as the UN, the World Wildlife Fund and the World Economic Forum. The NDFN calls for 30% of the globe to be set aside for 'full protection' and another 20% for 'sustainable management'.4 For an idea of how this conquest of half the planet would play out, we only need to look at the conservation parks already carved out by organizations like the WWF in cooperation with other NGOs, governments, and transnational institutions. Even moribund neoliberal mouthpiece The Guardian has had to admit that, in setting up these 'Protected Areas', the WWF has been implicated in the rape, torture, and murder of indigenous tribes such as the Baka 'Pygmies' of the Congo, and of land-grabbing in collusion with corrupt governments and corporations, although these critical articles are currently hidden from search results on their website (someone from one of the Guardian's powerful backers must have complained). The WWF have even been known to support sterilization programs and a shoot-on-sight policy that used the phrase "kill the unwanted". These 'Protected Areas' generally end up ecologically compromised in the absence of experienced tribal stewardship, if not carved up by mining companies. The fact that the contemporary Left is more upset about croaky-voiced lobster enthusiasts than an actual cabal of wealthy white eco-fascists supporting brutal ethnic-cleansing in the name of 'conservation' is a bitterly ironic example of mass-media sleight of hand. Survival International CEO and tribal advocate Stephen Corry has written:
Both military conflict and the growth of information technology must be seen as the major polluters they are. The first is barely mentioned in climate activism, and the plan for the second is the exact opposite of what’s needed, with yet more energy-hungry “artificial intelligence” lined up to monitor our lives for the benefit of industry and state control. If we’re going to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, we must also reduce dependence on “smart” tech, and we must accept the fact that real solutions aren’t found in marketing gimmicks like “net zero,” offsetting, carbon markets, or “pricing nature.” Real solutions are found with the local peoples that have successfully been creating and managing the world’s biodiversity since prehistory.
New Deal for Nature: Paying the Emperor to Fence the Wind, Counterpunch 2020
Grassroots activists savvy to this kind of greenwashing would do well to note that "net-zero carbon by 2025" is written into the three 'Demands' issued by Extinction Rebellion, and that the official XR website points campaigners to check out pro-fracking ecomodernists the Breakthrough Institute to find "more information about the possible solutions" to help achieve this goal.
William Gibson's 1981 short story 'The Gernsback Continuum' tells the story of an architectural photographer who witnesses a parallel universe in which the atomic utopias of 1930s American sci-fi had come to pass:
Here, we'd gone on and on, in a dream logic that knew nothing of pollution, the finite bounds of fossil fuel, or foreign wars it was possible to lose...
Behind me, the illuminated city: Searchlights swept the sky for the sheer joy of it. I imagined them thronging the plazas of white marble, orderly and alert, their bright eyes shining with enthusiasm for their floodlit avenues and silver cars.
It had all the sinister fruitiness of Hitler Youth propaganda.
With hindsight, the ecomodernist visions of smart-cities powered by fusion energy and genetically engineered biomass crops will appear as tacky and infantile as the Atomic Age fantasies described by Gibson's narrator. This is our good fortune. No matter what deranged mischief the green technocrats attempt to unleash upon our world, the cracks in the machine are already showing, like mossy ruptures on a concrete underpass.
Take courage. It's time to get growing.
“There’s been a critical failure in the past to look at which livestock systems and meats are part of the problem and which are part of the solution. The result is we are eating far less beef – 15 percent down in the last year and 50 percent since the 1980s.
“In order to support the transition to regenerative farming systems, which rebuild the fertility that has been lost during the intensive farming chapter, we actually need to eat more grass-fed meat, mainly beef and lamb.
“In the UK, two-thirds of the farmed area is currently pasture (grass and clover). These grasslands play a vital role in maintaining the soil carbon bank, as well as producing food we can eat, through the unique ability of ruminants to digest cellulose. Not only does this maintain a healthy soil, but the land works as a carbon sink – absorbing carbon dioxide. So, if you’re eating grass-fed beef, lamb and dairy, you can do so with a clear conscience, knowing you are part of the solution, not the problem.
“University of Oxford Professor Myles Allen has recalculated the amount of methane emissions from ruminants. As a result, he’s calling into question all the conclusions of the recent reports on climate change and agriculture. The inference from this new research is that we don’t have to stop eating grass-fed cattle or sheep.
“Instead of demonising livestock in general and cattle and sheep in particular, we need to differentiate between the animals that are part of the problem, namely intensively produced poultry, pork and diary products, and those that are part of the solution, namely grass-fed ruminants. At the root of the climate change problem is our fossil fuel consumption, this is where we need to take the most urgent action”.Patrick Holden, Director, Sustainable Food Trust
Nuclear energy presents a unique set of problems of its own that prevent it from being a feasible alternative to fossil fuels in the long term. Firstly, mining, transportation, and storage of nuclear material is really only viable with the background of a highly functional petroleum infrastructure, and even then it's shaky. Secondly, the environmental problems associated with both the extractive processes and the accidents that inevitably befall nuclear power stations are very serious, and almost a decade later, Japan continues to stumble in its efforts to clean up the Fukushima mess, which could take decades. Thirdly, and perhaps most concerning for our long-term comfort and survival, there remains no tried and tested method for safely disposing of the waste material aside from encasing it in steel and concrete and hoping for the best. In the centuries and millennia to come, our descendants could face the prospect of having to deal with the nuclear waste that we've dumped without even the advantage of our own technological 'solutions'; John Michael Greer in his 2009 book Dark Age America paints the stark image of condemned criminals forced to drag nuclear waste off to uninhabitable deserts marked off by animal skulls on posts and suchlike. With all that in mind, it is worth mentioning that organisms such as radiotrophic fungi do show some promise in helping to clean up irradiated environments. However, the mycelial clean-up solutions that have been proposed by the likes of Paul Stamets have generally rested on the assumption of a functional high-tech infrastructure (I would be fascinated to see any examples to the contrary). In the long run, we may have to accept that certain areas of the globe will be effectively uninhabitable for human life and let Mother Nature do her thing.
2020, p.39
Tollefson, Jeff. 2019. ‘Global deal for nature’ fleshed out with specific conservation goals', Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01253-z