This book is a unique interpretation of neoliberal global economics using Heidegger’s key
ideas through the lens of climate change and ecological integrity. Ruth Irwin considers the
role of global neoliberalism and its inadvertent environmental effects. She unpacks
Heidegger’s important ideas about technology, and reflects on his concepts, and their
insight on modern globalisation and climate change.
In this book, Ruth Irwin draws attention to commonplace economic assumptions, such as
‛progress’ and ‛innovation’, ‛individual rationality’ and the nebulous idea that the Invisible
Hand can create market equilibrium. This set of ideas focuses on human benefit and is
completely oblivious to the economic ‛externalities’ that flood the environment with tailings,
pollution, plastic, forever chemicals, climate emissions, and other forms of entropy. The
2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forged models of business-as-usual,
showing it would generate an increase in averaged surface temperature of 5.8° C above
pre-industrial levels by 2100 unless serious change is instituted in the way modern people
utilise resources by increasing consumerism. Later models revised these estimates
upwards.
Exponential economic growth continues to push climate emissions higher and higher.
There are multiple reasons for economic growth, and in this book, Irwin looks closely at the
way population forms an upswell that continuously pushes up consumer demand. Growing
population combines with a larger middle class, who have normative assumptions about
high levels of consumerism. These two issues are regarded as desirable by classical and
neoliberal economists, but as highly problematic by environmentalists. This is the nub of the rub between the two groups, and nobody seems to be able to transcend the arguments. Environmental concerns need to be taken very seriously, given the J curve of climbing climate emissions. This means that the notion that tradition nations need to undergo ‛development’ is also highly problematic. At the same time, condemning poor communities to lasting poverty while the climate crisis compromises their traditional food and water resources is not ethical either.
Environmental optimists assume that novel technologies will save the planet from the
ravages of modern economic consumerism. They buy into the neoliberal and classical
economic paradigm that technological innovation will produce progress. However, by the
time this book was published in 2008, and certainly by now, it is obvious that the plethora
of amazing green technologies that are awash in the modern world, from electric vehicles,
to solar panels and wind turbines, are not making any dent on overall accelerating climate
emissions. Jevon’s Paradox illuminates this problem; all the innovation created in the
market is absorbed and exceeded by economic growth. Rather than creating overall
efficiency gains, the efficiency is utilised to increase productivity and consumerism. Rather
than less emissions, innovation produces more.
Technology is understood as innovative and progressive in the language of economic
growth. But at the same time, technology often presents real dangers. The nuclear bomb
Heidegger deepens the critique of technology yet further. Not only is the concept of
‛progress’ not at all straight forward, but the calculating rationality that precedes
technological innovation informs the way modern people understand the world. This
proscribes awareness to a narrow range, rather than allowing an open hearted, fully
embodied, emotional and integrated way of belonging in the environment. Long before the
acknowledgement of mirror neurons, Heidegger called for a more engaged mode of being
in the world than allowed by the narrow conditions of individualistic rationality. Calculation
and measurement is enhanced by modern technology. Technology enables an acute way
of seeing the very very tiny, and the very very large. The Hadron Collider, the WEBB
telescope, even ubiquitous eyeglasses enhance the way that modern people perceive the
world. But there are drawbacks to these new improvements. Calculating and measuring
has utility, no doubt, but it also shapes the way that modern people think, obscuring older
and perhaps more genuine ways of knowing. Heidegger argues that technology helps to
separate modern people from a close understanding of ecological surroundings. We are at
a remove. Technology changes our relationship with the earth to interpreting it as a
resource, rather than our home. Heidegger is not looking for an ‛essence’ to truth. Rather
he is uncovering a broader and deeper range of understanding how interconnected we
each are, in the social and ecological context of the world.
Feminist philosophy has made huge progress in the critique of the separation of humanity
from environment, culture from nature, subject from object. Feminist philosophers like
Merchant, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Plumwood help to highlight the way modern onto-
epistemology separates culture from nature, and also sets out an embodied critique of this
separation. Haraway’s concept of the Cyborg is groundbreaking, but integrating the
embodiment of technology with culture, social and ecological relations. Philosophically,
Heidegger and feminism point out important directions for a postgrowth and post climate
change society.