Nach dem Regen

After weeks if not months without rain, it was almost as if I had forgotten the feeling of getting soaked while biking home from work. Still, not even the pouring physicality of the rain was enough to bring real orientation in time and space.

One moment I am on my way to Guangzhou, the other back driving on winding roads along the Pacific. Intellectually, I am in the midst of a similarly strange frenzy as I struggle to make sense of conflicting intuitions about emancipation, urbanization and the macropolitics of nature. In some ways, it was easier back when “ecomodernism” did not exist and I only had my own ideas to make sense of.

One thing I am struggling with right now is how ecomodernism relates to the seemingly radical idea that “nature needs half”. Personally, I would say that ecomodernism actually goes even further and envisions a comprehensive decoupling of nature from the economy. Yet, some prominent ecomodernists like Erle Ellis seem to disagree. And of course, in reality, with real people living off the land, it seems slightly unrealistic to suggest that we should turn the whole planet into a national park. At the same time, these are not only philosophical debates but something that has real implications for how we for instance view biofuels (and, thus, BECCS) in the fight against climate change. Well, back to work.