Getting Hitched and Unhitched with the Ecomodernists
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3914285 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bronislaw Szerszynski (0000-0002-6546-1479, Lancaster University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 239-244 |
| Publication date | 2016-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/22011919-3616443 |
| OpenAlex | W2329477571 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 4 |
The authors of An Ecomodernist Manifesto offer us a new twist on an old argument: to avert ecological collapse we need not less modernity, but more. 1 According to the ecomodernists, our global predicament is like that of a truck driver in the midst of an emerging multiplevehicle pile-up; if we lose our nerve, and jam on the brakes, the disaster will overwhelm us.We must instead keep faith in the technological, progressive project, and press the accelerator down even further; only then can we get through the moment of danger and leave the pile-up of history behind us.Let us decompose this vehiculum novum into its two halves, and look at the torsion involved in this particular coupling of ideas-the ecological cargo and the modernist tractor unit, as it were.The 'eco-' prefix refers to their recognition that "humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature." 2 Here, they seem to align with the direction of travel of the wider environmental movement.Yet the '-modernist' half of their name firmly asserts their belief that if this is to happen, it will not come about through any slowing or reversal of the modernisation process but only through greater energy use, urbanisation, technological innovation and agricultural intensification.In this they seem to set their trajectory at an angle nearing 180 degrees to the usual orientation of the environmental movement, which would more usually call for degrowth, ecological agriculture, contraction of energy and resource use and more 'natural' lifestyles.The ecomodernists believe that there is no contradiction here: anti-technological sentiments and romantic ideas of pristine nature were always stowaways, illicit passengers that did not really belong in the environmentalist package.If they fall off the back of the accelerating wagon, all the better.However, from the point of view of the wider ecology movement, the ecomodernist pantechnicon is overloaded with contradictions and its attitude wilfully obtuse; it is already
Political science · American Environmental and Regional History · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · History
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,63 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |