Brad Allenby, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Arizona State University, suggests in an essay at Earthvision website that ideologically driven environmentalism is failing, that there is a need for a new environmentalism which he terms ‘phoenix environmentalism’. Allenby writes that:
“Phoenix environmentalism rejects Edenic teleologies and static utopianism and accepts complex adaptive systems as preferable models of our current reality. This is a difficult step, for it cuts strongly against powerful existing emotions. It means accepting that humans will continue to impact evolutionary biodiversity, while creating designed biodiversity in companies and laboratories; that the world’s ecosystems will change profoundly as a result of human activity; that more technology, not less, will characterize the world.”
Read the full essay:
As readers will recall from their training in the classics (or Harry Potter), the phoenix is a bird that burns in old age, to be reborn from its ashes. Regarding environmentalism, a recent poll sponsored by Duke University speaks to the burning and old age: only 10% of those polled identified the environment as one of their top concerns, compared to 34% listing the economy and jobs. This would not be remarkable if we were in a recession, but it is quite significant given that the economy has been growing for a couple of years. Moreover, 79% claimed they favored stronger environmental standards, but only 22% said that environmental issues have played a major role in their recent voting. Judging by the almost total lack of environmental discussion in the last presidential election, even that 22% number is a gross overstatement of voter interest.
These numbers are in a sense simply validation of a trend that has been apparent for at least ten years. Classic, ideological environmentalism, born of the 1960’s, is not just in trouble; as the Nietzschean “The Death of Environmentalism” notes, it is deceased as a viable mainstream public policy discourse. With notable exceptions, the environmental community has not adjusted to this reality, instead huddling in an ever shrinking self-selected band of true believers waiting for the rest of the world to recover its senses and return to the alter. This can be seen in the unchanging negativity of the rhetoric of most environmental organizations; in the tendency to cling to the Kyoto Treaty as if it were the only talisman capable of granting safe passage to the future; in continued efforts to halt rather than appropriately shape powerful technological waves such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Thus, it is not surprising that to some the poll data represented “a clear disconnect” (the quote is from William Reilly, former U.S. EPA head). But in reality it does not. For most Americans, environmental issues have always been only one good among many, and in general as the most obvious environmental problems have been addressed, they have switched their priorities to other good they also value, such as jobs. For classic environmentalists, on the other hand, the environment is a transcendent value, and thus cannot be balanced away in such a risk/benefit calculus. The disconnect, therefore, is an artifact, and an indicator, of an environmentalism whose age has passed.
But there is a phoenix at work here, and an important one. It has several characteristics. For one, it is more systemic than the environmentalism it grows from, and displaces; whether reified as “environmental justice” or “sustainable development,” it integrates social, cultural, and economic factors as well as just environmental ones. For another, it rejects environmentalism as a dominant discourse in favor of understanding, and creating tools and methods for introducing, environmental dimensions into other human activities, especially management and design of institutions, products, and services. It also tends towards pragmatism, taking the position that it is better to accomplish what can be done within the world as it is, rather than insisting on an Edenic world that can never be.
But perhaps most fundamentally, phoenix environmentalism rejects Edenic teleologies and static utopianism and accepts complex adaptive systems as preferable models of our current reality. This is a difficult step, for it cuts strongly against powerful existing emotions. It means accepting that humans will continue to impact evolutionary biodiversity, while creating designed biodiversity in companies and laboratories; that the world’s ecosystems will change profoundly as a result of human activity; that more technology, not less, will characterize the world. It means accepting accelerating change in all human systems, which, in an age that scientists have already entitled “”the Anthropocene,” or the Age of Man, includes most “natural” systems as well. Indeed, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, material flows of all kinds, the biosphere, oceanic and atmospheric systems — these are increasingly shaped by human design and human culture, and to deny this is simply to blink reality. In such a period of rapid technological, cultural, and economic evolution, ossified mental models based on unthinking attachment to past patterns will inevitably fail.
The solution is not to deny ethical responsibility for outcomes, or to retreat to irrelevancy, no matter how romantic. Rather, the challenge is to develop a phoenix environmentalism that enables us to ride turbulent waves of change while guiding them as best as possible to be ethical, rational, and responsible.
It reminds me of the piece by Steward Brand titled Environmental Heresis, click here.
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Thanks to detribe for sending me the Earthvision link.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Basically he is saying let the party continue but not feel bad about it.
I’m old enough but still young enough to remember the 1970 Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi. Lyrics go ..
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
Put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ’em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
and so on .. kitch 70s stuff but perhaps true.
We’ve never had it so good – so why would we be interested in THE environment – whatever “THE environment” is.
