Tinkering Toward Salvation: The Secular Eschatology of Ecomodernism

An Ecomodernist Manifesto was published in 2015 by a group of professors, ecologists, authors, and nonprofit founders who found themselves disillusioned by the environmentalist movement’s inability to make meaningful progress towards climate change mitigation and for the reigning view that “human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse” (6). They based their manifesto (and ecomodernism broadly) on the guiding principles that humans should seek to decouple economic growth from environmental resources through technological innovation, that modernization is a liberatory force, and that advancing “democracy, tolerance, and pluralism” will bring about a “great Anthropocene” (31). 

Ecomodernists emerged as a reaction against the trend of apocalypticism and crisis rhetoric utilized by environmentalists beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the decades since, works like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), and the 1972 report The Limits to Growth have been heavily critiqued– and rightly so – for how the ideas propagated through these publications have entrenched an anti-human environmental ethos and provided justification for neocolonial and imperial projects. These works have been cast as alarmist, as “eco-catastrophism,” and ever since their predictions failed to come true, eco-eschatologies have been dismissed. The Earth proved itself to be more resilient than we gave it credit for, ecomodernists argue, and environmentalist views that claim otherwise are an impediment to achieving the abundance that lies at the heart of ecomodernist futurity. Technological innovation, modernization, and deregulation of “modern energy,” not reduced consumption or regulation, will lead to optimal planetary and human conditions. Ecomodernists maintain that environmental challenges do indeed demand human action, and they are aware of the threats to climate policy posed by skeptics and denialists on the right. Their solution is to advocate for “quiet climate legislation” to make progress and garner bipartisan support. 

The secular nature of ecomodernism’s eschatology is not wholly nonreligious; rather, ecomodernism participates in a discourse of boundary-making concerned with which forms of eschatology are acceptable within progressive environmental spaces. Peter Coviello has described secularism as a force of hegemonic liberalism, one that creates and maintains delineations between good religion and bad belief.

Ecomodernists utilize the discursive boundaries of secularism through their framing of apocalypticism or crisis rhetoric as bad belief. Such language strays too far from established science and rationality, leading to hysteria, fatalism, and poor politics. Ecomodernists critique “ecotheology” for being anti-human and alarmist. In a Breakthrough Journal article, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger offer their own “secular ecotheology,” which they term “modernization theology.” They argue that technology must be seen as “humane and sacred,” and should be celebrated for its ability to provide humanity with “experience of transcendence” in nature (17-18). Despite the claim that ecomodernism “is a work in progress and a broad church,” the movement is not wholly or even predominantly religious. Rather, I argue that ecomodernists engage in what Jere Kyyrö and colleagues call climate religion discourse (CRD) to simultaneously delegitimate their opponent’s views, casting them as irrational and superstitious, and uplift their own views as models of good religion.

Ecomodernism makes broad appeals to “humanity,” and vaguely cites the need to uplift impoverished people in “developing nations” as a reason for modernization and development. Coupled with their advocacy for deregulation and “quiet politics,” ecomodernism exemplifies the tendency of discourses surrounding the Anthropocene to depoliticize and abstract the particular, localized struggles of marginalized groups. 

Secular eschatology operates from a colonial/modern and unilinear perspective of time, one that assumes time is experienced identically across geographic and cultural contexts, thus displacing temporalities of the marginalized and the non-Western, many of whom experience time as nonlinear or plural. Always looming further down the unilinear road in secular eschatology is the threat of the end of time. Delf Rothe and others have outlined various responses to climate change within a secular eschatological framework, but what remains unique about ecomodernism is its refusal to contend with the possibility of the end of time at all. Ecomodernists are virulently opposed to crisis rhetoric and apocalypticism and see technology as a limitless solution to any environmental problems humanity may be facing.  

The ecomodernist end of times is an end of the need for time altogether; it is a transcendence of material constraints, a complete decoupling from earthly resources. Framing modernization as “the road to salvation” allows ecomodernists to foresee a potential end of material existence from which they have already been saved. There is no need to worry about the end, because we can hold it off indefinitely through our use of technology. 

Lauding modernization as the vehicle for the spread of equality, democracy, and freedom, ecomodernists ignore what Walter Mignolo calls the “darker side” of Western modernity: coloniality. Their advocacy for deregulation and criticism of left-leaning environmentalists has made ecomodernism an appealing ideology across the political spectrum, particularly on the right, and further cements the belief that addressing climate change through politics is impossible or ineffective. By upholding colonial/modern narratives of progress and capitalist visions of endless growth and material abundance, ecomodernism peddles a theodicy of a “good, even great” Anthropocene. Those who fail to accept the salvific truth of its principles will be left behind in the race of forward progress. 

This paper argues that in order to reject the secular eschatology offered by eco-catastrophism and ecomodernism, we must embrace a pluriversal conception of temporality, one that holds space for diverse interpretations of time that extend beyond the unilinear, and centers marginalized voices in the endeavor for planetary and human wellbeing. It has been argued that for many marginalized communities, the end of the world is already here; taking this seriously requires forming a secular eschatology that serves as a framework for navigating the dynamic between fatalistic negativity and utopian possibility.