Modernity and the Environment

Modernity: Problem and Solution?

• • Modernity (onset ~ 17th c.)

  • • market society and capitalism

  • • nation-state

  • • liberal democracy

  • • belief in progress through human agency and reason

  • • environmental degradation

    • modernity has also destroyed the planet

• • Ecomodernism: green modernity by making industry more sustainable via tech

  • holds that the modern advent is to blame for envir degregation but also tech and modernity can help

  • modernity in industrail casued it but tech can be the solution

• • Green Keynesianism: green modernity by making capitalism more sustainable via state

  • says capitalism is to blame

  • but argues capitalism can be greened through intervention by the state to be the solution

    =

    • the solution is more modernity to be greened to make sustainable

    • to know create and control towards envir ends to improve and redeemed the enviro

    • they make the same basic move that modernity is the problem and the solution

Ecomodernism: What

• Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of industrialization

  • em accepts the problems are bound up w modernity that they cant be dealt w in isolation

  • modernization has liberated humanity from nature are double edged cua they also degraded the env

  • but it also helped humans to grow but as energy production grows to meet population demands, co2 has risen

  • calls for a update or switchover

• Green modernity by greening industry (i.e., ecological switchover powered by tech innovation that supports sustainable production and consumption or “decouples” economic growth from environmental impact)

  • massproduction wouldnt only take products from en but instead would try to maintain the env sustainability

  • tries to overcome env crisis without leaving path of modernity

  • wants to restructure consumption through more new green tech

  • it wants to shift to new clean env tech

• Potentially complemented by demographic trends and future decline in global population

  • this decoupling can be enables not only by tech but also demographic trends that can complement one another

  • knowing that population growth decreased

• Green "super-industrialization" seen as a new and higher phase of human development

  • optimistic abt the em vision

  • if humanity draws on its growing social econ and tech power stabalize and protect natural world we can build a great world

Ecomodernism: When

• 1970s: advent of environmental politics; grassroots environmental movements; creation of environmental ministries that take a legislative-bureaucratic approach to addressing environmental harm

  • gassroots and west paid attention the enviro for first time

  • they set us rules across diff sectors (sector specific)

  • the earliest ints didn’t take a interconnected approach but it imposed domain specific limits

• 1980s: rise of ecological modernization

  • = em is what replaced this approach

    • it rec the interconnected nature and asserted inst can internalize env care

    • Environmental degradation calculable (e.g., cost-benefit analysis)

      • env problems should be acc for through monetary and scientific

      • focused on cost benefit analyze to incentivize efficient resource use

    • Environmental repair compatible with ongoing economic growth

      • the pursuit of econ growth can be resolved with env problems

      • by contract early em argue the two can be compatible and says greening isnt just good for env but good for the bottom line

      • sustainability pays

    Onward: ecological modernization a prominent, even dominant, environmental framework

Ecomodernism: Why is it appealing?

• Frames environmental crisis as a win-win business opportunity and avoids pitting government regulators against economic producers

  • it frames a zero sum game and stopping env harm

• Avoids addressing potential social contradictions and doesn’t posit a need for structural change

  • it puts a win win lost on addressing env concerns that sustainability is also a business opp

  • it avoids addressing would be social contradictions

  • not about shortcomings or extreme structural change but a techno inst fixed through the already social order

  • doesnt imply capitalism as unstable —> not a concern for em

• Neutralizes more radical environmentalisms (i.e., by making environmental repair status-quo friendly and compatible with modernity)

  • not only a tech solution but also pol accommodation

  • not opposed to modernization, em is status quo friendly

  • env harm didnt say we need to critique the modern project

  • wants to endure and alluring that human can control the natural world

Green Keynesianism: What

• modernity is the problem and the solution

  • not just industry but capitalism is the issue

  • focus on making capitalism more sustainable by the state

  • also called green deal

• Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of capitalism

  • pairs it w social egalitarian objective

• Capitalism can be made more sustainable via state intervention

• Left to its own devices, capitalism directs economic activity in ways that harm both environment and society

• The state can help repair both by a) directing investment and b) coordinating production for c) social and environmental public good

  • the state must intervene to help it by making new jobs.

