Ecodoomsaying K
1nc
1nc Link/Impact - Apocalypticism
Environmental apocalyptic discourse is an instrument of political and
philosophical resignation and never incentivizes real action – fear
simultaneously desensitizes us and makes the problem seem too large which
leads to violent apathy and scapegoating.
Pascal Bruckner, French philosopher and writer, wrote ‘The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse’, 12 [May
22, 2012, “Dazed and apocalyptic; Why today's secular elites are prophesying a doomsday without
redemption”, National Post f/k/a The Financial Post, Canada]//JH
One could go on citing such quotations forever, given the spread of the cliché-ridden apocalyptic literature. Environmentalism
has become a
global ideology that covers all of existence - not merely modes of production but ways of life as well.
We rediscover in it the whole range of Marxist rhetoric, now applied to the environment: ubiquitous
scientism, horrifying visions of reality, even admonitions to the guilty parties who misunderstand
those who wish them well. Authors, journalists, politicians and scientists compete in the portrayal of
abomination and claim for themselves a hyper-lucidity: They alone see clearly while others vegetate
in the darkness.
The fear that these intellectuals spread is like a gluttonous enzyme that swallows up an anxiety, feeds
on it and then leaves it behind for new ones. When the Fukushima nuclear plant melted down after the enormous earthquake
in Japan in March 2011, it only confirmed a feeling of anxiety that was already there, looking for some content. In six months, some new
concern will grip us: a pandemic, bird flu, the food supply, melting ice caps, cellphone radiation.
The fear also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the press reporting, as though it were a
surprising finding, that young people are haunted by the very concerns about global warming that the
press continually instills in them. As in an echo chamber, opinion polls reflect the views promulgated
by the media. We are inoculated against anxiety by the repetition of the same themes, which become
a narcotic we can't do without.
To wake people up requires ever more extreme rhetoric, including a striking number of analogies to the Holocaust. Noel Mamère, a French
politician in the Green party, has accused another politician, Claude Allègre, of being a négationniste about global warming - a French word that
refers to those who deny the Jewish and Armenian genocides. Economist Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, has explicitly compared the Danish statistician and eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to the Fuhrer. The American climate scientist James
Hansen has accused oil companies trying to "spread doubt about global warming" of "high crimes against humanity and nature" and called
trains transporting American coal "death trains." Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman has writ-ten that "global warming deniers are now on
a par with Holocaust deniers."
A time-honoured strategy of cataclysmic discourse, whether performed by preachers or by
propagandists, is the retroactive correction. This technique consists of accumulating a staggering
amount of horrifying news and then - at the end - tempering it with a slim ray of hope. First you break
down all resistance; then you offer an escape route to your stunned audience. And so the advertising copy for
the Al Gore-starring documentary An Inconvenient Truth reads: "Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's
scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic
destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced - a
catastrophe of our own making."
Now here are the means that the former vice-president, like most environmentalists, proposes to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions: using lowenergy lightbulbs; driving less; checking your tire pressure; recycling; rejecting unnecessary packaging; adjusting your thermostat; planting a
tree and turning off electrical appliances. Since
we find ourselves at a loss before planetary threats, we will
convert our powerlessness into propitiatory gestures, which will give us the illusion of action. First the
ideology of catastrophe terrorizes us; then it appeases us by proposing the little rituals of a posttechnological animism. But let's be clear: A cosmic calamity is not averted by checking tire pressure or
sorting garbage.
Similarly, we are told that "our power exceeds our knowledge," as the German philosopher Hans Jonas once put it - yet we are also told, with a
certainty puzzling from such skeptics, that we must change our diets, cut back on air travel, consume fewer material goods and stop driving gas
guzzlers. This is the central aporia of green neo-asceticism: It attributes a wildly exaggerated importance to ordinary human behaviour, thus
weakening its appeal to the very humility that it tries to instill.
Another contradiction inherent in apocalyptic discourse is that, though it tries desperately to awaken
us, to convince us of planetary chaos, it eventually deadens us, making our eventual disappearance
part of our everyday routine. At first, yes, the kinds of doom that we hear about - the acidification of
the oceans, the pollution of our air - charge our calm existence with a strange excitement. The enemy
is among us, and he waits for our slightest lapses, all the more insidious because he is invisible. If the
function of ancient rites was to purge a community's violence on a sacrificial victim, the function of
our contemporary rites is - at first - to dramatize the status quo and to exalt us through proximity to
cataclysm.
But the certainty of the prophecies makes this effect short-lived. The language of fear does not include the word "maybe." It tells us, rather,
that the horror is inevitable. Resistant to all doubt, it is satisfied to mark the stages of degradation. This is another paradox of fear: It is
ultimately reassuring. At least we know where we are heading - toward the worst.
One consequence of this certainty is that we begin to suspect that the numberless Cassandras who prophesy all around us do not intend to
warn us so much as to condemn us. In classical Judaism, the prophet sought to give new life to God's cause against kings and the powerful.
