Technocratic EcoModernism or Critical Modernism and Public Ecology? Why the Ecomodernist Manifesto and 'the Good Anthropocene' is not Good Enough

The recent writings of The Breakthrough Institute cumulating with The Ecomodernist Manifesto indicates there is a clear need to distinguish between technocratic/managerial modes of ecomodernism and a public ecology that can appropriate the better insights of ecomodern discourse whilst moving decisively beyond it. I suggest that whilst the ecomodern attempt to push back against fatalistic modes of “end times ecology” is not without merit, Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ tendency to conceptualize a post-carbon transition as primarily requiring a Schumpeterian-supplement to actual existing “neo-liberal modernization” (leaving all else intact) results in a technocratic discourse which fundamentally de-politicizes socio-technical and socio-ecological questions. This paper suggests that if we are to avoid the globalization of a technocratic ecomodernist project we need a public ecology. Public ecology fully acknowledges the urgency of achieving a socio-ecological transition and does not shy from the virtues of productivism. But it does argue that a new productivism that acknowledges as Latour (2010) suggests, we are all now enrolled in redesigning the anthropocene will require that we draw the productive energies of diverse workers, citizens and social movements into new modes of "high energy" politics (Ungar 2008). Public Ecology suggests we need to enact multiple modes of top down and bottom up modes of innovation and invention that draws from the broadest pools of knowledge and experience to fundamentally redesign the socio-technical and socio-ecological assemblages we find ourselves situated with. Moreover Public Ecology reclaims the best aspects of a critical modernism by placing questions of labour, ownership and control, institutional redesign and cultural change, as central to discussions of “the good anthropocene”.