  • can improve not only physical but lives of people

• States have historically used Keynesian economics to successfully address crises (e.g., “New Deal” response to military-economic crisis) and should do so again today (i.e., to address environmental-economic crisis)

  • capitalism is env but socially destructive

  • a tiny number of ppl mae investments and shape gov action

  • it externalizes costs onto community and prioritizes CEOS over the planet

  • the state needs to take the lead to repair both

  • egailtarian policies that prioritize public over private is better to help env but social good

• Keynes: economy driven by consumptive and investment demand which may need to be stimulated during crises through

  • by adopting the new deal franklin roosevelt helped implement keynes where economices were propelled by demand and investment

  • but in times of crisis demands can slow down

  • demand must be stimulated both through:

    • fiscal policy (government spending and taxation)

    • monetary policy (adjusting interest rates and money supply)

  • = in the past states like the us used this to respond to a military econ crisis and they can do so again to respond to a env crisis

  • states should use public investment and intervene to help capitalism more env sound

Green Keynesianism: Multiple Strands

• Aronoff et al. vs. those they characterize as "faux Green New Deal boosters”

• Both strands frame environmental degradation as a collective action problem (i.e., a problem it's ineveryone's interest to fix but about which no one actor has a sufficiently self-interested incentive to act)

  • they are not democratic and avoiding climate crisis it is to help public goods to help quality of life

  • requires democratic buy in where not only elites are capable of generating

  • collective action can be addressed which rely on the state

• Both strands contend that the state must step in to resolve this problem, but propose different degrees and forms of state intervention

  • 1)State intervenes directly in the economy (position Aronoff et al. endorse)

    • manages resource use toward societal and environmental long-term interest

    • via exercising “levers of public spending, coordination, and regulation”

      • state solved it by intervening in the economy, to act like a material manager to organize resource use ‘levels of public spending w coordination and regulation’

      • the state can prioritize env goals

      • they accept this one

  • 2) State intervenes indirectly in the economy (position Aronoff et al. reject as “faux Green New Deal”)

    • creates markets and financial incentives to promote environmental repair

    • via e.g., pricing natural resources, offering subsidies, levying taxes

    • they resist this

  • = either way the state needs to step in either actively or indirectly intervening

  • this turns the climate crisis as a opportunity by stabilizing the climate can go hand in hand w econ improvement (stays at status quo)

  • we can overcome modernity by rettoling diff aspect of modern project when the state makes capitalism more sustainable

Green Keynesianism: Why

• Green Keynesianism frames repairing environmental degradation as an economic opportunity

  • finds a silver lining in env degregation w econ opp

• Green Keynesianism constitutes a relatively big tent accommodating of political economic diversity

  • encompasses a wide range of politics

  • theres room for discrepancy here

  • theres diff flavors of this

  • diff levels of state intervention

• Insofar as capitalism is here to stay, making it greener may register as one of few available paths forward

  • capitalistic system is beyond debate and depolitized and looks like one of the few options as our disposal

  • we dont need to q modernity but should double down on it and use more modernity

Green Keynesian Challenge One

• Mann and Wainwright, Climate Leviathan

• Keynesianism functions through the nation-state’s ability to direct the movement of capital

  • a world state is necessary for it to work

  • but nation states has changed alot

• But states can no longer do this as effectively as they once could

  • neoliberalism and globalization have curtailed their economic autonomy

  • rise of international finance has decoupled capital accumulation from domestic politics

    • taming capitalism in ways to make it greener may now be well beyond the capacity of a traditional station state

    • only a global state can direct a global econ

• A global sovereign would be needed to pull the Keynesian levers of a now global economy, but this is a politically challenging prospect

Green Keynesian Challenge Two

• another challange is its material implications

• Keynesianism, including green Keynesianism, aims to stimulate

  production and consumption and this may still be materially taxing and harmful to the environment

  • imagine it powered by clean energy

  • the point is to power consumption and stimulate the economy but there are env consequences even if its greener

