Breakthrough Dialogue 2017: Democracy in the Anthropocene

Human societies have alternated between scarcity and abundance, disruptive social change and stable institutions, periods of peace and prosperity and episodes of violence and collapse for as long as there have been human societies. Over the last few centuries, and especially since World War II, the world has become become increasingly stable, thanks to rising affluence, democratization, and shared investments in science, technology, and infrastructure. But today, many of the institutions that have made those arrangements possible appear to be under assault, from illiberal populism on the right and postmodern relativism on the left. With faith in social authority, government, and politics waning in many parts of the world, what will be necessary to sustain social, economic, and environmental progress?

The failure of systems and institutions that are too big to fail has become a cautionary tale for our age: of systems too complex and large-scale to manage, authority too remote to account for local conditions or incorporate local knowledge, and technocrats too swept up in their own overweening ambitions. Stoked by Hayekian fears of collectivization on the right and Schumacherian dreams of localized economies on the left, we have talked small across the political spectrum for the last half-century even as the breadth and scope of human enterprises, the complexity of our technological systems, and the scale of political institutions necessary to manage both has only grown. Few voices have been willing to defend bigness. But on a planet of seven-going-on-nine billion people, is big inevitable? The long-term shift toward greater centralization—mega-cities, centralized electrical grids, industrial agriculture—has brought not insignificant benefits alongside the high-profile risks and failures that so much contemporary debate seems obsessed about. How should we balance our desires for greater control and “small-d” democracy with the increasing scale of social organization in the Anthropocene?

Ecomodernism envisions a dematerializing economy that makes fewer demands upon natural resources and ecosystems. Promising trends suggest such a future might be possible. Population growth is slowing and is flat or even falling in many parts of the world. Material consumption for many goods and services is saturating in developed economies. Rising resource productivity has enabled us to produce greater material output with less material input. But what are the consequences of these developments for the economy? Slowing population growth and saturating demand for goods and services has brought slower economic growth. Rising resource productivity has been closely coupled with rising labor productivity. The dark side of slowing economic growth, demand saturation, and rising resource and labor productivity could be secular stagnation, the jobless recovery, and rising inequality. What will be necessary to assure that a resource-efficient, decoupled global economy will be a prosperous or equitable one? Could nature-liberating technological change be as great a threat to shared economic prosperity as efforts to restrict economic activity in the name of the environment?

The last decade has seen growing attention to the sustainability of food systems, with much of the discussion led by prominent chefs, food critics, and journalists. The basic argument has been that food that is organic, local, grass-fed, and wild is more sustainable than that produced through the large-scale, industrial systems that dominate food production today. However, in recent years a number of careful studies have begun to suggest that the sustainable choice might not be so obvious. Humans use roughly 40% of the ice-free land on the planet to grow food and raise livestock, comprising the vast majority of our direct land footprint, and the expansion of cropland and pasture is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss. In this panel, we take a hard look at what kind of farming systems might practically bring the best outcomes for both people and the environment. Do the largely arbitrary definitions of “organic” and “conventional” serve us? How might we apply the best attributes of industrial and organic production systems in order to produce more and healthier food with lower attendant impacts on the environment?

The historic legacy of conservation has often been characterized by the displacement of people, truncation of rights, and blaming of victims. The litany of confusions and tragedies that have arisen from well-intentioned conservation efforts is long and ongoing. What would a progressive pro-people conservation look like? How might win-win conservation strategies facilitate the movement of people out of conservation zones while assuring them better land, water, and living conditions, and accelerate land-sparing modernization and access to markets and infrastructure?

To date, biotechnology has mostly been deployed in the agriculture sector, but now the same genetic tools are being harnessed for conservation outcomes. Scientists are working on novel applications of gene editing to improve the natural world’s resilience to human threats—for example, by altering genes to improve genetic diversity in endangered species. New techniques like gene drive also open the door to radical ecosystem interventions like killing off rodents that threaten native bird species, or eliminating the mosquitoes that spread Zika virus. “Genetic rescue” even offers the possibility of bringing back extinct species like the passenger pigeon or woolly mammoth. The pace of new genetic developments is occurring faster than the conservation community can debate them. Should humans intervene at the DNA level to preserve biodiversity, or leave nature alone? What is the state of the art with these cutting-edge technologies, and how should we understand the ethical and environmental debates that rage around them?

Sometime later this century, global carbon emissions will push atmospheric temperatures above the international target of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Ignoring this basic reality has allowed experts to craft goals and policies that do not consider a post-2°C world. That is the work of this panel. What sorts of social and economic impacts can be expected with warming above this target? How can climate policy shift to embrace a more pragmatic approach to resilience and adaptation on a hotter planet? Should we adopt a new target—2.5°C? 3°C?—or abandon targets and timetables altogether?

Energy is central to modern life, yet Africans consume just a tiny fraction of the energy used by citizens of wealthier regions. Demand for affordable and reliable access to energy is growing rapidly across the continent, driven by both economics and politics. In both Nigeria and Ghana, for instance, electricity has become a visible and powerful signal of the government’s ability (or not) to deliver jobs and a better life. In both countries, the current government won recent elections in part on the back of frustration at blackouts and slow progress on electrification. Our panel will consider different future energy paths for African countries and the linkages to job creation, public expectations, and democratic accountability.

