By FERNANDO NOGUEIRA DA COSTA*

Ecological utopia without regression: The challenge of reinventing the future without denying modernity

1.

Utopia (from the Greek or-tops: “non-place”) is, classically, a projective critique in which one does not simply describe “an ideal future”, but exposes, by contrast, the contradictions, injustices or unsustainability of the present. When we apply this to ecological utopias, we find a tension between the legitimate critique of the capitalist system of infinite growth and the problem of historical reversibility.

Environmental criticism is based, above all, on evidence of ecological collapse due to climate change, loss of biodiversity, scarcity of resources, etc. However, history is not a straight line of back and forth, but is irreversible in many ways.

For example, new consumer habits (internet, commercial aviation, urban mobility, industrialized food), new social arrangements (urbanization, longevity, cultural diversity) and new technologies (digitization, mass electrical energy, global information networks) have profoundly changed human beings and their basic needs.

Pragmatically – and not ideologically –, we must recognize the impossibility of returning. Proposing that human society “return” to a localist, pre-industrial or low-scale structure is virtually impossible without an extreme catastrophic disruption, for example, climate collapse, nuclear war or major prolonged pandemics.

In reality, cultural expectations of consumption, mobility and personal autonomy are deeply rooted. Hence, there is a structural limit to proposals for regression: even communication technologies such as smartphones and the Internet are now perceived as fundamental rights by a large part of the population.

Logically, a “return to the past” would imply the loss of acquired rights. It would be politically and socially unviable without severe authoritarianism.

Ecological utopia is extremely important as a critique and warning against the risks of the current civilizational trajectory. However, it cannot be applied as a “return to the past project” – it needs to be thought of as an innovative transformation, capable of articulating new habits, new technologies and new values ​​without abruptly breaking with modern cultural, economic and social achievements.

The real challenge is: how to innovate in contemporary civilization without destroying the foundations built by modernity? This great historical question still remains open.

2.

Contemporary thinkers are trying to address this very problem in a non-regressive way. Many people, faced with the ecological crisis, have recognized exactly the problem that has arisen: it is not possible to “go back to the past” – it is necessary to reinvent the future based on the reality that has already been transformed by modernity.

Among the most important ecological ideas is the proposal to abandon the opposition between nature and society, a characteristic of modernity. There is no “pure natural world” to which we can return. Everything has already been “hybridized” by human action.

Its central idea is that we need to build a new (“terrestrial”) politics based on the reconnection between humans and non-humans (climate, soils, oceans, forests, etc.) without intending to erase what has already been done. This proposal would be to create local and global political-ecological collectives capable of accepting the hybrid world as it is – and redesigning economic and social practices without regressive fantasies.

Another line of thought recognizes that the climate crisis challenges the foundations of modern history, but does not attempt to abolish history. It proposes thinking about “double belonging”: we are citizens of nation states (with their borders, economies, cultures), but we are also members of a biological species (descendants of homo sapiens), in need of acting on a planetary scale.

In this proposal, it is necessary to articulate national policy and planetary policy without destroying modern democratic and social achievements, but rather expanding them.

Another current of thought has created the concept of “hyperobjects”: things so vast in time and space (like global warming) that they cannot be “understood” in a traditional way. The ecological response cannot be a “sacrifice” or a “mea culpa” religious, but rather a new type of aesthetic, ethical and practical coexistence with a world that has already been irreversibly changed.

Therefore, it is a matter of abandoning the idea of ​​ecological purity and building more realistic practices of coexistence with the contradictions of today's world.

In fact, none of the relevant or respectable thinkers today advocate a “return” to a pre-industrial society. The scientific proposal is a civilizing innovation, where technologies are reconfigured (not abolished), cultural values ​​shift toward sustainable coexistence, and political institutions evolve to incorporate new ecological realities.

3.

The critical starting point is simple: history does not go backwards – the challenge is to innovate, not regress. In the public debate, a very deep and real philosophical tension can be seen in the contemporary ecological movement. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze it with care and systemic rigor.

There is a structural paradox. Ecological activism, especially the most radical, often combines philosophical idealism and denial (or underestimation) of material determinations.

They believe that awareness, education and the mobilization of wills can structurally transform industrial, capitalist and polluting society. They assume that changing the “ecological awareness” of individuals and communities will automatically lead to a new sustainable socioeconomic order.

Thus, they ignore global productive infrastructures, fossil fuel energy chains, urban-industrial consumption patterns, technological and financial dependencies, all of which are materially rooted. They underestimate the logical, technological and historical barriers to system change: the very reproduction of current societies depends on material bases that cannot be changed by sheer force of will.

In more classical philosophical terms, idealism believes that changes in ideas (culture, mentality) can bring about changes in material reality. Historical materialism (as in Karl Marx) understands that material changes (technologies, modes of production, economic crises) are the determinants of the possible space for ideological transformations.

Thus, idealistic ecological activism desires transformation, but ignores or minimizes the structural limits imposed by material infrastructure. There are many concrete examples of this contradiction, such as in urban mobility: people advocate abandoning cars, but cities are materially designed for cars, with distant suburban areas, a lack of efficient public transportation, etc.

Organic food is advocated with the proposal of large-scale local and organic agriculture, but urban logistics, access to food and food security in global cities depend on industrialized mass production.

When it comes to reducing energy consumption, there are calls for drastic reductions in energy consumption, but the entire digital communication infrastructure (internet, servers, networks, Artificial Intelligence) requires increasing amounts of electrical energy.

The criticism is fair, but the proposed transformation is often unfeasible without catastrophic ruptures or new technological leaps that do not yet exist.

There is indeed a paradoxical ecological idealism: it believes in the power of consciousness to change the material world and does not consider the material, technological and historical rigidity of current social systems. Therefore, without seriously considering the material and structural conditions, ecological activism runs the risk of being reduced to symbolic moralism (greenwashing emotional or political) with no real impact.

Some thinkers, including ecological Marxists and systemic critics, try to address this dilemma by proposing more realistic forms of ecological transformation without falling into idealistic utopias.

*Fernando Nogueira da Costa He is a full professor at the Institute of Economics at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of Brazil of banks (EDUSP). [https://amzn.to/4dvKtBb]

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