The idea that anthropocene — the human alteration of natural ecosystems — can be good or even great, as promised in the recently released Ecomodernist Manifesto, is purely delusional. Worse, it underlies a narrative in which the wholesale destruction of nature and of sustainable indigenous societies is repackaged as a noble mission — one whose ultimate purpose is the complete alienation of humans from the planet that spawned us.
Robert Jay Lifton noted that before you can commit any mass atrocity, you must convince yourself and others that what you’re doing is not atrocious, but rather beneficial. You must have what he called a “claim to virtue”. Thus the Nazis weren’t, from their perspective, committing mass murder and genocide, but were ‘purifying the Aryan Race’. They weren’t waging aggressive war but gaining necessary Lebensraum (territory). The United States has never committed genocide, but rather has fulfilled its Manifest Destiny. It has never waged aggressive war, but rather has ‘defended its national interest’ and ‘promoted freedom and democracy’.