And it depends whether you’re technological optimist and a believer in the market. Are there enough resources to deliver all planetary citizens an Australian standard of living? What unseen damage do we do to sustain our lifestyle. Is it sustainable – or how long can it all continue – so we’ve never had it so good so bugga THE environment. Greed is good – let’s drink to that…
Still looking back Phil?
No Rog – just saying “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” .. and there’s more going every day.
and
do yo’all think there are limits to growth – or technology and market rules absolutely ?
Are we both arrogant and good enough to be “species-ist” and think we’re the top of evolutionary tree and can control/manage it all?
Just in the interests of maintaining the dialectic ?
Are we not happy with the personal benefits of a nice economy, abundant energy and great technology. Is not greed still good ?
P.S. We could move up from ancient retro to just retro with 1973 Pink Floyd and Dark Side of the Moon – “Money”
Money, get back.
I’m all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it’s a hit.
Don’t give me that do goody good bullsh1t.
I’m in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a lear jet.
Money, it’s a crime.
Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie.
Tedious.
Phil,
You appear to have completely missed the point about Phoenix Environmentalism, and your posts instead have offered common catch-phrases that could be themselves an excellent parody of the pre-Phoenix version of environmentalism. This rather proves the point of the original Allenby quotation I would say.
No I think it’s noveau nonsense. I think there are fundamental limits to growth.
“the Anthropocene” indeed … it’s all a lot more difficult than that – and anyone who says “complex adaptive systems” triggers my immune defence and b/s-ometer
Anyway I have posed some questions – TEDIOUS though they may be… along the lines of how long the party can continue ? (thanks Ender)
I think the Earth and its systems will have the final say anyway. We can rant all we like about “Edenic teleologies and static utopianism” and “complex adaptive systems” until we are blue in the face however really if the Earths climate goes south on us there is really little we can do.
The risk you may be exposing yourselves to, Phil and Ender, is that by denying the nature of the human beast, you become irrelevant and achieve nothing. Perhaps you are right Ender, to say that the biosphere will dictate the outcome. However this is washing your hands of the problem, your problem. It’s like driving through a green light into the path of an on-coming car chase on the cross road. You can sit there in the mangled wreck of your car claiming that you didn’t do anything wrong, which is true, but you’re still in deep manure.
We don’t get to choose whether or not we collectively have a severe environmental impact. That much is set in stone by China and India seeking to achieve our standard of living. We can hardly argue that they should enjoy their current material disadvantage. None of us are going to sacrifice anything significant to achieve a more equitable distribution of resources. Buy an expensive hybrid car? Pretentious, ineffectual arrogance. Give money to Greenpeace and put their sticker on your hybrid car? Conspicuous compassion. Why not donate to all the churches?
All we can do now is choose which environmental impacts we will accept and which are the ones we must focus our attention upon. If technology doesn’t save us, nothing will. The evil marketplace ultimately finances everything. It’s crash or crash through.
“Is it sustainable – or how long can it all continue ”
Lets take some specific examples of the absurd ways “sustainability” arguments often proceed:
Copper, food and weight.
In the 1970s all telephone networks depended on copper and estimates of global copper reserves were based on that demand. Today there is talk about the replacement of copper telephone landlines by wireless networks that are actually cheaper to install that copper, and glass fibre coaxial cable replaces much long distance copper. Thus sustainability and resource limits are intimitely connnected with technology change and limits to growth are expandible. The Club of Rome got all this absurdly wrong, and those who still follow the Club, like Professor Lowe of ACF, pretend to themselves these errors never occurred.
On the other hand food sustainability is treated differently to supposedly “limited” materials like copper. Most environmentalists have stopped taking about limits to food availability such as land area and water supply (for rather interesting reasons I suspect). Even though past food demand was substantially met by technology (not land for some 50 years), in this case the anti-tech crown get it wrong in a different way by, in effect, saying there are no limits to food supply by repeatedly saying “we have enough food” in discussion of food security, and actually actively trying to stop introduction of technology to extend food resources. Go figure, as they say in the USA.
Finally, economic growth does not necessarilly mean increased resource use. Alan Greenspan once famously referred to the “weightless economy” – referring to the fact that the weight (eg number of kilograms per dollar) of US GNP had not changed since 1900. Less and less material things were being used per dollar of trade, as the economy shifted to services and to lighter objects (eg trains) by design (driven by cost competition). The internet is adding to this trend. Buts and bytes are very light.
One source of these errors is to forget that thecomplex evolving “industrial ecology” is at least as important as natural ecology in the total cycling of many materials (well illustated by the rise in quantity of synthetic nitrogen in fertilisers). Hollywood movies ( “Greed is Good”) and reflex hatred of capitalism are too simplistic and too emotional to be of much value in analysing how to best manage these complicated global problems, and I distrust opinions that seem to be strongly based on their influence. But I concede, a lot of public opinion is driven by them, thats why propaganda is so harmful, and skeptics are so valuable.