In Christianity, millenarian movements embodied a hope for justice against a Church wallowing in luxury and vice. But in a secular society, a
prophet has no function other than indignation. So it happens that he becomes intoxicated with his own words and claims a legitimacy with no
basis, calling down the destruction that he pretends to warn against. You'll get what you've got coming! - that is the death wish that our
misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption
to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy. It is a short distance from lucidity to bitterness, from prediction to
anathema.
Another result of the doomsayers' certainty is that their preaching, by inoculating us against the
poison of terror, brings about petrification. The trembling that they want to inculcate falls flat.
Anxiety has the last word. We were supposed to be alerted; instead, we are disarmed. This may even
be the goal of the noisy panic: to dazzle us in order to make us docile. Instead of encouraging
resistance, it propagates discouragement and despair. The ideology of catastrophe becomes an
instrument of polit-ical and philosophical resignation.
What is surprising is that the mood of catastrophe prevails especially in the West, as if it were
particular to privileged peoples. Despite the economic crises of the last few years, people live better in
Europe and North America than anywhere else, which is why migrants the world over want to come
to those places. Yet never have we been so inclined to condemn our societies.
Perhaps the new Green puritanism is nothing but the reaction of a West deprived of its supreme competence, the last avatar of an unhappy
neocolonialism that preaches to other cultures a wisdom that it has never practiced. For the last 20 years, non-European peoples have become
masters of their own futures and have stopped regarding us as infallible models. They are likely to receive our professions of environmentalist
faith with polite indifference. Billions of people look to economic growth, with all the pollution that accompanies it, to improve their condition.
Who are we to refuse it to them?
Environmental worry is universal; the sickness of the end of the world is purely Western. To counter this
pessimism, we might list the good news of the last 20 years: democracy is making slow progress; more than a billion people have escaped
absolute poverty; life expectancy has increased in most countries; war is becoming rarer; many serious illnesses have been eradicated. But it
would do little good. Our perception is inversely proportional to reality.
The Christian apocalypse saw itself as a hopeful revelation of the coming of God's kingdom. Today's has nothing to offer. There is no promise of
redemption; the only hope is that those human beings who repent of their errors may escape the chaos, as in Cormac McCarthy's fine novel
The Road. How can we be surprised, then, that so many bright minds have become delirious and that so many strange predictions flourish?
1nc Alt – Reframing
We advocate the reframing of environmental debates away from apocalyptic
discourse – this is key to promote greater human agency and avoid expertism.
Foust et al. 8 [Christina R. Foust, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication
Studies at the University of Denver, et al., with William O. Murphy, Doctoral Student and Graduate
Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver,
and Chelsea Stow, Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human
Communication Studies at the University of Denver, 2008, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A
Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper Submitted to the
Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association Convention in San
Diego, November 20th, pg.22-23]//JH
In conclusion, we
hope to inspire more scholarship in the spirit of Moser and Dilling’s (2007) call for a greater inter-disciplinary
conversation on climate change. The methodological tool of frame analysis can help foster common ground
between humanities scholars, social scientists, and climate scientists, concerned about global warming. Frame analysis can also be a valuable tool in
identifying the troubling aspects of how a discourse evolves and is communicated—and in so doing, it can lead to more effective
communication. Deconstructing the harmful effects of an apocalyptic frame, we feel some responsibility to try to
offer alternative frames which might balance the need to communicate the urgency of climate
change, without moving people to denial and despair. We would like to see the press inspire more of a
public dialogue on how we can mitigate climate change, rather than encouraging readers to continue
to be resigned to the catastrophic telos. This does not mean that we should ignore the potentially devastating consequences of global
warming (now and in the future); but it does mean that we must begin a conversation about how to change our daily
routines to make things better. We believe that the press could promote greater human agency in the issue
of climate change, so that people do not become resigned to the telos of global warming. This includes
encouraging more personal and civic responsibility, rather than suggesting that experts will take care
of it (or that we can do nothing to mitigate the impacts of climate change). Journalists could acknowledge the
expertise of scientists, balanced with an acknowledgement of the power of common sense and morality— such a move may help avoid casting scientists as
Through a less tragic, more productive framing of the issues of climate change, we may expand
the common ground needed to build a political will for dealing with climate change.
prophets.
Links/Impacts
Link – Short Timeframe
Framing warming impacts as short timeframe minimizes possibility for human
agency.
