L3: Modernity and the Environment

Modernity

• (onset ~ 17th c.)

• market society and capitalism

• nation-state

• liberal democracy

• belief in progress through human agency and reason

• environmental degradation

Ecomodernism

green modernity by making industry more sustainable via tech

• Modernity in industrialism caused the degradation but modernity through tech is the solution

Green Keynesianism

Green modernity by making capitalism more sustainable via state

• Modernity through capitalism caused degradation but modernity through the state can be the solution

Ecomodernism: what

• environmental harm is integral to modernity bc of industrialization

• 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)

  • Growth without leaving the path of modernity

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

  • Decoupling complemented with demographic trends

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

  • Optimistic and hopeful vision of ecomodernists

Ecomodernism: when

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

  • Fell out of favor, ecomodernization replacing it

• 1980s: rise of ecological modernization

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

    • Incentivizes efficient resource use

  • Environmental repair compatible with ongoing economic growth

    • Sustainable resource use pays → can strive for economic development and growth without putting strain on environment

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

Ecomodernism: why

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

  • From zero sum game to positive sum game

    • Environment framed as business opportunity

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

  • Doesn’t call for any extreme structural changes, the changes needed can be completed through the current institutions 

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

  • Political accommodation → radical critique can be neutralized

Green Keynesianism: what

• Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of capitalism

• 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 directing investment and coordinating production for social and environmental public good

• 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)

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

    • fiscal policy (government spending and taxation)

    • monetary policy (adjusting interest rates and money supply)

Green Keynesianism: multiple strands

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

  • Through research and development

• Both strands frame environmental degradation as a collective action problem

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

Green Keynesianism: intervene directly vs indirectly

Solve the collective action problem

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

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

    • Do what is best for the people and the planet

  • via exercising "levers of public spending, coordination, and regulation"

Indirectly associated with faux Green New Deal

• 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

Call for active state to address capitalism negative impact of it on the environment

Green Keynesianism: why

• Green Keynesianism frames repairing environmental degradation as an economic opportunity

  • Like EM

  • State works to make capitalism more sustainable

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

  • Can accommodate a lot of different views of political economy

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

  • Can look like our only option

    • Capitalism here to stay, only option is to make it greener

    • One of the few available options

Green Keynesianism: challenge one

• Mann and Wainwright, Climate Leviathan

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

• 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

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

Green Keynesianism: challenge two

• Keynesianism, including green Keynesianism, aims to stimulate production and consumption and this may still be materially taxing and harmful to the environment

• 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)

Challenges of Ecomodernism

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

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

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

  • Overlap with poor labor outcomes … = social costs

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 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) →

• 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)

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)

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

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

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

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

Modernity and environmental harm

Many environmental ethicists argue that the modern elevation of humanity, and denigration of the non-human, has generated environmental destruction

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

• Through this view, we cannot repair the environment though tech or state

  • Modernity is the problem but CAN’T be the solution

• Something beyond is needed to be able to repair