First off can i just say: What is with that first sentence. That kind of language makes me want to repeatedly slam my hand in a car door.
Its university level arts postgrad mumbo jumbo – Prof. Allenby is a civil/environmental engo, he shouldn’t need to write such convoluted crap to make his point.
He could have written:
“Phoenix environmentalism accepts that the world is complex and always changing, and that the vision of a perfect, stable, green utopia is not realistic.”
There, I feel better now.
Anyhoo…
I like the idea of phoenix environmentalism. There are certainly plenty of environmental thinkers out there who bore me to tears. I think lots of environmentalists – and certainly great segments of the green groups – are stuck in the 1970s, when the work of a ‘greenie’ was to actually put the environment on the radar of the general populace.
I think that time is long gone, most people are aware of the environment as a broad issue, but the proposed solutions need work. The endless conference speeches of certain environmental personalities, which are big on why things are bad, and brief/unrealistic/simplistic on solutions make me groan.
I think phoenix environmentalism will be more at peace with the way the world is now – the world isn’t a bad place. It is our place, and we can continue to tend to it to help it adapt. Phoenix environmentalism will concentrate on the steps away from our present situation, rather than the vision of the perfect place we might like to be some infinite amount of time in the future – where everyone uses super efficient, fast, free public transport, or rides a bike, coal is a nice black rock and nothing more, plastic bags don’t exist, cows are our sisters instead of our dinner, and people would rather where hemp sacks than animal fur.
To concentrate on those small steps, you need to understand and accept how the world is now – that it is complex and adaptive, that good people don’t just go out and buy a worm farm and a 3A showerhead and a solar hot water system and a hybrid vehicle just because you want them to, and if you want to change things, you need to objectively think about how that might happen in a ‘good’ way.
I’m a little skeptical of Prof. Allenby’s article though. I hope he is not just looking for a debating point. Futurist bullcrap like “while creating designed biodiversity in companies and laboratories” doesn’t leave me with a good impression.
Of course Club of Rome got it wrong – but maybe they were crazy to try. However the fundamentals of the systems approach are still appropriate. Some improvement(substantial substitution) of technology is obviously possible – but is it infinite ?
On much of our sugar growing lands and and some cotton growing lands we have yield decline or plateau syndrome. Despite the best efforts of plant breeders and agronomic techniques. Why probably a milieu of factors – soil compaction, carbon decline in soils, mycorhizza decline, and bits of disease maybe from green trash blanketing (although that’s much better for erosion and organic matter).
Much of our grazing lands has symptoms of overgrazing. Some studies put 20% of northern Australia’s rangelands into the irreparable category. Is management on the rest getting substantially better? Are inappropriate fire regimes turning northern Australian grasslands into a thicket of native eucalypts and acacias?
What’s our success level with control of prickly acacia and mesquite?
How much of southern Australia is affected by increasing soil acidity?
Are we finding new crop lands – nope – in fact we’re putting houses on lots of it.
Are we hitting the wall in most of our major cities with water supply ? yep – why – sometimes population pressure, some of it is declining rainfall which may be a multi-decadal thing or may be an interaction of greenhouse gas increases combined with ozone depletion.
What’s our extinction rate with native marsupials. How are we with control of feral cats and pigs. Have we stopped cane toads geeting to Darwin or Kakadu. Kimberley next.
I’m usually positive towards considered selective genetic manipulation of crop plants. Putting the BT gene into cotton is a good idea – as long as we don’t get BT resistance. Insects still consume 30% of all our food despite all our technologies. Have the supposed success of BT cotton simply been due to dry seasons anyway? Similarly putting Roundup resistance gene into crop plants is good as long as they don’t hybridise with close relatives – leaving us with resistant weeds. But none of these things are limitless – not Jack’s Beanstalk.
And globally how are we doing with atmospheric CO2 – doing nothing really … just watching it.
And it’s very interesting that we’re finding that people don’t really want water conservation measures – if you’re rich enough you’d rather not bother thank you very much. You really want enough money to consume as much as you like. Now that’s OK – but are there limits and how likely are we to find them.
Oil supply will likely peak in the next 10 to 20 years – do we have any viable alternatives coming – hydrogen – nope. Bio-fuels – not enough for all ? Coal to oil gasification is probably best bet.
And what happens when China wants more of the pie than we’re prepared to share?
Don’t count on the Anthropocene just yet – just out of the woods and miles to go before we sleep.