Foust and Murphy 9 (Christina R., Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication
Studies at the U of Denver, and William O., a doctoral student in the Department of Human
Communication Studies at the University of Denver, “Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in
Global Warming Discourse” A Journal of Nature and Culture, 3:2, p. 158-159)//JH
The shorter the time frame is from beginning to telos, the less likely humans are to have agency over
the effects of global warming. Tragic apocalyptic discourse posits a quickened pace for global warming: ‘‘Global warming has the
feel of breaking news these days. Polar bears are drowning; an American city is underwater; ice sheets are crumbling’’ (Revkin, 2006b, p. 1). To
promote a feeling of immediacy for global warming may not, by itself, hinder human agency. Warning readers that we currently feel some
effects of global warming may promote a sense of urgency while retaining the potential for human action. To suggest that
‘‘the
fastest warming in the history of civilization [is] already under way’’ (Herbert, 2000, p. A23), however, may
thoroughly discourage readers from active participation by minimizing human agency. Moreover, it is
possible to read signs of climate change as a catastrophic telos which is already in process: ‘‘the oceans are rising, mountain glaciers are
shrinking, low-lying coastal areas are eroding, and the very timing of the seasons is changing’’ (Herbert, 2000, p. A23). Global
warming
thus appears impervious to human intervention in the current moment.
The tragic acceleration of time may also occur when reporters or scientists give no perspective for readers concerning temporality. Following
early estimates that ‘‘if no action is taken, the average surface temperature of the globe will rise by two to six degrees Fahrenheit by [2100],’’
Stevens (1997) concludes, ‘‘It would mean more warming, coming more rapidly, than the planet has experienced in the last 10,000 years’’ (p.
F1). With no sense of time scale, readers are left to experience the global warming narrative as though happening overnight or over a season, in
the same way they may have witnessed floods or droughts. The accelerated time places the catastrophic telos outside human influence: ‘‘Since
the warming would be unusually rapid, many natural ecosystems might be unable to adjust, and whole forest types could disappear’’ (p. F1).
The combination of tragic telos, deterministic linear temporality, and an extrahuman force guiding
history appear most dramatically in discussions of feedback loops, self-perpetuating cycles that
exacerbate warming and its effects. Homer-Dixon (2007b) describes feedback loops as ‘‘a vicious circle . . . in our global climate
[that] could determine humankind’s future prosperity and even survival’’ (p. A29). Here, the end-point of global climate
change is cast completely outside of human agency, for ‘‘nature takes over.’’ Though Herbert (2002) mixes a
variety of caveats and verbs (for example, in the above excerpt he uses ‘‘could,’’ rather than ‘‘would’’ or ‘‘will’’) in his discussion of feedback
loops, the tragic implication is clear: It is likely that surface temperature will rise ‘‘between 3 and 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That is a level of
warming that could initiate the disintegration of the ice sheet. And stopping that disintegration, once the planet gets that warm, may be
impossible’’ (p. A25). With the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, ‘‘Tremendous amounts of housing, wetlands and farming areas around the
world would vanish. Large portions of a country like Bangladesh . . . would disappear’’ (p. A25). Once a feedback loop becomes instantiated,
there is little (if anything) humans can do but witness the (apparently rapid) disappearance of entire nations.
The argumentative force of the tragic apocalypse also appears through analogies, especially those between current climate change and ancient
climate catastrophes, or fictional weather apocalypses, as in The Day After Tomorrow (Bowles, 2004; Scott, 2004). For instance, Gugliotta
(2005) lures readers with the headline, ‘‘Extinction Tied to Global Warming; Greenhouse Effect Cited in Mass Decline 250 Million Years Ago’’ (p.
A3). Volcanoes releasing ‘‘Huge amounts of carbon dioxide . . . trigger[ed] a greenhouse effect that warmed the earth and depleted oxygen
from the atmosphere, causing environmental deterioration and finally collapse’’ (p. A3). Stories about analogous events function as
enthymemes where global warming’s worst effects are fated, outside of human capacity to mitigate or adapt to them. Through the harrowing
images of fictitious or ancient catastrophes, audiences may draw their own conclusions concerning the fate of humanity, and life itself.
Link – Climate Change Data
Reading climate change data apocalyptically discourages action to solve
environmental problems – perpetuates a feeling of despair and justifies the
dismissing of climate scientists as alarmists.
Foust et. al 08 [Christina Foust , Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication
Studies at the University of Denver, William Murphy, a doctoral student in the Department of Human
Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow, Doctoral Student and Graduate
Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver,
“Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of U.S. Popular and Elite Press
Coverage from 1997-2007”, November 2008, p. 3-4)//JH
Since the release of Al Gore’s award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the American
public has been faced with an increasing amount of discourse on climate change. Leiserowitz (2007) concludes
that “Large majorities of Americans believe that global warming is real and consider it a serious
problem, yet global warming remains a low priority relative to other national and environmental
issues” (p. 44). Indeed, though the United States emits a shockingly disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases, large-scale policy
changes or even a precursory conversation about changing the energy economy have been slow in coming. Meanwhile, climate scientists
and others concerned about global warming have continued to sound the alarm with increasing
urgency (Moser & Dilling, 2004). In her review of the 1999 book, The Heat is On, Catherine Keller (1999) identifies a tendency
to “read [climate change] data apocalyptically” (p. 42), which has devastating consequences for
motivating the public to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The apocalyptic tone of climate change
discourse may not only encourage a feeling of despair in the face of impending disaster, but also
contributes to skeptics’ ability to discredit climate scientists as alarmists (Leiserowitz, 2007). Yet, as Killingsworth
and Palmer (1996) suggest, environmental advocates like Rachel Carson have relied upon dire predictions of the
world’s end to provoke necessary action: “To employ apocalyptic rhetoric is to imply the need for
radical change, to mark oneself as an outsider in a progressive culture, to risk alienation, and to urge
others out into the open air of political rebellion.” (p. 41). Though apocalyptic language often reads as divisive, this
particular strategy ultimately invites widespread attention to environmental issues.
