{"id":24817,"date":"2017-08-22T18:02:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T23:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24817"},"modified":"2017-08-22T18:02:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T23:02:14","slug":"back-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24817","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Back to the Future<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Last week I succumbed to a bad habit of mine that I\u2019ve been trying to put behind me \u2013 leaving snarky comments on ecomodernist websites. I won\u2019t dwell too much here on the ins and outs of the issues, or on ecomodernism itself \u2013 hell, there\u2019s a\u00a0whole page<\/a>\u00a0of this site devoted to that, even if it\u2019s not very up-to-date. In this post, I\u2019d just like to extract a few kernels from the issue that are relevant to my next cycle of posts. But first let me venture a working definition of the creed for anyone who\u2019s lived thus far in blessed innocence of it: ecomodernism typically combines overenthusiasm for a handful of technologies as putative solutions to contemporary problems (typically nuclear power and GM crops), underenthusiasm for any social orders other than capitalist modernity, a fetishisation of both humanity and nature as surpassing splendours each in their separate spheres, questionable evidence-selection to support the preceding points, and high disdain for those who take a different view.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
The question I want to address in this post is why I get so easily riled whenever I encounter professions of this faith. Well, I guess I got off to a bad start: my first experience of it was a brush with the absurdly apoplectic\u00a0Graham Strouts<\/a>, and then the only marginally slicker\u00a0Mike Shellenberger<\/a>. I\u2019d acknowledge that there are less strident voices within the movement who genuinely think it represents humanity\u2019s best remaining shot at escaping the dangers encircling us. And since\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>the remaining shots available to us seem pretty long ones to me, if the ecomodernists could only concede the likely length of those odds I wouldn\u2019t so much begrudge them their schemes. But \u2013 other than being the unfortunate possessor of a bilious personality, perhaps the likeliest explanation for my ire \u2013 I\u2019d submit three general reasons as to why ecomodernism gets under my skin.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to the Future Last week I succumbed to a bad habit of mine that I\u2019ve been trying to put behind me \u2013 leaving snarky comments on ecomodernist websites. I won\u2019t dwell too much here on the ins and outs of the issues, or on ecomodernism itself \u2013 hell, there\u2019s a\u00a0whole page\u00a0of this site devoted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15683,8075,9738],"class_list":["post-24817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-chris-smaje","tag-ecomodernism","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24818,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24817\/revisions\/24818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}