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The Sustainability Debate: Idealism versus Conformismthe Controversy over Economic Growth
ABSTRACT Since the publication of Our Common Future in 1987, scientists have struggled with the concept of sustainability and many denitions are now in existence. However, one can differentiate between a much smaller series of themes. Working from these denitions, we focus on six such themes. We will furthermore show that these themes are the battleground for two opposing worldviews within Western society which rule each other out. The rst, the idealistic strand, operates in clear opposition to mainstream politics. Economic growth in this worldview cannot continue because in the end it will destroy nature and with it human society. It is therefore usually labelled as pessimistic. This pessimism should however be viewed as a political tool in the search for the good society. By contrast, the conformist strand adherents are contemporary optimists. They do not envision a break with the past. The agenda here is that of political and economic continuity. Both sides in the debate claim the strategy of the other as impossible. The debate about sustainability should overcome this blockade to get back on course.
Introduction Since the publication of Our Common Future in 1987, scientists have struggled with the concept of sustainability and many denitions are now in existence. In 1989, Pezzey counted 60 (Kula, 1998, p. 147), Kastenholz could nd even more than 60 in 1996 (Steurer, 2002, p. 244). A comparison of the 57 denitions the MIT listed in 1997 (Murcott, 1997) shows, however, that one can differentiate between a much smaller series of themes. Working from these denitions, we focus on six such themes; these are presented here not as a means to reach a nal decision as to what sustainability is. On the contrary, what we will show is that these themes are the battleground for two opposing worldviews within Western society that are not complementary
Correspondence Address: Dr J. C. Hanekamp, Runderweide 2, 2727 HV Zoetermeer, the Netherlands. Email: hjaap@ xs4all.nl 1474-7731 Print=1474-774X Online=05=030349 14 # 2005 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080=14747730500367843
The Idealistic Worldview Resources In the last chapter of his book The Wonderful Century, Alfred Wallace lamented in 1898 the chaotic and wasteful plunder of the earth in a surprisingly modern fashion (Wallace, 1898). Such laments have proven to be even older. Van Zon was able to trace them back to the fteenth century when a ctional trial between a devastated mother earth and greedy mankind was published (Van Zon, 1996). In the twentieth century the plunder of the earth has developed into one of the main themes in the environmental debate, so many other books on this issue could be mentioned (McNeill, 2000; Van Zon, 2002; Zwaan et al., 2003; Diamond, 2004). Central in the sustainability debate, however, is the question of whether or not mining mother earth is, besides damaging nature, a historical cul-de-sac for humanity. Resources, so the argument goes, with the exception of renewables, are nite so, one day, standards of living must decline. In England, in 1865, William Stanley Jevons predicted that (admittedly) the use of coal had strongly enhanced the power and prosperity of England but that within some decades this would all be over, as the country would run out of coal resources (Kula, 1998). In the Dutch republic the same fears were uttered in the eighteenth century about the exhaustion of peat reserves (Verstegen, 2005a). The basic idea here is that resources are somehow given. Limits to Growth (Meadows and Meadows, 1972) visualized this in a graph by setting (all) resources in the year 1900 at 100%. Exhaustion, in this line of thought, is unavoidable, even if more resources are discovered. In our view, the fear of exhausting resources is the basic reason why the sustainability debate always focuses on future generations. We hear the echoes of Limits to Growth when writers talk about Minimizing resource depletion, terms used by Barbier in 1987 (cited in Murcott, 1997, 9) or, as Tolba wrote in 1987, the necessity of operating within natural resource constraints (cited in Murcott, 1997, 12). The most outspoken in terms of thrift are Opschoor and Reijnders, who stated in 1991 that use of relatively rare non-renewable resources, such as fossil carbon or rare metals, should be close to zero [our italics], unless future generations are compensated for current use by making available for future use an equivalent amount of renewable resources (cited in Murcott, 1997, 32; see also Verstegen, 2005a). This idea clearly aims at balancing present and future resource use. New technologies are used only to replace present resources. Goodland and Ledoc wrote in 1987 that resource use should not eliminate, degrade, diminish or deplete (cited in Murcott, 1997, 10). As an alternative to the use of non-renewables, which by denition must lead to a downfall of society either by exhaustion or by pollution, we see the idealistic notion that sustainability means a complete switch to renewables and, to start with, a slowing down of the pace of consuming non-renewables
This idea underpins the model developed by Dennis Meadows in the early 1970s; he tried to prove that further economic growth would inevitably lead to a breakdown of society. The model gave room for a decent standard of living if economic growth stopped in time and income per capita could be frozen at the European level which was half the level of the United States (Meadows and Meadows, 1972, p. 171). Further qualitative growth could only be accomplished within the boundaries of an equilibrium state. In this way, Meadows supported a moral appeal for a better world with a scientic model. This idea is still operating as a key element in the sustainability debate, as Boersema shows. He cited a 1997 survey by the World Bank which showed no addition of well-being once income per capita has surpassed a level of about $15,000 per year (in 1995). So, his argument goes, at some point, income growth becomes rather useless. If growth is no longer necessary we can focus on the quality of life, making way for a green society (Boersema, 2004).