Link – Climate Change ‘Solutions’
Climate change solutions are externalized – this reinforces the dichotomy
between humans and nature which discourages intrinsic valuation of nature
Swyngedouw 10 [Erik – professor of geography at the University of Manchester in the School of
Environment and Development; “Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of
Climate Change”, Theory Culture Society, May 24th, Sage \\NL]
environmental apocalyptic thought is that it reinforces the nature–society dichotomy
and the causal power of nature to derail civilizations. It is this process that Neil Smith refers to as ‘naturewashing’:
A third characteristic of
Nature-washing is a process by which social transformations of nature are well enough acknowledged,
but in which that socially changed nature becomes a new super determinant of our social fate. It
might well be society’s fault for changing nature, but it is the consequent power of that nature that
brings on the apocalypse. The causal power of nature is not compromised but would seem to be augmented by social injections into
that nature. (2008: 245)
While the part-anthropogenic process of the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is readily acknowledged, the
related
ecological problems are externalized as are the solutions. CO2 becomes the fethishized stand-in for
the totality of climate change calamities and, therefore, it suffices to reverse atmospheric CO2 buildup to a negotiated idealized point in history, to return to climatic status quo ex-ante. An extraordinary technomanagerial
apparatus is under way, ranging from new eco-technologies of a variety of kinds to unruly complex managerial and institutional configurations,
with a view to producing a socio-ecological fix to make sure nothing really changes. Stabilizing
the climate seems to be a
condition for capitalist life as we know it to continue. Moreover, the mobilized mechanisms to arrive at
this allegedly more benign (past) condition are actually those that produced the problem in the first
place (commodification of nature – in this case CO2), thereby radically disavowing the social relations and processes
through which this hybrid socio-natural quasi-object (Latour, 1993; Swyngedouw, 2006) came into its problematic being. Populist
discourse ‘displaces social antagonism and constructs the enemy. In populism, the enemy is
externalized or reified into a positive ontological entity [excessive CO2] (even if this entity is spectral) whose
annihilation would restore balance and justice’ (Žižek, 2006a: 555). The enemy is always externalized and
objectified. Populism’s fundamental fantasy, for Žižek, is that of ‘intruders’ who have corrupted the system. CO2 stands here as
the classic example of a fetishized and externalized foe that requires dealing with if sustainable
climate futures are to be attained. Problems therefore are not the result of the ‘system’, of unevenly
distributed power relations, of the networks of control and influence, of rampant injustices, or of a
fatal flaw inscribed in the system, but are blamed on an outsider (Žižek, 2006a: 555). That is why the solution can be
found in dealing with the ‘pathological’ phenomenon, the resolution for which resides in the system itself. It is not the system that is
the problem, but its pathological syndrome (for which the cure is internal), that is posited as ‘excess’. While
CO2 is externalized as the socio-climatic enemy, a potential cure in the guise of the Kyoto principles is
generated from within the market functioning of the system itself. The ‘enemy’ is, therefore, always vague,
ambiguous, socially empty or vacuous (like ‘CO2’); the ‘enemy’ is a mere thing, not socially embodied, named and counted. While a proper
analysis and politics would endorse the view that CO2- as-crisis stands as the pathological symptom of the normal, one that expresses the
excesses inscribed in the very normal functioning of the system (i.e. capitalism), the
policy architecture around climate
change insists that this ‘excessive’ state is not inscribed in the functioning of the system itself, but is
an aberration that can be ‘cured’ by mobilizing the very inner dynamics and logic of the system
(privatization of CO2, commodification and market exchange via carbon and carbon-offset trading).
Link – C02
Their singular focuses of C02 raises it to an unquestionable status – this
overlooks alternate causes of environmental devastation and continues
Capitalist exploitation.
