Legendary energy consultant
Art Berman is a realist, but many of us see him as quite a pessimist as well.
Here, he argues that the Ecomodernists of the Breakthrough Institute are
optimists who miss or ignore some of the realities of energy and food
production. I generally like and agree with the economists, so I will be
critical of Berman’s critique.
Ecomodernism is generally
seen as a pragmatic form of environmentalism that considers economics, business
interests, and technology, and criticizes the influence of climate activists
and more hardcore environmentalists.
Berman first calls
ecomodernism’s ideas, which he describes below, as too simplistic and perhaps
too optimistic, since, as he says, that optimism is unwarranted because they
misunderstand energy:
“Ecomodernism offers a clean, linear narrative:
technology will rescue us from climate change and ecological decline. Nuclear
power will deliver dense, reliable energy. Agricultural intensification will
shrink humanity’s land footprint. Urbanization will concentrate people and
“spare” nature. Growth can continue. Nature rebounds. Risks become manageable.”
Perhaps he is correct here that it will be harder to solve these problems than they suggest.
First, he analyzes some ideas
ecomodernists have championed: dematerialization, decarbonization, and land
sparing. These, he calls the three pillars of ecomodernist thinking.
Dematerialization involves using fewer physical resources. A prominent example
is the smartphone, which can also act as many other things: camera, video
camera, flashlight, level, calculator, online computer, etc., etc. He states
that there is no global dematerialization or decoupling and shows a graph of
global material flows continuing to rise.
His argument is that
efficiency gains in some areas are overcome by the sheer scale of growth
globally. He also cites offshoring, as do many who have argued that decoupling
is not really occurring. I have examined this argument before, and I believe it
is certain that there is some decoupling occurring. However, it is difficult to
quantify it on a global scale. Offshoring is certainly occurring in several
sectors, but it is debatable how much and how it should be counted. While he
makes a good point, I believe he falls short here. High material flows will
continue as more countries move from developing to developed status. If we look
at so-called developed countries, then decoupling (minus offshoring) shows some
definite decoupling. We can do more with less, especially in the more
technologically advanced countries. While that may be offset by the less
efficient efforts of developing countries, it is still occurring and is still
significant.
He also says there is no
global decarbonization, and while that too is true, since global emissions
continue to rise, it is also true that several countries, including the U.S.,
have most certainly decoupled carbon emissions and GDP, as well as achieved
lower per capita carbon emissions. Of course, as shown below, this has not yet
happened globally.
I think we are certainly closer to a
point where decarbonization can happen. Again, we have to account for rising energy access
in the poor, underdeveloped, and developing countries. We know that globally, energy
access and energy consumption will increase as those countries develop,
regardless of the emissions from different energy sources. He gives a very
general argument, but I think a weak one, that using less emitting energy
sources won’t result in fewer emissions. What? That may be true globally as
global energy consumption increases, but it won’t be true in more and more
developed and developing countries as they use more decarbonized energy
sources.
Next, he states that the idea
that land-sparing due to agricultural intensification is a weak argument and
not happening globally. Again, it is the practices of developing countries that
are causing any global increase in land use for agriculture. I think his
argument is weak here, since we can clearly produce more crops on less land in
much of the world.
Again, I think that the
global total is not yet reflecting that the changes implemented in developed
countries are reflected globally, but one day they likely will be.
Does urbanization result in
land-sparing? While he acknowledges that urbanization often results in less
in-city per-capita transport emissions, that does not mean less total
throughput. To support his argument, he gives the following graph in a study of
60 Chinese cities, which shows that urban energy metabolism grows with urban
mass. China may not be the best example since it uses lots of coal. I am not
really sure how to interpret the following graph, and he does not explain it.
He merely says that focusing on specific areas where there has been
dematerialization, decarbonization, or land-sparing ignores the global picture,
which is all that really counts. Such selectivity gives optimism where it is
not warranted, he suggests. The idea is, of course, that the successes in
developed countries will eventually trickle down to developing countries, but
he does not acknowledge that at all.
Next, he argues that nuclear
energy is not the answer. Here, he cites the high cost of nuclear energy. I am
in basic agreement with him here. While I think nuclear energy can be very
helpful, it probably won’t be due to costs, long timelines, and risks,
including significant safety and regulatory risks and costs. Advanced nuclear and small
modular reactors are still expensive and have long timelines. The bottom line
is that while more nuclear power may help, it won’t happen anytime soon, and it
will be expensive.
Berman: Ecological Overshoot is the Real Situation and the
Real Problem
This is an interesting
analysis and, in some ways, echoes the concerns of the more catastrophist
environmentalists. Berman explains:
“Ecological overshoot is the core systemic risk of our
time, and it is the blind spot shared by mainstream climate policy, the
renewable transition narrative, and ecomodernism.”
