Responding To The Politics Of Unsustainability

Carlos Rymer May, 2007

Towards A New Dialogue About The Movement

Responding to the “Politics of Unsustainability”: An Agenda For The Global Environmental Movement1 Recently, Bluhdorn and Welsh of the United Kingdom published a comprehensive overview of the state of environmental politics in the Journal of Environmental Politics (April, 2007). Titled Eco-politics beyond the Paradigm of Sustainability: A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda, the journal article concludes that the perceived progress in environmental policies and discussions (including the recent upsurge in media coverage about global warming) is in fact merely a discussion of managing our seeming inability to be sustainable and framing fundamental, “radical” changes in institutional action to influence markets in terms that sustain a politics of unsustainability (such as ecological modernization, sustainable development, alternative technologies, etc.). I do not intend to discuss their main arguments, but I want to summarize them here: •

The environmental crisis is worsening globally, and we are becoming attuned to solving one problem at a time through problem-specific fixes rather than society-specific fixes.

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The environmental movement has been almost fully integrated into governmental processes and discussions, which has tamed demands for scientifically justified, fundamental changes in human behaviors and institutional actions. Demands for sciencebacked changes have been neutralized and reframed as ideas that are now mainstream.

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We have been discussing how to achieve sustainability for a very long time, have created concepts that convey progress and satisfy people and the broader movement, and have established bureaucratic processes to “talk” about different issues, but have not addressed the fundamental problem of unimpeded, unnecessary consumption where it is very high.

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We have assumed that we can solve environmental problems through technological fixes, and continue to hold the assumption that the current democratic form of capitalism that promotes consumption cannot be modified.

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We have completely delved into discussions without setting concrete actions that affect society at all levels, and that in turn has put us far behind scientific measurements that indicate that planetary conditions are worsening.

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The author, Carlos Rymer, is a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York studying sustainable development. He is a campus climate challenge leader, state organizer in New Jersey, and leader of other efforts to reduce global warming pollution and fully place sustainability goals into society’s improvement. He may be contacted at [email protected] or 551-556-0189.

Carlos Rymer May, 2007 •

Towards A New Dialogue About The Movement

We have accepted a system where politicians act to do what consumers prefer (greater material consumption) and where consumers distrust political actions, thus preventing realistic dialogue.

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We have created a political-discussion system that has instead worsened our ability to address the environmental crisis through concrete actions that will ultimately nullify our negative environmental impact and allow us to make positive environmental impacts. These arguments are summarized from an academic point of view, and are more fully

explained in the authors’ article. Yet I am an activist, and I want to discuss this in terms of what this means to the environmental movement, and in particular to the climate movement, so I strongly suggest attributing any criticism to the section below, and not to what I’ve summarized above. As an activist who’s up-to-date with the progress of the climate movement, I am proud to conclude that we have made great strides towards getting the message out about the state of our climate, the actions that we need to take immediately, and the need to grow the movement further. With the recent national day of action in the United States, Step It Up, I believe we have enough momentum to enlist U.S. legislators to an agenda of reducing global warming pollution substantially. However, now that we have this momentum, we need to fully use it not just to ensure that we ensure a safe climate, but so that we enter a real sustainability revolution that will fundamentally change markets, consumer culture, and the process of politics to achieve the following goals (8-Point Plan): •

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world 90% below 1990 levels by the year 2030. This goal has been justified by the most current science, and it is one we in the climate movement must begin to embrace before we lock ourselves into a system that was designed to reduce emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, is not flexible, and does not address the necessary institutional changes to value natural and human capital (i.e. price ecosystem services and human depreciation so that our consumer culture is fundamentally placed within the framework of science-backed sustainability).

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Reduce the global ecological footprint to that which the Earth can sustain.

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Engage the developed world with the developing world in changing the current economic indicator, GDP, into a new, agreed-upon indicator that equally treats economic,

Carlos Rymer May, 2007

Towards A New Dialogue About The Movement

environmental, and social aspects as part of the human economy (this will involve substantial discussion about what should go into the indicator and how developing countries will measure them, and so will require large institutional changes and financial support). •

Engage the United States with the rest of the world in a discussion on how to fully price natural and human capital as part of markets, so as to change consumer culture.

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Engage in a discussion about necessary changes to the current political system so that consumers and politicians are better aligned with real necessary actions, whether they constrain or provide incentives (i.e. we need to make sure agendas are created based on real environmental and social needs, and not on special-interest desires).

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Establish a global agreement to protect environmentally and socially degrading businesses from losing market share (i.e. subsidizing them to change in order to do what is environmentally and socially required while maintaining a fairly competitive market) so they can profit from doing environmental and social good (and so that we tame the opposition rather than having them taming us).

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Fully fund the most innovative ideas and developments about how to progress towards a sustainable society that improves rather than grow.

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Rethink governments so as to ensure that different communities within a nation have political representatives (i.e. provide anthropologists, businesspeople, economists, engineers, environmentalists, scientists, sociologists, etc. with the right to have an equal vote in governmental decision-making). We cannot focus on one issue without addressing the broader crisis; doing so may get us

past one problem, but it will ultimately tame us after victory, leaving the rest of the crisis in a worsening trend. As a climate activist, I have been mainly promoting action to fight global warming, yet I believe that we have the capacity to avert the environmental crisis altogether. Therefore, I propose to the climate movement and the broader environmental movement to achieve the proposed agenda: •

Use the current momentum in the movement to reframe our demands in terms of solutions to the environmental crisis, not just global warming.

Carlos Rymer May, 2007 •

Towards A New Dialogue About The Movement

Demand 90% reductions below 1990 levels in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the United States and the rest of the developed world, and 60% by 2030 globally.

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Establish a large coalition of U.S. non-governmental organizations that includes all communities (scientific, environmental, religious, youth, etc.) and whose goal is to empower people to make decisions about their influence to create institutional change in order to achieve the goals (note: inner discussions and dissent are good, as long as they’re within the framework of the long-term, science-backed goals).

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Create a comprehensive, bold demand (such as the 8-Point Plan) that is approved by this large, inclusive coalition and externalize ourselves from partnerships that soften our demands so as to ensure that they are met through national legislation and global agreements that outline concrete, aggressive steps.

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Cast ourselves as the initiators of the dialogue about the politics of unsustainability and the institutional changes that must take place to value natural and human capital, change our consumer culture, and rethink government structure. The time to begin this discussion is now. Presidential candidates in the United States are

claiming to have bold plans to fight global warming, environmental problems are exacerbating, and attitudes in the global human society are favoring action that will do nothing less than solve human and environmental problems. A discussion about this is not something that should divide us; that is not my intention. Rather, a discussion about this and a positive reaction to this proposal may ensure that we achieve the greatest societal impact with the current movement we are building. Through the lens of the environmental crisis, there is no time to lose. We must talk now.