Swyngedouw 13 (Erik Swyngedouw Geography, School of Environment and Development University of Manchester,
UK) [The Non-political Politics of Climate Change] http://www.acme-journal.org/vol12/Swingedouw2013.pdf (Pg. 4-5) //MC
The negativity of climatic disintegration finds its positive injunction around a fetishist
invocation of CO2 as the ‘thing’ around which our environmental dreams, aspirations as
well as policies crystallize. The ‘point de capiton’ for the climate change problematic is CO2, the objet petit a that
simultaneously expresses our deepest fears and around which the desire for change, for a better socio-climatic world is woven4, but
one that simultaneously disavows radical change in the sociopolitical co-ordinates that shape the Anthropocene. The fetishist
disavowal of the multiple, complex and often contingent relations through which
environmental changes unfold finds its completion in the double reductionism to this
singular socio-chemical component (CO2). The reification of complex processes to a thinglike object-cause in
the form of a socio-chemical compound around which our environmental desire crystallizes is indeed further inscribed with a
particular social meaning and function through its enrolment as commodity in the
processes of capital circulation and market exchange. The procedure of pricing CO2
reduces the extraordinary socio-spatial heterogeneities and complexities of ‘natural’
CO2’s to a universal singular, obscuring—in Marx’s view of commodity fetishism—that a commodity is “a very strange
thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties”(Marx, (1867) 2004: 162). The commodification of
CO2— primarily via the Kyoto protocol and various off-setting schemes—has triggered a rapidly growing
derivatives market of futures and options. On the European climate exchange, for example, trade in CO2
futures and options grew from zero in 2005 to pass the 3 billion tons mark in June 2010;
585,296 contracts were traded during that month, with prices fluctuating from over 30 Euro to less than 10 Euro per ton over this
time period5. CO2’s inscription as a commodity (and financialized asset) is dependent on its
insertion in a complex governance regime organized around a set of managerial and
institutional technologies that revolve around reflexive risk-calculation, self-assessment, interestnegotiation and intermediation, accountancy rules and accountancy based disciplining, detailed quantification and bench-marking of
performance. This regime is politically choreographed and instituted by the Kyoto protocol (only marginally amended by the
Copenhagen and Durban debacles) and related, extraordinarily complex, institutional configurations. It is precisely these
gestures that permit incorporating the atmosphere into the commodified logic of capital
circulation and neoliberal recipes. It also stands guarantee that economic growth and
energy demands will continue on their insatiable trajectory. The consensual scripting of climate change
imaginaries, arguments and policies reflect a particular process of de-politicization, one that is defined by Slavoj Žižek and others as
post-political and becomes instituted in what Colin Crouch or Jacques Rancière term ‘post-democracy’.
Link – Geoengineering
The projected rationality of geoengineering proposals triggered by the
apocalyptic fear of climate change promises consequences that only quicken
nature’s decline – turns the case.
Crist 7 [Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech
University, 2007, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume
141, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Telos Press, p. 48-50]//JH
Given the dominant framing of climate change, it is hardly surprising that schemes for what is called
“geoengineering” (and, in even more Orwellian speak, “radiation management”) are increasingly aired as reasonable
solutions to the climate crisis; it will be equally unsurprising if they are soon promoted as inevitable. A recent article in Nature
claims that given “the need for drastic approaches to stave off the effects of rising planetary temperatures . . . curiosity about geoengineering
looks likely to grow.”54 Six months earlier, an article in Wired gushed over the prospects, assuring us that “luckily, a growing number of
In the wake of
apocalyptic fears, geoengineering is easily packaged as an idea whose time has come; physicist Paul
scientists are thinking more aggressively, developing incredibly ambitious technical fixes to cool the planet.”55
Crutzen’s recent attentions have imbued it with even more credibility. Crutzen received the Nobel Prize for his work on ozone depletion, and is
now cautiously promoting “active scientific research” into the possibility of shooting SO2 into the stratosphere, which, by converting into sulfate
particles, would mask global warming by an effect known as global dimming; Crutzen calls it “stratospheric albedo enhancement.”56 In essence,
this strategy calls for countering one form of pollution with another.
In a 1997 article in the Wall Street Journal, nuclear physicist Edward Teller beat the environmental mainstream to a geoengineering solution for
global warming by a decade. Indeed Teller’s summons to undertake, if necessary, incredibly ambitious technical fixes to cool the planet, as a
rational and economically defensible enterprise, may turn out in retrospect to have been pioneering in the realm of policy. It even seems plausible
that Teller’s self-assured and dollar-quantified message (coinciding with the year of the Kyoto protocol) played into the current U.S.
