Romanticizing Nature Won’t Save the Planet
Romantic ecologists want humanity to downscale development and harmonize with nature — but the solution to the climate crisis must be “ecomodernist”
No thinking person can nowadays deny human activity’s profound impact on our planet’s climate. There is reasonable debate about how severe the changes will be and what should be done to ameliorate them. But those who can agree on the underlying truth, that the climate is in rapid flux, propose conflicting tales about what led humanity to the present moment. Among environmentalists roughly two clashing narratives float around: The first one, which I shall call “ecological romanticism”, posits that as human development accelerated with the industrial revolution, humanity fatefully alienated itself from nature and — like Goethe’s Zauberlehrling — foolishly unleashed forces beyond its control. The opposing view, termed by some “ecomodernism”, instead embraces modern technology and places its bet on human ingenuity to solve the climate crisis.
In quotidian discourse, one seldomly hears those two positions articulated openly. But whenever someone bemoans that modern humanity has “lost touch” with nature or argues for deindustrialization and degrowth to combat climate change, the romantic view of ecology shimmers through. It is especially prevalent in circles on the left and the radical climate movement that are deeply invested to fight climate change. (Although it also enjoys some traction among ecofascists on the right, where its reactionary origins arguably lie.) But precisely because society needs the former two groups to push the fight against climate change, I would argue that their adherents should drop the romantic tale. On the one hand, humans generally do not like to be lectured about how the fruits of civilizations they enjoy (or in poorer parts of the world: still strive to enjoy) are actually conceived in sin and must therefore be abandoned. And what is more, the idea that humanity can return to a natural state of being is quite naïve, and if actually attempted would necessitate a genocidal program to crush world population numbers to a prehistoric low.
Like the romantics of the early 19th century, ecological romantics see nature as a source of spiritual inspiration for humanity. They stress feelings and emotions when they posit that humans ought to return to a holistic oneness with nature. They criticize technology not only if it produces obviously harmful side effects, like excessive carbon emissions, but regard technological development with fundamental suspicion and sometimes reject it outright. As they celebrate untouched nature, every form of technological advancement or domestication is a further step away from the pristine Garden Eden. Progress is indicative of humanity’s estrangement from its initial harmony with nature. Since technology is sinful, it can therefore never be part of any attempt to solve humanity’s ecological challenge.
Under the guise of what is sometimes called “deep ecology”, ecological romanticism stands in reaction to Enlightenment and humanist ideals, since it shifts the view away from the well-being of humans (or other sentient creatures), and instead expresses concern for the integrity of the whole planet. In this Gaian frame of mind, the planet is a giant self-regulating ecosystem, and any attempt by humanity to free itself from its initial natural dependence can only be seen as a foolish plot to disturb Earth’s equilibrium. While there is certainly something to be said about complementing humanist ethics with a concern for the well-being of other living creatures, it seems absurd to begin to worry about any matter — organic or inorganic — that does not possess a nervous system and is therefore incapable of feeling pain or pleasure. When I last checked, “the planet” was not aware of what happens to it or to strange life forms that inhabit it.
As any astute observer will have noticed, ecological romanticism is dripping with badly repackaged Christian doctrine. Where a cool-headed analysis of the benefits and externalities of the industrial age is needed, it instead engages in moralistic finger wagging. Through acts of sin and promethean haughtiness, humanity has ousted itself from the primordial Garden Eden. Finding itself in this self-inflicted precarity, it now needs to atone and embrace austerity and abstinence so that it may be readmitted into the kingdom of harmonious bliss. To stay with the analogy, the romantics’ feverish apocalyptic visions of climate change are already familiar to anyone who has read about Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis and can recall the heavenly plagues in Exodus.
The obvious religious nature of the romantic message has not even escaped James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia theory, which holds that the Earth is a holistic self-regulating ecosystem. Lovelock’s hypothesis has done much to fuel the romantic vision in its own right, and yet in recent years he has modified his thinking and is now embracing nuclear energy as a necessary tool to combat climate change. On the question of the climate movement’s religious overtones, he observed in an interview: “It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. […] The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”
Most fervently opposed to the hallucinations of the ecological romantics stands a movement assembled under the banner of “ecomodernism”. This movement was given some flesh in 2015 when a group of scientists published the Ecomodernist Manifesto to present its ideas about ecology and fighting the climate crisis. At the outset, its authors “affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse.” While the first proposition is compatible with ecological romanticism, the second one is clearly opposed to it.
The authors point out how “to make more room for nature” humanity should embrace technology to rationalize activities like farming, instead of expanding subsistence or ecological agriculture, which actually requires more space and wrestles more land from nature — land that could otherwise be returned to wildlife. They thereby point to a paradoxical flaw in the thinking of those who want to limit humanity’s impact on nature, but also advocate for ecological farming methods: Were humanity to follow their advice, we would actually have to claim more land from nature for cultivation and would thus disturb ecosystems to a greater extent. The only way to sustain a growing human population of seven billion is indeed to rationalize farming, not to downscale it.
The ecological modernists point to another paradox which cuts against the romantic’s inclination to glorify the pre-modern living conditions of hunter-gatherer tribes and communities relying on subsistence farming. “The technologies that humankind’s ancestors used to meet their needs supported much lower living standards with much higher per-capita impacts on the environment.” As technology modernized, it became more effective, thus enabling more people to be supported on less cultivated land. “Absent a massive human die-off, any large-scale attempt at recoupling human societies to nature using these technologies would result in an unmitigated ecological and human disaster.”
What counts for farming also applies to energy generation say the authors of the manifesto: “Substituting higher-quality (i.e., less carbon-intensive, higher-density) fuels for lower-quality (i.e., more carbon-intensive, lower density) ones is how virtually all societies have decarbonized, and points the way toward accelerated decarbonization in the future.” This can only mean, of course, to drop traditional environmentalism’s reflexive suspicion against nuclear energy, and to embrace it instead — at least until renewables are up to the task of providing clean energy for all of humanity.
As I mentioned before, ecological romanticism is barely ever openly articulated. The political project that might be most clearly informed by it is arguably the degrowth movement. More often, the romantic underlay simply shimmers through in the debate about the environment. And yet, this vagueness makes it all the more important to elucidate romantic influences and to expose the shady and unworldly premises on which they rest. Like all anti-modernist sentiments, ecological romanticism conjures the image of an idealized past as a way to overcome the dilemmas of the present. But any feasible and humane solution to the climate crisis must embrace modernity with all its potential heights and pitfalls. Modern development accelerated carbon emissions and led us into stormy waters — but modernity also harbors the potential to steer us out of them.
