Lecture 3

Question 1

What is modernity?

Answer 1

• Modernity onset around 17 century
  o Market society and capitalism, nation-state, liberal democracy, belief in progress through human agency and reason and finally, environmental degradation.

Question 2

Ecomodernism

Answer 2

Green modernity by making industry more sustainable via tech.

Question 3

Green keynesianism

Answer 3

Green modernity by making capitalism more sustainable via state.

Question 4

What are the main ideas of ecomodernism?

Answer 4

o Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of industrialization.
o Green modernity by greening industry. (example on slides)
o Potentially complemented by demographic trends and future decline in global population.
o Green super industrialization is seen as a new and higher stage of human development.

Question 5

What future does ecomodernism anticipate?

Answer 5

o Anticipates therefore a technological shift and hopes to disconnect economic activity from the ecological.
o Marks a new phase, because earlier stages focused on industrial.
o We can overcome environmental crisis.

Question 6

The rise of ecomodernism

Answer 6

o 1970s; advent of environmental politics; grassroots environmental movements; creation for environmental ministries that take legislative bureaucratic approach to addressing environmental harm. Cost benefit analysis.
o 1980s; rise of ecological modernization. Environmental degradation (example on slides) recognizes interconnectedness.
o Onward; ecological modernization a prominent, even dominant, environmental work.

Question 7

The appeal of ecomodernism

Answer 7

o Frames environmental crisis as a win-win business opportunity and avoids pitting government regulators against economic producers.
o Avoids addressing potential social contradictions and doesn’t posit a need for structural change. No focus systemic features of capitalism.
o Neutralizes more radical environmentalisms (i.e., by making environmental repair status-quo friendly and compatible with modernity).

Question 8

Main ideas of green keynesianism

Answer 8

o Environmental harm is integral to modernity because of capitalism.
o Capitalism can be made more sustainable via state intervention.
o Left to its own devices, capitalism directs economic activity in ways that harm both environment and society.
o The state can help repair both by a) directing investment and b) coordinating production for c) social and environmental public good.
o States have historically used Keynesian economics to successfully address crises (like the “new deal” response to the military economic crisis) and should do so again today (like addressing environmental economic crisis).

Question 9

What does Keynes stand for?

Answer 9

o Economy driven by consumptive and investment demand which may need to be stimulated during crises through both fiscal policy (government spending and taxation) and monetary policy (adjusting interest rates and money supply).

Question 10

Multiple strands of green keynesianism

Answer 10

o Aronoff et al. vs. those they characterize as faux green new deal boosters.
o Both strands frame environmental degradation as a collective action problem (example on slides).
o Both strands contend that the state must step in to resolve this problem, but propose different degrees and forms of state intervention.

Question 11

State intervenes directly in economy (strand green keynesianism).

Aronoff et al

Answer 11

 Manages resource use toward societal and environmental long-term interest.
 Via exercising “levers of public spending, coordination, and regulation”.

Question 12

State intervenes indirectly in the economy (strand green keynesianism)

Answer 12

 Creates markets and financial incentives to promote environmental repair.
 Via e.g., pricing natural resources, offering subsidies, levying taxes.

Question 13

Why green keynesianism?

Answer 13

o Green keynesianism frames repairing environmental degradation as an economic opportunity. It 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.

Question 14

Challenge 1 green keynesianism

Answer 14

o Mann and Wainwright, climate leviathan
o Keynesianism functions through the nation-state’s ability to direct the movement of capital.
o 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.
o A global sovereign would be needed to pull the Keynesian levers of a now global economy, but this is a politically challenging prospect.

Question 15

Green keynesianism challenge 2

Answer 15

o Keynesianism, including green keynesianism aims to stimulate production and consumption and this may still be materially taxing and harmful to the environment.
o In response, some green Keynesians argue that an increasingly service and experience based economy may allow production and consumption to be less materially taxing.

Question 16

Challenges to ecomodernism

Answer 16

• Efficiency gains achieved by greener tch 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.

Question 17

Shared challenge modern ethics and ethos

Answer 17

• 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 (i.e., 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 (i.e., ethos and ethics of human self-conceit).

Question 18

Modernity and humanity’s elevation

Answer 18

• Prior to modernity, social and political order were thought to be dictated by forces beyond human control (e.g., nature, divine).
• But polity and society become objects of human design and agency in the modern era (e.g., 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 (e.g., via observation-based experimental science).
• Prior to modernity, time was thought to unfold according to circular sequences beyond human command (e.g., natural cycles, wheel of fortune).
• But history comes to be seen as linear, progressive, and human-made in modern period (i.e., consequent to our ever-increasing knowledge of and control over the material world).

Question 19

Modernity and environmental harm

Answer 19

• 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.