administration’s resolute defiance of calls to curb emissions, for he confidently affirmed that should global warming turn out to be dangerous, an
ingenious engineering mega-fix for it will be cheaper than phasing out fossil fuels.57
If mainstream environmentalism is catching up with the solution promoted by Teller, and perhaps harbored all along by the Bush administration,
it would certainly be ironic. But the irony is deeper than incidental politics. The
projected rationality of a geoengineering
solution, stoked by apocalyptic fears surrounding climate change, promises consequences (both physical
and ideological) that will only quicken the real ending of wild nature: “here we encounter,” notes Murray
Bookchin, “the ironic perversity of a ‘pragmatism’ that is no different, in principle, from the problems it
hopes to resolve.”58 Even if they work exactly as hoped, geoengineering solutions are far more similar to
anthropogenic climate change than they are a counterforce to it: their implementation constitutes an
experiment with the biosphere underpinned by technological arrogance, unwillingness to question or
limit consumer society, and a sense of entitlement to transmogrifying the planet that boggles the
mind. It is indeed these elements of techno-arrogance, unwillingness to advocate radical change, and
unlimited entitlement, together with the profound erosion of awe toward the planet that evolved life
(and birthed us), that constitute the apocalypse underway—if that is the word of choice, though the words humanization,
colonization, or occupation of the biosphere are far more descriptively accurate. Once we grasp the ecological crisis as the escalating conversion
of the planet into “a shoddy way station,”59 it becomes evident that inducing “global dimming” in order to offset “global warming” is not a
corrective action but another chapter in the project of colonizing the Earth, of what critical theorists called world domination.
Link – Risk Discourse
Risk discourse is used as a method of reinforcing environmental naiveté – covers
up the development of dangerous technology.
Frederick Buell, professor of English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY, 03 [From
Apocalypse to Way of Life, 2003, p.160-161]//JH
Risk thus remains a significant issue for biotechnology. And with the entrance of biological scientists into commercial ventures, temptation to celebrate risk-taking
and satirize precaution once again runs extremely high. It is thus troubling when Theo Colburn and her colleagues report in Our Stolen Future that: "when
questioned about the risks of releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment, one of the world's prominent biologists saw no reason for
hesitating. He told a group of journalists that our society has to 'be brave' and forge ahead with new technologies despite uncertainties." 50 His concealment of selfinterest and his dubious extension of "bravery" from his and his colleagues' enterprise to people at large-people who neither assent to nor even know of the
hazards involved-echo the libertarian-conservative discourse of risk described in the last chapter. An even uglier cat seemed to emerge from an all-too-familiar bag
when Don Westfall, the vice president of Pro mar International, observed that: "the
hope of the industry is that over time the
market is so flooded [with genetically modified products] that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of
surrender."51 The result would be a confirmation of Commoner's worst fears: society would be committing itself to yet
another "massive uncontrolled experiment whose outcome is inherently unpredictable."52 The politics
of risk discourse and the many uncertainties of risk assessment would then do exactly what
environmentalists have accused risk assessment of doing: they would provide a cover for continuing
to develop, not restrict, dangerous technology. As such,they would represent a fascinating adaptation of
old ways to the new age of anxiety. A society that had lost the environmental naivete it had when the
postwar chemical industry first geared up would, thanks to risk assessment, be able to repeat what it
did then because it could tell itself it was proceeding differently. But if precise determination and
effective social control of the risks raised by the new technologies are an area of great concern, a still
more serious problem comes when one considers the ways in which society absorbs and deploys
technology. A look at how the new technologies articulate with older ones and how the combination of the two further articulates with societal growth
presents the most realistic and serious version of hyper/postmodern socialenvironmental crisis today.
Government agencies hide behind risk assessment as justification for hazardous
activities that harm people and the environment.
Mary O’Brien, Ph.D., consultant on alternatives to risk assessment and toxic-chemical use, staff
scientist for the Environmental Research Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland and for the U.S. Office of
Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, 2000 [Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative
to Risk Assessment, MIT Press 2000, p. 106-108]//JH
1. Risk-assessment
processes allow government permitters to hide behind ''rationality" and
"objectivity" as they permit and allow hazardous activities that harm people and the environment. It is
not always easy for an individual to rationalize the permitting of a hazardous activity that will, for instance, reduce a species' chance of survival
or result in denial of medical benefits to veterans. Risk
assessment can let employees of a government agency
distance themselves from the meaning of their decisions.
Many agency
employees convince themselves that risk-assessment processes really are rational and
objective, and that therefore their decisions really aren't causing harm. Such employees may then focus more on
whether a risk assessment has been developed according to the "rules" than on whether it reflects reality.
2. Risk assessments can be manipulated endlessly, and government agencies like to have discretion.
Because risk assessment can be manipulated to approach desired outcomes, current policies can
remain in place or policies accommodating predetermined management can be installed.
3. Since
risk assessments involve so much uncertainty, so many assumptions, and large doses of
cumulative reality, they are not reproducible, as is a scientific experiment or study. They therefore
cannot be disproved. An agency’s conclusions can be criticized, and alternative assessments can be proposed, but who is going
to rule that this agency's conclusions are wrong or arbitrary? When you are building with putty, whose sculpture
is the correct one?
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, for instance, that courts must defer to the "scientific" claims of federal agencies, even if independent
scientists' evidence seems more compelling (Marsh v. ONRC 1989). Imagine trying to challenge an agency's risk assessment in the face of this
required presumption against science, evidence, and rationality.
