The Case for Ecological Civilization

A letter to an Eco-Marxist academic

I wrote this letter to a liberal academic in response to a recent book they published. I do not expect a response.

In my experience, today’s liberals are extremely uncomfortable engaging in intellectual discussions with folks who disagree with their worldview. They are happy to denounce their political opponents from a distance, but they typically do not engage in substantive conversations with them.

Hello,

I came across your work recently after listening to a podcast interview with you. Your work is interesting, I agree that the failure to value ecosystem services within the economy is a crucial failure in our current political system.

I am a fellow traveler in the environmental space and I am wondering if you would be interested in a conversation.

I am a deep green environmentalist, I have been involved politically since the 90s and I built my entire career around renewable energy. I currently make my living building industrial solar and battery storage projects across the USA. I was also at Cornell for a long time as both a student and research staff employee where I became deeply versed in all the science and tech around climate change and clean energy.

But at this point I am an apostate, I think we need a completely new ecological vision and that is what I would like to discuss with you.

I want to make the case for Ecological Civilization as a replacement for the current model of Green New Deal Eco-Marxism.

Decarbonisation is failing as a political, economic, and technology project and it has become a dangerous distraction from solving real environmental and social problems.

Renewable energy does not and will not replace hydrocarbons and we need to come to terms with this as a practical engineering reality. I am happy to detail all the technical and economic reasons why the political class will be forced to throw in the towel on decarbonisation, but it is too much for an email.

The simple reason is that energy demand is growing globally and we need all the energy we can get from all sources, but the energy needs to be non-toxic and ecologically sound (which is possible).

We need a new vision for how to achieve ecological goals that does not involve degrowth or deindustrialization, which are exercises in plunging advanced economies into poverty in the name of saving the planet, while leaving the world's poor destitute.

I think we need to harmonize culture and industry with nature instead of viewing human activities as inherently in conflict with nature. This is a moral, ethical, and spiritual matter first, before it is a technical, political, or legal one.

I am an optimist, there are loads of practical solutions out there.

We can get to net-zero carbon emissions through nature based solutions, in fact, nature is the only path to net-zero. 30 years of effort to decarbonize our economies has resulted in zero progress globally, more coal, oil, and natural gas are being burned today than ever before, and proven reserves have also grown. Peak oil is a busted theory, hydrocarbons are proven now to be wildly abundant, we will never run out.

Fortunately, Mother Nature will absorb all the carbon emissions since CO2 is a building block of life. It is a matter of embracing the carbon cycle rather than fighting it. The carbon cycle is tied to the hydrological cycle, reforestation induces rainfaill, restores groundwater, and provides shade that literally cools the planet.

The net-zero solution is 100% in land use and eliminating toxic pollution.

Reforestation, soil, regenerative agriculture in farming and ranching, permaculture in urban and suburban areas, restoring wetlands, peatlands, fisheries, all of these areas provide robust capacity to convert gigatons of carbon to life, and the numbers add up generously, logarithmically.

Current climate analysis generally dismisses nature based solutions because the scientists want to see carbon permanently sequestered and removed from the system. This is because contemporary climate science treats carbon as a threat, but this is a flawed assumption, a bad presupposition, carbon dioxide is not a threat, it is a biological gas, a building block of life. All soil, plant and animal life is made from carbon and nature is a giant carbon sponge.

If we put ecology first we can draw a straight path to net-zero, everything else is a distraction.

I have much more to say on clean energy tech, eco-philosophy, and politics but I am sure this is enough for now. I would love to dialogue with you.

Thanks,

Ed Dodge