Ecomodernism – the way forward or right-wing “climate change denying”?

Is Ecomodernism as attractive as it sounds?

The newspaper article quoted below is by Owen Paterson, who is a Conservative MP and Chairman of UK 2020, described as a centre right think tank. He was, until a year ago, minister in the UK coalition cabinet, and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He is described by George Monbiot as “the worst environment secretary this country has ever suffered” and by James Delingpole as “the other best thing in Cameron’s Cabinet: principled, informed, diligent“. So who am I to say whether he knows his onions or not?

However I like the idea, that he puts forward here, that it is man’s ingenuity and relentless innovation and progress that will prevent us ruining our planet and not the process of controlling mankind’s activities and preventing economic growth. Mr Paterson does not mince his words describing the green lobby and environmental campaigning NGOs as the “Green Blob”. However he does seem to back up his position with a number of cogent points.

I have quoted only parts of the article – but please go to the original which was penned by Owen Paterson himself on the 20th Sept 2015 in the Online Telegraph.

A new idea is gaining ground, under the term ‘Ecomodernism’, which celebrates that economic growth and technology can go hand in hand with green living.

For the past 50 years the environmental movement has been in thrall to a simple, powerful and utterly wrong idea: that the best way to save the planet is to curtail human activity, whether in the form of breeding, building, burning or business. Anybody who suggests a different strategy – that economic activity is not just compatible with environmental benefits, but vital to creating and improving them – has been howled down.

But that is changing, and a new idea is gaining ground, under the term “Ecomodernism”. The key idea behind Ecomodernism is that the more technology human beings adopt, the more they can decouple from dependence on the natural environment and live lives that are prosperous but green. The great Green Blob that dominates the public and NGO sector, whose reactionary tendencies I referred to when I left office as Environment Secretary last year, still refuses to recognise this.

Something remarkable is happening to the human race. Today’s seven billion people have both more food and more nature reserves than the five billion of 30 years ago. We in developed countries are using less land, less fertiliser and less water to produce more food. We are using less iron and less wood to build more buildings. We are using less oil and less gas to achieve each increment of economic growth. We are using fewer trees for paper and copper for wires, to communicate with…

The reason poor countries have the worst environmental problems is that they have not yet made these transitions. They are still relying on renewable, natural resources such as wood and bushmeat to support their lifestyles. They are still coupled to the natural environment.

I guess the crucial question is whether the world can develop “green” energy sources fast enough to supply the developed world’s needs and the rapidly expanding needs of the developing world before the greenhouse emissions change world climate beyond some catastrophe inducing tipping point.

However the idea of a tipping point is a whole new subject which is introduced rather nicely by this Guardian article by Andrew Simms, where he puts a rather positive spin on a climate change tipping point – not at all the usual doom and gloom.