4. Risk
assessment gives specialist power to an agency in ways that alternatives assessment does not.
Not everyone is able to prepare, read, or decipher a complicated risk assessment. On the other hand,
society has many people who know about alternatives to current harmful activities. Limiting a risk
assessment to one option or a few standard options and to the habits of conventional risk-assessment
companies allows an agency to work primarily with business. These standard risk assessments allow an agency to avoid
dealing with many other groups who know about alternatives to the proposed activity and about unquantifiable benefits and hazards of the
activity and of the alternatives. Most
agency and contract risk assessors know a great deal about standard riskassessment techniques and very little about alternative technologies or processes. If they were to
depend on citizens in the society to show them alternatives, they would lose their specialized power.
5. Risk-assessment models
and numbers- are intimidating to citizens, so they give agencies the upper
hand. Recall the Kettleman City case, mentioned earlier in this chapter. Even a native English-speaking community would have trouble wading
through and critiquing a 3000-page risk assessment.
6. By focusing the public's attention on the details of a risk assessment, agencies divert public debates
from consideration of whether the assessed activity should even be taking place.
The risk-assessment process lets agencies avoid facing the responsibility of helping a community or a
society to change and the responsibility of requir ing a multinational corporation to change.
Impact – Consumerist Capitalism
The propagation of risk and environmental crisis becomes a bottomless barrel of
demands – leads to the most destructive forms of consumerist capitalism.
Frederick Buell, professor of English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY, 03 [From
Apocalypse to Way of Life, 2003, p.165-166]//JH
But no version of realistic accommodationism is more pessimistic than that of Ulrich Beck, who shades the social process of accommodationism
into a larger structural critique of capitalism. If accommodationism is
fueled by people profiting from keeping things
going and making new industries out of ameliorating old problems (both of which create new problems in the
process), the system as a whole is increasingly structuring itself to "profit from the abuses it produces , and
very nicely, thank you."61 For Beck, a truly gothic capitalist market logic lies behind and reinforces the
technological logic we have been describing; far from being the ultimate contradiction of capitalism, environmental
crisis offers capitalism its most boundless, if grisly, possibilities. "Through the production of risks," Beck writes:
"needs are definitively removed from their residual mooring in natural factors, and hence their finiteness, their satisfiability. Hunger can be
assuaged, needs can be satisfied; risks
are a 'bottomless barrel of demands,' unsatisfiable, infinite."62
Propagating risk and environmental crisis becomes, then, the ultimate extension of consumerist
capitalism, the creation of the kind of market that economists and industrialists would (perhaps literally)
die for: a market that, in both theory and fact, can never, ever be glutted. Removing breasts and prostates is just
an early-generation business in this line. Of course, many Green radicals have argued that if class contradictions did not finish off or hobble
capitalism, the ultimate (and apocalyptic) contradiction between a capitalist system devoted to growth and the limits of the ecosystem would.
The possibility Beck raises is vastly gloomier. A more and more overtly brown capitalism, Beck suggests, could ride through this contradiction,
finding vast and theoretically ungluttable new markets for a new class of Green and/or remedial necessities and discovering in a damaged
future not its own extinction, but its purest and most Platonically perfect form yet. Environmentally
destructive capitalism
would thus accompany and accelerate society all the way down the resulting spiral to a continually
postponed, never-quite-reached bottom- and that slow-motion spiral will be our social-environmental
catastrophe, one that we are already decisively in.
Impact – Eco-authoritarianism
Environmental fear rhetoric abrogates the political and is a method of coercion
where people are forced to participate in order to save their existence – this
approach fails
Gourevitch 10 [Alex – professor at Harvard University, 2010, Duke University Press, Public Culture
22:3, “Environmentalism–Long Live the Politics of Fear” \\NL]
Scaring Us into Action/Submission
Gore’s passage further reveals how environmentalism
is another incarnation of the politics of fear. We act,
“the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization is bearing down on
us.”32 Crisis consciousness is a common refrain in environmental thought, and it has made a strong
impact on wider culture. From the Day after Tomorrow to Underworld, the cultural representation of environmental disaster has
become the newest genre of popular feature films. As Slavoj Žižek has observed, “It seems easier to imagine the ‘end of the
world’ than a far more modest change in the mode of production.”33 The authors of the environmentalist selfcritique The Death of Environmentalism write: “Most people wake up in the morning trying to reduce what they
have to worry about. Environmentalists wake up trying to increase it. We want the public to care
about and focus not only on global warming and rainforests but also species extinction, non-native
plant invasives, agribusiness, overfishing, mercury, and toxic dumps.” 34 Indeed, we might say that the
orientation toward catastrophism was highly developed well before terrorists ever reached our shores. The point is
not just that environmentalism indulges in a hysterical, cultural impulse. Rather, when catastrophe
becomes the cause of political action, it once again serves to repress instead of open up politics.
