Alf Hornborg

We respond to David Schwartzman’s critique of our paper. We argue that his “solar communism,” his approach to the question of energy return on energy investment (EROI), and his critique of Georgescu-Roegen’s fourth law of thermodynamics situate him as a left ecomodernist, albeit with sympathy for degrowth. Schwartzman’s take on these issues illustrates how the ontological separation of human ingenuity and global social metabolism obscures the question of for whom a high-energy modern society is possible. This is further exacerbated by his commitment to the notion of perfect recycling, which has been proven practically impossible in inorganic systems.