Breakthrough?

In which we consider decoupling human activities from nature as manifesto

I was traveling and at a funeral this past weekend and didn’t have a chance to post. I was also exposed to Covid, so we’ll see what transpires this week.

I’ve been wanting to share the Breakthrough Institute as a serious resource for exploring how to respond to the Anthropocene.

As good a place to begin as any is their Ecomodernism Manifesto, which outlines a principled view, which is backed up with case studies and industry-specific analyses and policy prescriptions across the rest of the website.

The main idea is that it won’t work to “harmonize” human activity with nature. Rather humans need to use knowledge and technology to live intensely in less space, with fewer resources, to make room for nature to thrive as much as possible on its own.

I’m putting that in my own words to the extent I understand it today. Better for you to read Breakthrough Institute’s own words. At the very least, what these folks represent is a unique, as far as I can see, approach. It’s not romantic. It’s not denial. It’s a hard-headed look at what we can and can’t do. It may be idealistic in the sense of too optimistic when it comes to relying on human science, technology, and ingenuity — especially on the social side, the “human factor” (A4) — but at least they’re thinking carefully, doing the research, and exploring actual policy options with integrity. It’s not muddle-headed.

Here’s the intro. It is meant to be a teaser to get you to read the whole thing.

To say that the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans.

As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.

In this, we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse.

These two ideals can no longer be reconciled. Natural systems will not, as a general rule, be protected or enhanced by the expansion of humankind’s dependence upon them for sustenance and well-being.

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.

Although we have to date written separately, our views are increasingly discussed as a whole. We call ourselves ecopragmatists and ecomodernists. We offer this statement to affirm and to clarify our views and to describe our vision for putting humankind’s extraordinary powers in the service of creating a good Anthropocene.

(My emphasis on the main points.)

Continue reading at the Breakthrough website.