As climatic changes shift disease vectors and induce species migration through changes to habitats, creating new assemblages of species that allow some to prosper, others to die off, and new hybrids or adaptations to appear, so also with ideas and ideals that are shifted by environmental change. Species adapt to changes in their environment, whether through developing productive forms of resilience or through decline and extinction, but do so without the mediation of disruption to and transformation of their ideas about the world and ideals that orient them to it. Humans also adapt – whether successfully or not in developing resilience against environmental change – through their ideas and ideals, and only then through their institutions, material relationships, and social practices.
Understanding the planet that we inhabit and the changes that we have brought about, and must therefore adapt to, requires our catching a glimpse of the world in deep or geologic time. The natural scientist learns to see the world in this way, then – like the philosopher returning to the cave in Plato’s Republic – helps the rest of us see a bit of what this perspective offers. Empirical social scientists sometimes view the world in what Stephen Skowronek calls political time,6 understanding change scaled to decades or centuries of human history rather than millennia of earth systems history, and gleaning insights that would not be available to those of us experiencing a world of more limited time horizons.
Normative political theorists seek a perspective that is wider than political time – as this is necessarily contained within the period occupied by a single political community or regime, in order to follow how it changes and in order to observe patterns that emerge over time – so that they can trace the emergence and evolution of formative ideas and ideals across political communities and regime types, as well as through major world events and the appearance of disruptive and transformative ideas. In conversation with those viewing the world in geologic time and those viewing it in political time, the political theorist is thus well equipped to understand how changes at the earth system level interact with those in formative ideas and ideals, in turn shaping social and political institutions and practices. A disposition toward ideas, or a critical method of seeking to understand forces in the world through the ideas that animate it, political theory is less a collection of texts than an activity or quest. Our goal in this book will therefore be focused upon theorizing environmental politics in ways that assist in understanding the crisis of ideas described above. While this may involve some engagement with canonical texts in the history of Western political thought or contemporary political theory, its objective is to motivate and inform students seeking to understand how ideas may be complicit in the environmental crisis or constructive in addressing it.
Sustainability as emergent and disruptive ideal
With the emergence of the environmental crisis (discussed further in chapter 2), many of our received social and political ideals face profound challenges in accommodating new facts such as ecological limits to growth, or new kinds of transnational and intergenerational threats such as climate change. The existence of ecological limits to growth, along with the real possibility of approaching or transgressing such limits within our lifetimes, appeared as the kind of event or scientific discovery that would disrupt many of our received ideas and ideals. Not only could economic growth no longer feasibly be taken as an indicator of social progress (as discussed in chapter 5), but the crisis associated with the planet’s finite ability to generate the ecological goods and services upon which human societies and their normative aspirations depend now requires a broader reassessment of the role that social and political ideals, such as liberty and equality or democracy, play in orienting collective life. Long-settled norms of sovereignty are challenged as the system of states or resistance to international cooperation in protecting the global environment is viewed as a possible contributor to the environmental crisis. Conventional assumptions about agency and responsibility appear ill equipped to grapple with some drivers of environmental degradation or frustrate some promising environmental solutions. Attachments of community are likewise challenged as complicit, with new constructions of community offered as potential remedies. The crisis has required a rethinking of conventional theories of justice, with new conceptions and novel hybrids between existing ones allowing us to conceive of and articulate environment-mediated injuries and construct solutions in creative new ways. Examination of each of these ideals and its role in intensifying or diffusing the crisis forms the basis of this book’s eight substantive chapters.
Sustainability can be regarded as a kind of social or political ideal, growing out of the events and discoveries of the environmental crisis and ecological limits, to be added to the list of the eight treated within this book. Whatever else is constitutive of the good society, it must be a sustainable one if it is to persist over time, with impacts of increasing scarcity threatening to undermine or destabilize the other eight ideals. As we shall see, impacts of unsustainable institutions and practices often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged, undermining ideals of equality and justice, while also potentially threatening democracy and sovereignty. We may in this sense view sustainability as essential for other social or political ideals, as well as an ideal in its own right. Insofar as personal virtues describe character traits that tend toward the common good, it may comprise an essential aspect of the good life for individual persons, as well as having value for collectivities.
Since societies must soon transition to becoming ecologically sustainable, as we shall consider in more detail in chapter 2, sustainability captures a set of objectives for social institutions and practices, with the ideal orienting the present toward a future that is possible, necessary, and desirable. While few may find attractive the sustainable society that does not also embrace other ideals like justice and democracy, in many ways the sustainable serves as a vital complement to these other ideals, seeking to maintain the material preconditions for society to perform its most basic provisioning functions, as well as realizing the other aspirations that we see expressed in its various ideals. The other ideals thus also serve as important constraints upon sustainability – for example, in maintaining its humanitarian aspirations.
Sustainability as transformational ideal
But we must not overstate the compatibility between sustainability and other social and political ideals. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, critics have called for restrictions on important liberties in the interest of sustainability, have suggested that democracy is complicit in the environmental crisis and so must be limited or replaced, and have called for an end to the sovereign state in the interest of more effectively governing earth systems. Some visions of the sustainable society threaten ideals of equality and justice, or dramatically restrict individual agency. Were sustainability the only social and political ideal, or one that was universally viewed as taking priority over all other such ideals when they conflicted, it would be relatively easy to advance. Resources that would otherwise be used to advance other ideals could be devoted toward sustainable energy or transportation infrastructure. Powers that are constrained by ideals of democracy or sovereignty, or by consideration of the rights of persons or peoples, could be mobilized on behalf of rapid technological development or change. An environmental leviathan (to borrow an image from Hobbes) could identify and address the many obstacles that now prevent our transition to a sustainable society, working single-mindedly and purposefully.
Where we recognize multiple and (sometimes) incommensurable ideals, the pursuit of any one of them can be constrained by the existence and imperative nature of the others. We want our political system to be democratic, but also to be able to take actions necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. We want to create resilient cities, but must respect the rights and liberties of their residents. We want to protect biodiversity, but struggle to do so in the face of a view of progress for which it gets in the way. As we shall explore in these pages, these can take the form of a dilemma: suggesting that we must choose between democracy and sustainability,