I respectfully disagree with your position. Your premise is that the economy can grow indefinitely on a finite planet. I would suggest that this is not the case, and absolutely no data in the scientific literature supports this premise. In fact, fossil fuels are in decline (based on EROEI analyses), uranium ore supplies could not support a massive increase in nuclear reactors for any length of time, and a massive increase in solar and wind technology is theoretically possible, but shifting to electric transportation would likely exhaust several minerals that are necessary for their production. The problem here is scale – 9.5 billion people on the planet cannot all live like Americans. There simply are not enough resources, and so far, there is absolutely no evidence that we can “dematerialize” and grow economically at the same time. If you are interested, I’m willing to share all the literature I have on this topic.

Currently, the state of the planet is a clear indication that the scale of the economy is no longer in equilibrium with its resource base and waste assimilation capacity. To think otherwise in face of mountains of data is unethical. To promote growth as a way out of the mess caused by growth is insane. The size of the economy (in terms of material and energy throughput) must be in balance with the planets ability to provide resources and assimilate wastes.

Does that mean we have to go back to living in the stone age in order to come into balance? Hardly. I do thing a fascinating, and far more appropriate manifesto would be one of figuring out the pathway to this balance. How much is enough for the 20% of the population that consumes 80% of the resources? How, realistically, can we improve the lot of the poor without further degrading our environmental resource base? Do you really think that burning more coal can do that? Yes, it brings electricity to the poor, but why not leap frog past an old technology as the developing world leapfrogged past landline telephones? Also, agricultural intensification requires expenditures of LOTS of energy – right now about 10 kcal of energy to produce 1 kcal of food. Where will this energy come from? Oil? How are we going feed everybody – current estimates indicate a need to increase food production by at least 60%. 60% of the traded food in the world is relying on agriculture irrigated from non-renewable groundwater. How is that going to work? The “Ecomodernist Manifesto” is nothing but feel good pipe dreams , and I don’t care who wrote it, it doesn’t match the data we have and it doesn’t seriously consider the challenges that humanity will face before the end of this century.

Sincerely,

C. Brannon Andersen
Prof. of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Furman University