Modernity and the Environment Flashcards
(22 cards)
When did modernity begin?
Onset of modernity ~17th century
What is included in modernity?
- Market society and capitalism
- Nation-state
- Liberal democracy
- Belief in progress through human agency and reason
- Environmental degradation
General idea of ecomodernism
Green modernity by making industry more sustainable via tech
General idea of green Keynesianism
Green modernity by making capitalism more sustainable via state
What is ecomodernism? How does it hope to decrease environmental harm?
- Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of industrialization
- Green modernity by greening industry
– ie. ecological switchover powered by tech innovation that supports sustainable production and consumption or “decouples” economic growth from environmental impact - Potentially complemented by demographic trends and future decline in global population
- Green “super-industrialization” seen as a new and higher stage of human development
Ecomodernism 1970s
Advent on environmental politics; grassroots environmental movements; creation of environmental ministries that take a legislative-bureaucratic approach to addressing environmental harm
Ecomodernism 1980s
Rise of ecological modernism
- Environmental degradation calculable
– eg. cost-benefit analysis
- Environmental repair compatible with ongoing economic growth
Ecomodernism in the future
Ecological modernization a prominent, even dominant, environmental framework
Why do ecomodernism?
- Frames environmental crisis as a win-win business opportunity and avoids pitting government regulators against economic producers
- Avoids addressing potential social contradictions and doesn’t posit a need for structural change
- Neutralizes more radical environmentalism (ie. by making environmental repair status-quo friendly and compatible with modernity)
Challenges to ecomodernism
- Efficiency gains achieved by greener tech may be funneled into increased production and consumption, thereby erasing environmental advance
- 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
What is Green Keynesianism?
- Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of capitalism
- Capitalism can be made more sustainable via 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 crisis (eg. New Deal response to military-economic crisis) and should do so again (ie. to address environmental-economic crisis)
What did Keynes believe?
Economy driven by consumption 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)
What is the discourse on green Keynesianism having 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 (ie. a problem it’s in everyone’s interest to fix but about which no one actor has a sufficiently self-interested incentive to act)
- Both strands contend that the state must step in to resolve this problem, but propose different degrees and forms of state intervention
Position of green Keynesianism that Aronoff et al. endorse
State intervenes directly in the economy
- manages resource use toward societal and environmental long-term interest
- via exercising “levers of public spending, coordination, and regulation”
Position of green Keynesianism that Aronoff et al. reject as “faux Green New Deal”
State intervenes indirectly in the economy
- creates markets and financial incentives to promote environmental repair
- via eg. pricing natural resources, offering subsidies, levying taxes
Why do green Keynesianism?
- Green Keynesianism frames repairing environmental degradation as an economic opportunity
- Green Keynesianism constitutes a relatively big tent accommodating of political economic diversity
- Insofar as capitalism is here to stay, making it greener may register as one of few available paths forward
Green Keynesianism challenge (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
– ie. in as much as these goods are less resource intensive
A shared challenge of ecomodernism and green Keynesianism
Modern ethos and ethics
How does modern ethos and ethics affect green modernity?
- 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 (ie. 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 (ie. 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
- But polity and society become objects of human design and agency in the modern era (eg. 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 (eg. via observation-based experimental science)
- Prior to modernity, time was thought to unfold according to circular sequences beyond human command (eg. natural cycles, wheel of fortune)
- But history comes to be seen as linear, progressive, and human-made in modern period (ie. 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