“Overshoot means the scale of the human enterprise
exceeds Earth’s capacity to sustain it. Each year we use more energy,
materials, land, water, and waste-absorption capacity than the planet can
regenerate or safely absorb. As Figure 9 shows, this has been the prevailing
condition for more than fifty years. We’re already running more than three
times over capacity, and that’s just this year’s overshoot, not the cumulative
overrun we’ve been piling up.”
He makes some interesting
arguments here, but also relies on some cherry-picked data and assumptions that
may or may not be true. Earlier, he noted that the growth in the human
population, whether it stabilizes or not, won’t matter. Here, he gives the
whole human enterprise as the source of our overstressing of nature.
In the figure below, it is
shown that the total mass of humans and their livestock is now dominating the
mammals on the planet, with wild mammals in decline. However, 100,000 before
present, there were many megafauna: mammoths, mastodons, etc. that had quite a
lot of mass. It is likely that these megafauna were overhunted by ancient
humans.
Berman suggests overshoot is
being ignored because its effects are often delayed. He states:
“Our relationship with nature is the crisis. Overshoot
is the consequence. Climate change is one of the symptoms.”
Berman compares three
worldviews: mainstream climate policies, ecomodernism, and overshoot thinking.
For those favoring mainstream climate policies, he notes that carbon is the
issue and substitution (of low-carbon energy for high-carbon energy) is the solution.
For those favoring ecomodernism, he says, it offers a stronger version of the
same claim. It relies on technology to help us out of our predicaments and
favors urbanization and agricultural intensification. It relies on decoupling
and an optimism that suggests that our problems are solvable. Overshoot
thinking relies on a systemic framework. It simply acknowledges that we are
using resources and nature itself much faster than they can be replenished. The
first two, he says, underestimate the dilemma, framing it as a solvable
management challenge. Overshoot thinking, he says, is more uncomfortable. He
says the first two approaches are humanist and reduce nature to a set of
services. They rely on incremental advances, which he says won’t be enough to
solve our problems.
“Overshoot thinking is Earth- and process-centered. It
focuses on the macro forces that actually drive the system: population,
economic growth, energy use, material throughput, carbon emissions, and
ecological footprint. All of these have risen together since at least 1970
(Figure 15). Growth and overshoot cannot be separated. More population and GDP
require more energy and materials, which expand ecological footprint and
emissions. This is the basic reality that mainstream climate policy and
ecomodernism tend to minimize or overlook.”
He suggests ecomodernism is
worse than mainstream climate policy because it gives us false hope that these
problems can be solved at all. He says ecomodernism is big government.
“Ecomodernism’s rejection of nature is, at bottom, a
fear-based worldview. Like the demagogue who plays on anxiety, it implies: only
we know the way through this. It is the height of egotism—light on eco and
heavy on modernity, relentlessly human-centered rather than Earth-centered.”
“The more probable outcome is that we will reach for
comforting stories that promise abundance without limits—stories like
ecomodernism—because they flatter our preferred self-image and ask nothing of
us except belief. They cannot deliver what they promise, because they are built
on fallacies and on the same immature habits that brought us here: denial,
substitution for reflection, and the insistence that reality must negotiate
with our plans.”
That is perhaps a hard pill
to swallow, but is it really true? Is resigning to pessimism because there are
problems with other approaches that may be difficult to overcome, a smart way
to be? We do need to be realistic, but do we need to be pessimistic? His
pessimism reminds me of the late James Lovelock, who basically said we are
doomed, Climate change will win, and we will lose. Our natural systems just
can’t handle us. While I believe it is good to avoid overly optimistic thinking
when it is not warranted, we still need to try to do our best to solve
problems. His notion of overshoot thinking may provide a framework for our
predicament, but it does nothing to address it. His essay offers no way out,
only a resignation to our doom. It is perhaps a more realistic form of
catastrophism, but it is still catastrophism. Is he saying we shouldn’t try to
reduce carbon emissions and our ecological footprint? He doesn’t say. His
emphasis on overshoot thinking is perhaps good for us to contemplate as a possibility,
but we are humans, and we like to solve problems and will continue to do that
as we are able. My response is: ‘duly noted,’ but let’s get back to work.
I don’t see ecomodernism as
some kind of miracle philosophy, but merely an approach to environmentalism
that is not grounded in pessimism and catastrophism, neither of which offers
any kind of solution. We humans will continue to seek solutions to our
problems, regardless of their difficulty.
References:
Ecomodernism:
Modernity Without Ecology. Art Berman. Blog post. January 5, 2026. Ecomodernism: Modernity Without
Ecology | Art Berman