• In response, some green Keynesians argue that an increasingly service and experience-based economy may allow production and consumption to be less materially taxing (i.e., in as much as these goods are less resource-intensive)

  • green consumption will move away from material products to immaterial goods

  • this could diminish this negative env impact

  • they tap into this hope to spend money on dance classes rather then iphone

  • so maybe we can consume out way outside of env degradation

  • some argue the contrary where services are just as bad as material goods, and overall consumption has the decline itself

    • no job could be green in a overconsumption society

    • this poses a real challenge to green Keynesianism

Challenges to Ecomodernism

• Efficiency gains achieved by greener tech may be funneled into increased production and consumption, thereby erasing environmental gains

  • instead material gains might expand more consumption and might erase tech driven gains

  • rebound effect: where efficiency decreases the price but cheaper prices may increase consumption

• Where what’s economically profitable and what’s environmentally beneficial are in tension, the first is more likely to be prioritized

  • pollution prevention pays but not everywhere

  • whats best for bottom line may win over whats best for the env

• Technological improvements, even when they help the environment, may have socially regressive impacts

  • the replacement of lower tech by higher tech has in some ways overlapped w poor labour outcome and inequalities

  • green tech might come w a social cost

A Shared Challenge: Modern Ethos and Ethics

• Modern ethos and ethics promote a self-conceited view of human beings and a derogatory view of non-human nature

  • modern world view puts humans of a pedestal, says material improvemnets are due to humans

• Modern beliefs about human mastery, supremacy, and autonomy lead people to relate to the non-human environment instrumentally (i.e., as a means to human ends, rather than as an end in itself)

  • nature is there to serve us and exploited included through capitalism and industrial production to meet out desires

• From this perspective, trying to green modernity misses, and risks reinforcing, a root cause of environmental degradation (i.e., ethos and ethics of human self-conceit)

  • by egotistically prioritizing humans it offers us to destroy the env

  • trying to make modernity greener we miss the root cause of the problem and reinforces it

Modernity and Humanity’s Elevation

• Prior to modernity, social and political order were thought to be dictated by forces beyond human control (e.g.,nature, divine)

  • polity too forms that were dictated by nature of divine but this changes

• • But polity and society become objects of human design and agency in the modern era (e.g., social contract)

  • political order is smth humans can make by and for them selves

  • politics is based on a contract between ppl

• • Prior to modernity, knowledge was thought to be a fixed inheritance

  • affirms human agency and control

  • knowledge used to be fixed , guarded and passed down

• • But knowledge becomes open-ended and amenable to boundless human accumulation in modernity (e.g., via observation-based experimental science)

  • the material world is knowable to us through science and interrogate nature and extract its useful secrets and use the knowledge to improve the human condition

• • Prior to modernity, time was thought to unfold according to circular sequences beyond human command (e.g.,natural cycles, wheel of fortune)

  • in the past time was through to unfold beyond human control due to fate and fortune

• • But history comes to be seen as linear, progressive, and human-made in modern period (i.e., consequent to our ever-increasing knowledge of and control over the material world)

  • it takes a human rhythm and we decide how time unfolds and is human made progress

Modernity and Environmental Harm

• Many environmental ethicists argue that the modern elevation of humanity, and denigration of the nonhuman, has generated environmental destruction

  • its no wonder modernity has made unprecedented ecological destruction

  • it ignores how human agency and ideas of progress are connected and dependent on the env and non human things

  • reduced env that lacks ethnical values in its own right

• From this perspective, adequate environmental repair would require normative transformation of the way humans think about and relate to non-human others

  • modernity is the problem and cant be the solution

  • we must go beyond human centered

conclusion

• em modernity has brought us many things but as a big cost

  • the solution is to ramp up modern project to make it env sound

  • this means to embrace tech innovation

• for keynes

  • embrace capitalism and make it more sustainable

    • but how can it manage to rein in capital

    • how does cleaner tech translate to net ecological gains?

      • profits v env

• the env problem w modernity is that humans matter more then everything. Does modernity get at the heart of env crisis