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Conflicting Temporalities and the Ecomodernist Vision of Rewilding

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Non-Human Nature in World Politics

Part of the book series: Frontiers in International Relations ((FIR))

Abstract

Ecomodernism offers a progressive and humanist vision of the Anthropocene, one in which publicly funded innovation has made possible both universal prosperity and planetary-scale rewilding. However, given the present primitive state of technology, ecomodernism is surely guilty of fabulism as its realisation would depend on technologies that may not be available for many decades. Despite this, ecomodernists argue that there is an overriding moral imperative to accelerate the transition to a fully integrated high-energy planet even if this accentuates the short-term need for solar radiation management. The aim of this chapter is to review the debate between ecomodernists and traditional environmentalists in relation to these conflicting temporalities. It is suggested that science may be of surprisingly little help in settling the underlying macro-political disputes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While obviously diverse, “traditional environmentalism” is here used to denote the widely shared belief that human societies must harmonise with nature in order to avoid economic and ecological collapse. Specifically, Thomas Princen writes that “if there were a single philosophical position in environmental thought, adhered by all who are concerned about environmental destruction, it is that at the root of that destruction is human’s separation from nature” (Princen 2010, p. 82). Ecomodernism differs from traditional environmentalism in that it rejects this analysis and instead advocates further “trophic detachment” (see Quilley 2011).

  2. 2.

    For the purpose of this chapter, I have used The Ecomodernist Manifesto from 2015 as the primary source of what ecomodernism entails (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). The manifesto was an effort to forge a consensus position among 18 leading ecomodernist thinkers. This means that I do not specifically engage with post-ecological perspectives but rather build on the seminal work of Martin Lewis (1992) with regards to the politics of non-human nature.

  3. 3.

    For ecomodernists, rewilding is a future-oriented process by which land is returned to nature, and the degree of human intervention and management is reduced. For a broader conceptual discussion, see Gammon (2018).

  4. 4.

    The Breakthrough Paradigm Award is an annual prize offered by the Oakland-based ecomodernist think tank The Breakthrough Institute.

  5. 5.

    For a generalised discussion on the possible implications of technological transformation and astronomical trajectories, see Baum et al. (2019).

  6. 6.

    For a recent such attempt which, if nothing else, has received considerable traction in social media, see Bastani (2019).

  7. 7.

    The surface footprint of nuclear power is around 2 km2/GWe compared to 50 km2/GWe for photovoltaics, 300 km2/GWe for wind turbines and 2500 km2/GWe for biomass (Berger et al. 2017, p. 65). Note that the footprint of wind and solar is even higher if intermittency is accounted for.

  8. 8.

    The Na’vi is a species on the planet Pandora that embodies many of the ideals of deep ecology.

  9. 9.

    These risks include the possibility of uneven side effects in terms of altered precipitation and evaporation levels. Similarly, once initiated, a SRM programme would presumably have to continue until concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been sufficiently reduced or there would be a sudden spike in temperature. This so-called “termination problem” (Rabitz 2018) has been much discussed in the literature but the fact that the lifetime of sulphur aerosols in the stratosphere is limited to one to two years could also be seen as beneficial as it makes a SRM programme essentially reversible.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Therese Bjärstig, Elias Isaksson, Marcel Wissenburg, Jonathan Symons and Andrew Scerri as well two anonymous reviewers for comments that have been most helpful in revising this chapter. In addition, thanks to the generous support of the Karl Staaff Foundation, it was possible to present a draft version of this chapter at the WPSA Annual Conference in San Diego, California, in April 2019.

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    Rasmus Karlsson

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    André Saramago

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Karlsson, R. (2020). Conflicting Temporalities and the Ecomodernist Vision of Rewilding. In: Pereira, J., Saramago, A. (eds) Non-Human Nature in World Politics. Frontiers in International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49496-4_6

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