Cultural Conservation In an emotional appeal to the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1985, Jaime da Silva Araujo of the National Council of Rubber Tappers, complained about the deterioration of the tropical rainforest in Brazil. The rainforests he knew comprised 15 native products. When the trees were felled, only one resource remained: cattle, which hardly needed labour. So, deforestation means job losses and the now jobless people have to move into the cities and
The Conformist Worldview Technology Whether or not we can believe that technological solutions lie at the heart of a sustainable future, is one of the most basic questions in the environmental debate. On the one hand we see within the environmental movement a deep distrust of technology. Without the technological revolution of the last century, many environmental disasters would not have been there: the changeover to fossil fuels causes the enhanced greenhouse effect and air pollution, CFCs damage the ozone layer. DDT, Bhopal and Chernobyl have become symbols of the failure of modern technology to create a safe and nature-friendly environment. A list of the environmental havoc caused by modern technology will be endless and so this distrust can be found in many classics in the environmental library like Silent Spring. Under the inuence of pessimistic writers such as Galbraith and Mishan (Steurer, 2002), the evils of modern society are blamed on technology: historically mankinds long record of new inventions has resulted in crowding, deterioration of the environment and greater social inequality, wrote Dennis Meadows (Meadows and Meadows, 1972, p. 182). Back-to-the-land movements, organic farming and the exemplary features of native peoples living in harmony with nature are the direct result of the distrust modern society has generated against technology (Veldman, 1994). It is also clear that the criticism focuses on big technology: large power plants, nuclear energy, shing nets longer than ever, broad highways, enormous agricultural machines etc. or, according to Weart, even on every new technology (Weart, 2003, p. 69). Small is Beautiful, published in 1973 by Ernst Schumacher, was the direct answer to the perceived havoc wrought by big technology and capitalism (Bramwell, 1994, pp. 50 53). Nevertheless, it has been admitted by many critics as well as supporters that technology is capable of many goods things resulting in, above all, a much longer life expectancy. And it is recognized by all that sophisticated clean technologies are needed to reach the sustainable world (Ausubel, 1996; Meadows and Meadows, 1972, pp. 181, 182; Grubler, 1998, pp. 365, 366). So, one of the prerequisites of the operation of technology in a sustainable society must be that it causes no harm, or in more euphemistic terms only acceptable environmental impacts, as Schultink stated in 1992 (cited in Murcott, 1997, 37). The distrust against technology is echoed in the stronger words of ORiordan and Yaeger in 1994 that technological advance must be part of a policy that guarantees the liveability of future generations (cited in Murcott, 1997). This is the classical contradictory position on science and technology found within the idealistic strand of sustainability. Though it is recognized that knowledge is never complete and certain, science and technology have to prove that new technologies are safe. Within the world of denitions, no author dares to be absolutely against technological progress but one can rather easily distinguish between the careful and the daring. The careful approach is the core of the so-called precautionary principle which tries to prohibit complicated technologies like nuclear energy and genetic engineering or conceptualizes the entire chemical industry as a historical mistake.1
Poverty Right from the start Gro Brundtland made it absolutely clear that talking about the environment meant talking about poverty. Poverty is the main obstacle to environmental protection and so economic growth is absolutely necessary. This is a moot point within the idealistic mind-set as low consumption levels seem to be more in line with an environmentally friendly way of life than material abundance. This culminates in the idea that Saint Francis should be an example for the environmental movement: being poor as well as able to talk with animals (Ponting, 1991, pp. 145, 146). In Wackernagel, the author behind the idea of the ecological footprint, we see even an idealization of poverty. He found what he called a model society in Kerala in south-west India (Wackernagel and Yount, 2000). Here people have a life expectancy of about 70 years, a high level of literacy and an income of (sic!) one dollar a day. According to Wackernagel, three ideals of sustainability have been accomplished here: almost Western levels of health,
Mentality, Individualism, and a Culture without Ambition: Concluding Remarks The conformist idealist concept is a viable one in the fundamental analysis of the issue of sustainability. To grasp why, we should start with Bramwell, who has argued that ecological thinking in the political sense of the word has changed from soft right before World War II to soft left afterwards (Bramwell, 1994, p. 2). This remark makes clear why being progressive has nowadays an entirely different meaning than in the 1950s. Redening progress are the words Wackernagel uses to illustrate his idealistic conception of the sustainable society. It aims at conservation of past objects and cultures, on lowered resource use and stable, non-growing equal living standards in the material sense; it also aims at the prevention of a future crisis. It is the reformulation of the model of Limits to Growth. Modern times have made this future collapse an ostensible possibility and so the idealistic vision tends to romanticize the world before modernity arrived. It was this conservative, anti-modern ring, which kept green thinkers in the right camp before the war. It glories the world which existed before big mechanized technology crushed nature, the world where people, despite their poverty, lived more or less in a stable relationship with the environment. During the revolutionary 1960s the political world turned upside down. What was once the programme of the progressives, planned or at least controlled industrialization, ghting
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S.W. Verstegen is a lecturer in economic, social and environmental history at the Free University, Amsterdam. He has published on landed elites, the history of industrial innovations, and the environmental debate. J.C. Hanekamp works at the HAN Foundation, a Dutch academic think tank focusing on public issues related to such areas as the environment, agriculture, biotechnology, and chemistry. These topics border more or less with issues of sustainability and precautionary thinking. This article is the second instalment of a series of articles dealing with these themes. The preceding article, published in Journal of Risk Research, dealt with the history of the precautionary principle.