MOD ERNI ST MOD ERNI ST BY JOHN ASAFU-ADJAYE CHRISTOPHER FOREMAN RACHEL PRITZKER LINUS BLOMQVIST DAVID KEITH JOYASHREE ROY STEWART BRAND MARTIN LEWIS MARK SAGOFF BARRY BROOK MARK LYNAS MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER RUTH DEFRIES TED NORDHAUS ROBERT STONE ERLE ELLIS ROGER PIELKE, JR PETER TEAGUE APRIL 2015 • WWW.ECOMODERNISM.ORG AUTHORS JOHN ASAFU-ADJAYE is an BARRY BROOK, an ecologist associate professor of economics at the and modeller, is professor of environ - University of Queensland in Brisbane, mental sustainability at the University Australia. His research interests are of Tasmania. He has published three in the areas of natural resource and books, over 250 refereed papers, and environmental economics, specifically in is a highly cited researcher. His work fo - energy and climate change economics. cuses on environmental change and synergies of human interactions with the biosphere. He is a BreakthroughSenior Fellow (2012). LINUS BLOMQVIST is Director of Conservation at the Breakthrough In - RUTH DEFRIE S is Denning Family stitute and a member of the Breakthrough Professor of Sustainable Development Advisory Board. His current research fo - at Columbia University. Her research cuses on how technological progress is examines human transformation of the decoupling humanity’s environmental landscape and its consequences for footprint from economic growth, and the implications of climate , biodiversity, and ecosystem this process for conservation theory and practice. services . Her most recent book is The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis . STEWART BRAN D is cofounder ERLE ELLIS is an environmental of Revive & Restore, The Long Now scientist at the University of Maryland, Foundation, The WELL, Global Business Baltimore County, and a leading theorist Network, and founder/editor of the Whole of what scientists now describe as Earth Catalog . His books include Whole the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecoprag - His research investigates human-man - matism , The Clock of the Long Now , How Buildings aged ecosystems at local and global scales with the goal Learn , and The Media Lab . He was trained in ecology at of sustainable stewardship of the biosphere. He is a Stanford and served as an Infantry officer in the US Army. Breakthrough Senior Fellow (2012). PAGE 3 • APRIL 2015 • AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO AUTHORS CHRISTOPHER FOREMAN MARK LYNAS is the author of is a nonresident senior fellow at the several books on the environment, in - Brookings Institution. His book The cluding High Tide ; Six Degrees ; The God Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice Species ; and Nuclear 2.0 . Mark is cur - examines the limitations of environmental rently a visiting fellow at Cornell Univer - justice advocacy. He is also director of sity’s College of Agriculture and Life Sci - the social policy program at the University of Maryland. ences, working with the newly launched Cornell Alliance Foreman is a Breakthrough Senior Fellow (2011). for Science. He is a frequent speaker on climate change, biotechnology, and the importance of science in society. DAVID KEITH has worked near TED NORDHAUS is chairman the interface between climate science, and cofounder of the Breakthrough energy technology, and public policy for Institute . His book Break Through: From 25 years. He is Professor of Applied the Death of Environmentalism , coau - Physics in the School of Engineering thored with Michael Shellenberger, was and Applied Sciences and Professor of called “the best thing to happen to envi - Public Policy in the Harvard Kennedy School, and spends ronmentalism since Silent Spring” by Wired . In 2008, he about a third of his time in Calgary, where he helps lead was named a TIME Magazine “Hero of the Environment .” Carbon Engineering a company developing technology to capture of CO2 from ambient air. MARTIN LEWI S is a senior ROGER PIELKE, J R. is pro - lecturer in the department of history fessor in the environmental studies at Stanford University. His research per - program at the University of Colorado tains to the historical development and and director of CU’s Center for Science political usage of key geographical ideas. and Technology Policy Research. His Lewis has coauthored two leading text - most recent book is The Rightful Place books on world geography. He is a Breakthrough Senior of Science: Disasters and Climate Change (2014). Roger Fellow (2014). is a Breakthrough Senior Fellow (2008) and a member of the Breakthrough Advisory Board. PAGE 4 • APRIL 2015 • AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO AUTHORS RACHEL PRITZKE R is president MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER and founder of the Pritzker Innovation is president and cofounder of the Break - Fund, whose mission is to support the through Institute. His book Break Through: development and advancement of para - From the Death of Environmentalism , digm-shifting ideas to address the world's coauthored with Ted Nordhaus, was most wicked problems, with a focus on called “the best thing to happen to envi - the policies and technological innovations necessary to ronmentalism since Silent Spring” by Wired . In 2008, he provide cheap, clean, abundant energy for all. She also was named a TIME Magazine “Hero of the Environment.” serves as Chair of the Breakthrough Advisory Board and co-chair of the Clean Energy Program at Third Way. ROBERT STONE is an award- winning, Oscar- and Emmy-nominated JOYASHREE ROY is ICSSR Na - documentary filmmaker. His most recent tional Fellow and professor of economics film, Pandora’s Promise , documents the at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India. anti- to pro- conversion of five leading She initiated and also coordinates the environmentalists who support nuclear Global Change Programme. Joyashree energy in light of climate change. Among his other films is among the network of scientists who is Earth Days , which premiered at the Sundance Film shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the In - Festival . He is working on a documentary on how the tergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She is a Break - Apollo moonshot was marketed to both the American through Senior Fellow (2014). public and the world. MARK SAGOFF is a senior fellow PETER TEAGU E is Senior Advisor at the Institute for Philosophy and Public at Breakthrough Institute. Previously he Policy and a professor of philosophy at served as Senior Vice President of Re - George Mason University. A trenchant search and Strategy at Nathan Cummings critic of the “scientization” of ecological Foundation, where he played a pioneering issues, Mark has argued that environ - role in funding work that has coalesced mentalism must speak to social values. His books, including into the ecomodernist movement. Before that he was a The Economy of the Earth (2008), are landmarks in the senior environmental policy advisor to Congressman Leon field. Mark is a Breakthrough Senior Fellow (2012). Panetta, Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein, and Senator Barbara Boxer. PAGE 5 • APRIL 2015 • AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO MOD ERNI ST To say that the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world. In this, we 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. PAGE 6 • APRIL 2015 • AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO ese two ideals can no longer be reconciled. Natural systems will not, as a general rule, be protected or enhanced by the expansion of humankind’s dependence upon them for sustenance and well-being. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world. Intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settle - ment — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts. ese socioeconomic and technological processes are central to economic modernization and environmental protection. Together they allow people to mitigate climate change, to spare nature, and to alleviate global poverty. Although we have to date written separately, our views are increasingly discussed as a whole. We call ourselves ecopragmatists and ecomodernists. We offer this statement to affirm and to clarify our views and to describe our vision for putting humankind’s extraordinary powers in the service of creating a good Anthropocene. PAGE 7 • APRIL 2015 • AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO 1 Humanity has flourished over the past two centuries. Average life expectancy has increased from 30 to 70 years, resulting in a large and growing population able to live in many different environ - ments. Humanity has made extraordinary progress in reducing the incidence and impacts of infectious diseases, and it has become more resilient to extreme weather and other natural disasters. Human technologies, from those that first enabled agriculture to replace hunting and gathering, to those that drive today’s globalized economy, have made humans less reliant upon the many ecosystems that once provided their only sustenance, even as those same ecosystems have often been left deeply damaged. Violence in all forms has declined significantly and is probably at the lowest per capita level ever experienced by the human species, the horrors of the 20th century and present-day terrorism notwithstanding. Globally, human beings have moved from autocratic government toward liberal democracy characterized by the rule of law and increased freedom.