Context : Some “Green” political groups have decided that we all need nuclear energy, GM foods, lab grown “meat”. They have decided to call themselves “Ecomodernists.” These self anointed ecomodernists have taken it upon themselves to launch a “new wave of Green” and seek now to convert us all to their way.
This call to adopt technology to save humanity will make waves, journalists will write about it, politicians will promote it and philanthorpists will fund it. It is likely to become the major theme in discussions about “how to save the planet.” This is inevitable because the eco-technophiles are automatically aligned with the industries building nuclear power stations, creating GM foods and lab-grown so-called meats and building carbon capture plants. Support and funding will pour into their coffers and allow the tech-heads to spread the word. The public, in many countries, will love the techno-gospel message that we continue business as usual but switch to nuclear power and lab foods. People can continue their consumerist lives because the tech will sort out any negative consequences.
The mainstay arguments against nuclear power are basically now dismissed by the eco-tech heads who have aligned themselves with the industry standard propaganda that has been vomited into the public sphere for generations. Nuclear waste disposal? No problem, just bury it. Uranium mining? Just clean it up and it’ll be alright. Possibility of an accident? Throw some more tech at the problem.
Lab-foods are promoted by these people as lab production reduces the agricultural surface area which can then be “rewilded.”
It is easy to understand how, with some help from friends in industry, these “we mean well” eco-techers are becoming a rising force in the world of “Green” politics.
It’s a shame that the people promoting this vision have got things so profoundly wrong. It is important to understand that these people are fantasists and here is why :
Fantasy 1
Lab food can be open-sourced.
The reality is that these untested foods are patented and their production controlled by a tiny number of companies. So far so normal, the industry polemic that the “planet is safe in our hands” has been shown to be a lie over decades of public health disasters. Today we have an obesity pandemic, this crisis is directly linked to the food industries promotion of ultra-transformed foods. These foods are also responsible for a long list of other negative health impacts ranging from heart disease to cancer. Yet according to the eco-techers the same companies who have been poisoning people for decades and pouring money into the pockets of their shareholders are going to simply give up the lucrative lab-food patents they hold or will hold? Pure fantasy and it won’t happen. This path won’t lead us to some sort of Star Trek world where we all have food replicators in our homes and all is fine and lovely. It will most likely lead us to a dystopian Bladerunner world where a very small number of unelected people control all food production with no oversight.
The companies producing these fake foods are all based in the OECD countries. According to the eco techers this won’t be a problem and these companies will have a sudden “road to Damascus” moment and will freely share the tech with “developing countries”. Can any fantasy be so naive?
Fantasy 2
The problems created by technology can be solved by technology.
This has been an argument churned out by various industries, lobbies, politicians and fantasists for a long time, despite being shown to be an utterly flawed point of view. Whenever we have dropped a new technology onto the world it has created a wave of unforeseen and unintended new environmental and social problems. We are all ill, sickened by pollution, damaged by our food, harmed by our houses and misled by propaganda. Any eco-techer who doesn’t understand this must have their head buried in a compost heap.
Fantasy 3
Nuclear power produces little CO2.
This is the propaganda produced by the nuclear power industry and has been show to be completely false, nuclear releases 3.5 times more CO2 per kilowatt-hour than photovoltaic solar panel systems, 13 times more CO2 than on-shore windfarms and 29 times more than hydropower. An associated fantasy is that we can “green” uranium extraction, the industry response is that uranium mining is no more environmentally damaging than other type of ore extraction, which isn’t very reassuring. Mining, pumping, transportation etc all rely on fossil fuels. And another associated problem is access to cooling water, nuclear power production in France is already regularly reduced as the river flows, sources of cooling water, lessen and the water is warmer.
Fantasy 5
Enough nuclear power and lab foods can be brought online quickly enough to “save the planet.”
Concerning nuclear power this is debatable, nuclear power plants are notorious for running over time and over budget. Lab foods are still mainly in trial phase with some doubts being expressed about how well scaling up production will work. The defenders of lab produced food know that it can only be “green” if the processing uses renewable resources for it’s energy needs. In their heads this is no problem as the labs can simply use electricity from renewable sources but current energy markets and electricity supplies don’t work like that. On top of which renewable power would have to be increased massively to cope with this new demand which is basically “stop conventional agriculture and feed the world from hi-tech labs.”
Final fantasy
We have enough time to address climate change and related environmental problems before there is a catastrophic cascade collapse.
This is increasingly unlikely, too little too late is the message coming from an increasingly large number of scientists. Methane emissions from gas/oil production, landfill sites, rice paddies and cattle rearing continue to soar, Carbon dioxide emissions grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, global wildlife populations have declined by more than two thirds in less than 50 years, etc etc. Concerns about biodiversity loss are regularly dismissed as being fake news promoted by bunny huggers. A recent study of the Permian mass extinction has shown that this is simply not the case, dynamic ecosystems, thanks to a wide diversity of species, have built in redundancy, if one species disappears it’s role can be taken on by another species thus preserving the ecosystem. When enough species disappear this is no longer possible and the ecosystem collapses. Current biodiversity loss is at a higher rate than in any past extinction event. our ecosystems are becoming more and more fragile.
Permaculture and eco-realism
Things are not good, they are going to get worse and this is accelerating. Governments are increasingly preoccupied by war and defence. Environmental concerns are being sidelined in order to promote economic growth. People are more and more worried about their jobs and less and less concerned about having a liveable planet. People are also becoming weary of all the news about environmental problems and warnings about the state of the planet. They also feel dis-empowered and don’t know how to act, this is exacerbated by the propaganda spewed forth by various industries and their lobbies which is designed to confuse.
Fortunately there is a “third way” and it is called Permaculture design. Permaculture is, and always has been, about creating sustainable, healthy and resilient human communities. Permaculture designers are, in the main, profoundly realistic and have been working to help rebuild our current agricultural, social and economic systems. The main message coming from the professional Permaculture world is simple : “we have to act fast and effectively. The optimal way to do this is at a local level.” People redesigning and refitting their neighbourhood, bringing in sophisticated agroforestry for food production/species protection, building locally owned small scale efficient energy production systems and refitting the houses to reduce energy waste and make them more liveable. These things, and more, can happen very quickly and this is now essential.
For many years Permaculture designers have been calling for this type of change and have been helping to bring it about. Their message was “if we want to avoid the worse consequences of climate change and environmental destruction we must act”. Unfortunately governments over the years have failed us all, industries have continued to pollute and destroy, the situation has become critical. The message from Permaculture designers has changed and is now “Get on with making your local area as resilient as possible and help neighbouring areas do the same because that is how you and your children can survive through what is coming.”
Kicking the Can
Yep Steve, it's a robust argument for sure: *ecopopularism* is a shrewd label belonging to the same niche lexicon and survival manual as, eg, *amplified living*, *Bond villain*, *normalcy bias*, *transhumanism* and *ultratechnologies*.
Considered together such concepts are all part of a self-validating circular confection.
An overriding concern must be that this slow drip-drip of humbug and artifice is merely to defer mainstream acceptance of the Polycrisis, its implications and the urgent need to transition.