logo
episode-header-image
Jun 2020
59m 36s

The Death of Neo-Liberal Ecomodernism? f...

DR. CHRIS KEEFER
About this episode

Ecomodernism holds out the promise of decoupling human flourishing from environmental impacts through investment in mission-oriented research, development and deployment of an array of breakthrough low emissions technologies that can transform industry, transportion, agriculture and energy systems. It is a movement founded and largely based in the USA which tries to create a big tent and appeals to an all of the above politics. It embraces the roles of private sector entrepreneurs, free markets, civil society and the state in pursuing their goals. I am joined by Jonathan Symons who argues that a real crisis like climate change requires collective agency in the form of state funded democratically controlled intervention. It's how we got a man on the moon, how we developed nuclear energy and how competent nations like Taiwan and Australia are containing the COVID pandemic. The market isn't up to the challenge. To fulfill its promises ecomodernism requires a social democratic politics. 

Up next
Sep 25
The Canada-US Trade War: A Bridge Too Far? w/ Jesse Huebsch
The Canada-US trade war is escalating, threatening to unravel decades of economic integration between two of the world's closest allies. Chris Keefer is joined by returning guest Jesse Hoops to examine how we got here, what Washington hopes to achieve, and how Canada can respond ... Show More
1h 14m
Sep 3
Megaprojects: Some Assembly Required w/ Ian MacGregor
Canada is once again attempting to build nuclear megaprojects after a long pause, making the experience of people who have actually delivered recent large industrial projects increasingly valuable. Ian McGregor is a veteran Alberta engineer, entrepreneur and industrial project de ... Show More
54m 11s
Aug 13
The State of Fusion Energy w/ Gerrit Bruhaug
Fusion has spent nearly a century as the energy source of the future. In this episode, I’m joined by fusion scientist Gerrit Bruhaug to ask what has actually been achieved, what remains unsolved, and why progress has taken so much longer than the early pioneers expected. We start ... Show More
1h 24m
Recommended Episodes
Nov 2025
How climate shocks could break the economy | Edmond Rhys Jones
Climate change isn't just reshaping our planet — it's also shaking the very foundations of the economy, says sustainability expert Edmond Rhys Jones. He explores the massive gap between what science tells us about the climate crisis and how the economy measures its impact, advoca ... Show More
12m 59s
Dec 2020
From Climate Crisis to Real Prosperity
Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, argues that the roots of the climate change threat lie in a deeper crisis of values. He suggests that we can create an ecosystem in which society’s values broaden the market’s conceptions of value. In this way, individual c ... Show More
57m 43s
Sep 2023
What the Industrial Revolution Teaches Us About the AI Revolution
Simon Johnson is an MIT economist and the co-author of a new book called “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity”. Simon’s problem is this: How do you create the conditions for technological change to benefit many people, rather than just a ... Show More
35m 10s
Dec 2024
From pond scum to premium skincare?
Decarbonizing our economies in the race to fight climate change demands a wholesale overhauling of all sorts of production processes to make them as sustainable as possible. Greening chemicals, which are used as ingredients in all sorts of products, is where U.K. startup Deep Blu ... Show More
8m 19s
Jun 2021
Reimagining the economy to save the climate
As the environmental future of our planet reaches a critical point, Dr. Andrew Steer suggests the need for disruptive and systemic change. This talk was filmed at TEDxFoggyBottom. All TEDx events are organized independently by volunteers in the spirit of TED's mission of ideas wo ... Show More
7m 13s