12 Comments
May 22Liked by Michael Magoon

I have to agree with you. The modern “green” movement gets in its own way by opposing almost everything. I understand not wanting coal smokestacks, but when they also stand against Natural Gas, Nuclear, Hydro, and often times windmills (because birds), I have to question what the goal of the movement actually is.

As true stewards of life on Earth, we should celebrate human achievement, after all, we are animals on this planet too. Degrowthing our civilization, or freezing progress in place, increases the long-term existential risk to civilization and therefore life on Earth.

The fastest way to protect the environment, paradoxically, is to accelerate economic growth and human progress.

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Enjoyed. Is this debate losing the forest from the trees? Or mixing metaphors, are we missing the elephant in the room?

Because we're not trying to eat our pie and have it too, we're trying to eat all the pies for all time. The social framing may appear as "save the polar bears" because that's how people relate to the world. But it's not an accurate framing.

The present economic system is stealing from the future to enrich a few present. The theft is of such magnitude we risk contagious societal collapse, at a minimum. Failure of basic systems and movement of a billion people in warlike conditions, will make the Capitalism unviable. Risk becomes too unpredictable, the economy de-levers, and monetary velocity descends back to the generational transfer rate behind walls or on tropical drone guarded islands.

And this entire scam operates under the cloud of time uncertainty, humanity's juvenile maturity, and limited attention span. But there is no doubt, from the clear and consistent experience of history and science, what is in store for us. And let's not Dues ex Machina that.

The problem is not material progress, because that is happening little in the developed world. The problem is a consumption for status society that damages our bodies, social relations, and societal decision making today. And that game is deliberately rigged with false prices, so that insiders in a monopolistic marketplace can capture the surplus from today and the next millennia.

Show me a society today that is working with the rational risk adjusted prices for energy, investing in long-term adaptive infrastructure, managing agriculture so those fields still work in 6 generations, building so the product can actually be insured, and not filling their reproductive organs up with micro-plastics. We have a long way to go. And it shouldn't be much of a debate unless some ideology or system is committed to stealing.

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I would probably consider myself an eco modernist. Although I just think the environment is an important factor but not more important than long term economic growth. The greatest climate mitigation strategy would actually be increasing economic growth in climate vulnerable countries but unfortunately many of them (especially the ones in Africa) are hopeless.

I also hate it when an environmentalist talks about agriculture. Most agricultural regulations outside of chemical run off into rivers is probably useless. The most pro environmentalist thing for agriculture is increasing cereal yields per hectares. Precision agriculture is also reduce chemical demands from the agricultural sector. Unfortunately most environmental policy for agriculture is written by urban morons who have fantastical view of farm life.

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Thanks for the comment. I agree completely.

I would be very interested in hearing from other people who identify as an Eco-Modernist which they consider to be more important: economic growth or protecting the natural environment...

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Another subject where progress could solve environmental issues but reduce economic growth is for airlines, which simply buy carbon credits (notoriously fake or badly accounted for) and declare their flights carbon neutral, and are allowed to keep growing in passengers, instead of investing heavily in less carbon intensive flying like hydrogen, electric or other ideas. Same goes for big oil companies which could use more gains for progress in renewables but instead cling to their current model, again due to the fear of change.

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I believe carbon credits are overrun with fraud (as you noted). I do not see how that system will ever work. It leaves so much opportunity and incentive for fraud that I do not think that it could ever be made to work.

Big companies do not "cling to their current model... due to the fear of change." They do it because current energy systems (fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro) are far more cost-effective than other options. I seriously doubt that will change in the near future.

For the long run, it is better to offer research prizes for energy technology breakthroughs:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/innovating-the-next-energy-revolution

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I feel I’m an eco-modernist with priority to preservation before economic growth. At least in developed countries, I feel the marginal gain in comfort is not worth the accumulation of long term pollution that is created by things like intensive conventional agriculture, killing most insects, and then birds, which do not only live within the meager national parks that the non-eco modernist decided to leave, single use plastics, etc.

For example I disagree with your article that says that petrol is good for developing countries because cheaper than solar+storage, of course today it is, but if all countries were to invest heavily in different renewable energy storage tech, the price would probably be solved in 10 years. Who would have said that starlink launched in 2015 would have thousands of satellites in the air? Progress happens faster than you anticipate, so if from the get go you choose the easy path that you already know for sure craps out the planet, I have to disagree with that definition of progress, because then it is not durable progress, there’s no guarantee you can fix the externalities later, you’re just telling the next generation to fix it.

Degrowth is scary to many, and combined with the unwillingness for people to change, it’s definitely lost politically, i see the avalanche of “buts” every time i push people to ride their bycicle to work instead of their car. Now at least the birth stats show that we are stopping world population growth as soon as 2030, so that degrowth will come.

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May 21·edited May 21Author

Thanks for the comment.

If I am understanding you correctly, you seem to endorse degrowth. That does not seem compatible with eco-modernism as I understand it.

Why do you consider yourself an “eco-modernist?”

I would argue that there are many good reasons to support continued economic growth in developed nations. See this article:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-much-progress-is-enough

Just to mention some examples that you gave, intensive agriculture lowers the amount of land necessary to grow food, so it leads more land for wild habitat. Air and water pollution are on a clear downward trend in developed nations. The problems are actually worse in developing nations.

As for petrol in developing nations, I am not sure which article you are referring to, but it seems very unlikely that solar power + batteries will ever be able to run a transportation infrastructure. Solar radiance is very unevenly distributed, so you be leaving out much of the world, particularly Asia with half the world’s population.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/can-increased-windsolar-retire-asian

If solar + wind ever became more cost-effective then I would endorse it, but trying to force developing nations down that path now is horrible advice. They simply cannot afford it.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-sustainable-development-isnt

My definition of progress includes “over a long period of time”, so by definition it is durable.

If you want to bike to work, great, but forcing degrowth on people who you admit yourself do not want it is something that I could endorse.

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What do you think about carbon taxes,that both elon musk and steve pinker have promoted(neither could be categorised as a technophobic tradcon or woke envirocon)

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May 21·edited May 21Author

Thanks for the comment.

I wrote an article about carbon taxes. In summary, I am opposed to them, because they drive up the price of energy. I believe that the primary goal of government policy should be to promote long-term widely-shared economic growth. As this pertains to energy policy, this means abundant, affordable, and secure energy.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-a-carbon-tax-will-not-work

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“Most Degrowthers know that their agenda is deeply popular with most people, so they disguise their beliefs.“.

I believe you mean “unpopular?”

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Oops. Good catch. Corrected.

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