The problem of America’s widening political polarization remains stubbornly unsolved. It is universally acknowledged that the Left and Right no longer share any basis for policymaking or even understanding of reality, but how to mitigate this—to return to a previous era of bipartisan cooperation, or to forge a new framework to break through hyper-partisanship—is an open question. Some organizations have proposed explicitly centrist, bipartisan, moderate, and/or unlabeled political coalitions that take the “best of both sides” to defuse partisan tensions. Others reject this approach, insisting that the only way forward on policy priorities (for the Left or the Right) is to soundly defeat the opposition. The election of Donald Trump threw America’s polarization into the sharpest relief yet, raising the question: is centrism dead? It is an essential question for a 21st-century American politics, in which social policy, health care, a shifting labor force, and environmental challenges all require innovative and unprecedented government action. Can we move forward as a nation with our politics as broken as they are?

Disagreements around scientific issues seem to be growing as a source of contention in political discourse. A lack of science literacy is blamed for a lack of action on a range of environmental and public health issues. Many advocates are calling for more science education and better science communication, and are demanding respect for the field of science and their expertise. But how we communicate is also a science, with a dynamic and growing understanding of the best ways to engage the public on complex technical issues. In this session, we’ll explore what the latest science says about how best to communicate around these issues.

Social values are inextricably entangled in environmental science and policy alike. Whether in shaping how wilderness is managed, what role science should play in policy, or which people and priorities ought to be privileged in land-use decisions, environmental questions are inevitably values questions. But acknowledging that these values exist is one thing; grappling with how they should be accommodated in our environmental decisions is another. Practically speaking, how should diverse and competing values be identified and brought into conversation? What institutions offer promising practices for integrating the values of various stakeholders with scientific expertise in a productive, actionable fashion? And how can we do so at a moment when the “commons,” expert credibility, and democratic institutions appear to have lost favor?

While much of the conversation on global decarbonization focuses on electricity, the power sector is only responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. In comparison with other sectors, reducing emissions in the power sector seems easy. In this session, we’ll explore the options and challenges for decarbonizing heavy industry, transportation, and agriculture.

The world’s population is continuing to grow and urbanize, and the need for strong cities has never been greater. The way we build cities has profound economic, environmental, and social implications. As ecomodernists, we recognize the centrality of cities to conservation, innovation, and human prosperity.

The cost of renting and home buying continues to escalate, leading to an affordability crisis in many cities around the world, especially in hot markets like San Francisco and New York City. The YIMBY movement believes the problem is that cities have too little housing and that the solution is to build more housing. But is it really that simple? Our panel of experts will discuss the political and economic challenges surrounding the housing market. They will address whether we can build enough housing to meet demand without unacceptably impinging on the needs and desires of established residents.

There are large, seemingly intractable tensions between African aspirations for bottom-up democracy and the centralizing tendencies of strong development states. How can aspiring African development states move fast to deliver (often highly centralized) modernization projects while retaining the legitimacy of their populations, many of whom have well-justified skepticism toward centralized power following long legacies of its abuse? How can governments balance the need for public buy-in with the imperative to move quickly and decisively—in particular, where it concerns large infrastructure projects that necessarily involve trade-offs between the collective good and groups of people who will lose out from modernization, at least in the short term (for example, those displaced by the construction of dams or the conversion of informal urban slums into new housing developments)?

Building on provisions set out in the Convention on Biological Diversity to increase global protected areas, a growing number of scientists argue that only by setting aside half of the Earth’s surface, land, and water for biodiversity conservation can we ensure the survival of the world’s species, habitats, and the ecological services they provide. However, increasing the amount of land protected globally from today’s 15% to 50% by mid-century could have consequences for people, which in turn could jeopardize conservation objectives, unless due consideration is given to human development and the rights of local communities. This session will explore the challenges, opportunities, and risks of realizing the Nature Needs Half vision. What does it mean for communities living at the frontline of conservation? What are the implications for how we develop and manage human-dominated landscapes like farmland and cities? And how should it be done to ensure that both people and nature benefit?

There are over forty countries interested in starting commercial nuclear power programs around the world. These countries come from a broad range of geographies, economies, and governing structures. As the United Arab Emirates sets to open its first commercial reactor this year, which countries will be next, and what challenges will they face? On this panel, we’ll explore why new countries are interested in developing nuclear power and what are the biggest challenges they face.

Over the last 25 years, during which the politics of climate change have become ever more polarized, there has been a sea change in attitudes toward gay and queer Americans. How did LGBT rights win, while environmentalists have lost ground? There are important overlaps: how voters identify in terms of LGBT rights and climate change have become core questions of political and personal identity, and there are extremely well-funded social movements to advance change on both issues. But there may be limitations to the comparison—the economic and technical obstacles to climate action have no parallel in the LGBT debate. On this panel, two veterans of LGBT rights campaigns and two veteran observers of the climate wars will discuss what Green can learn from Pink and what lessons might not apply.