according to Gore, because
What’s more, as Gore describes it, in
the face of environmental crisis we do not make a choice, we simply must
act. We are even supposed to experience “the thrill of being forced by circumstances” to engage
politically. The blind necessity of acting to save individual and collective existence is supposed to
substitute for appealing to the will and reason of human beings. Fundamentally, the impulse here is not to
win an argument, and impel people to choose as free beings, but rather to terrorize us into action. Arguing from
catastrophe is as morally coercive as the famous “ticking time bomb” torture scenario. Just as Jayasuriya said
of the war on terror that there is no time to debate properly political issues of “power and distribution,” the same goes for environmental
catastrophe. In the New Left Review, George Monbiot writes that “our proposals and methods must be debated fiercely. . . . But we have so
little time.”35 A
properly political choice also carries with it the force of necessity. But that kind of necessity
means that social conflict has gotten to the point where individuals must recognize their social
existence and use their powers of reason and judgment to choose between alternatives. If they are
forced by circumstance to act politically, how they act is still a matter of choice, and political choice is
presumed to be deliberate choice. That is different from “being forced by circumstance” to act in a
particular way. Gore’s “thrill” is not the courageous stance of responsible persons but the exultation of being liberated from the burden
of having to choose by the sheer overwhelming force of external necessity — the juggernaut of eco-apocalypse. This “thrill” is just fear
— fear that one’s life will be destroyed by nature’s revenge for our moral lassitude. This is not politics,
and it is hardly the basis for a moral rejuvenation of an unequal and unjust society.
Environmental crisis discourse leads to authoritarianism and political passivity –
cedes power to the elites and depoliticizes people
Frederick Buell, professor of English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY, 03 [From
Apocalypse to Way of Life, 2003, p. 201]//JH
Looked at critically, then, crisis discourse thus suffers from a number of liabilities. First, it seems to have
become a political liability almost as much as an asset. It calls up a fierce and effective opposition with
its predictions; worse, its more specific predictions are all too vulnerable to refutation by events. It also
exposes environmentalists to being called grim doomsters and antilife Puritan extremists. Further, concern with crisis
has all too often tempted people to try to find a "total solution" to the problems involved-a phrase that, as an astute analyst of the limitations
of crisis discourse, John Barry, puts it, is all too reminiscent of the Third Reich's infamous "final solution." 55
A total crisis of societyenvironmental crisis at its gravest-threatens to translate despair into inhumanist authoritarianism;
more often, however, it helps keep merely dysfunctional authority in place. It thus leads, Barry suggests, to the
belief that only elite- and expert-led solutions are possible. 56 At the same time it depoliticizes people,
inducing them to accept their impotence as individuals; this is something that has made many people
today feel, ironically and/or passively, that since it makes no difference at all what any individual does
on his or her own, one might as well go along with it.
Impact – Depoliticization/Political Apathy
Constant consumption of disaster leads to “political anesthesia” – people lose
the desire and ability to work towards collective solutions and instead engage in
private acts of consumerism to securitize themselves.
Recuber 11—Timothy Recuber is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the Graduate Center of the City,
University of New York. He has taught at Hunter College in Manhattan [“CONSUMING CATASTROPHE:
AUTHENTICITY AND EMOTION IN MASS-MEDIATED DISASTER,” gradworks.umi.com/3477831.pdf]//JH
The emotional component of disaster consumption is therefore an important part of these processes. Sociologists who study disaster have long disputed the
conventional wisdom that mass panic is the defacto public response to disasters, especially on the ground in affected communities (Quarantelli, 2001; Tierny, 2007).
But while it is true that disaster-struck communities tend to exhibit a whole host of positive, pro-social responses, it does not mean that mass media accounts of
disaster may not inspire panic in distant spectators who are less directly affected. Divorced
from the kinds of sustaining, ad-hoc, local
communities that maintain order and provide support during and in the immediate aftermath of
disasters (see Solnit, 2009), those who merely consume distressing stories and images at a distance may be
more likely to take drastic measures or respond with maudlin or hysterical emotional displays. Of course,
mass media today tend to operate in crisis mode at all times, even over seemingly trivial matters (McRobbie and Thornton,
1995), making the shock and immediacy of disaster-related stories an overly familiar style of
communication and thus, at times, contributing to the onset of what has come to be known as “compassion fatigue”
(Moeller, 1999). On the other hand, and at the very least, American audiences of disasters have demonstrated over the past
decade that distant or unaffected spectators are likely to feel that they too have been vicariously
traumatized, and thus enfranchised to participate in mass-mediated rituals of commemoration, or to
claim the social and political status of victim (see Savage, 2006; Kaplan, 2005).
Such vicarious trauma is often the result of very genuine emotional responses by these distant spectators. In fact, as discussed in Chapter
Three, one of the most powerful norms that has emerged regarding the role of the spectator of disaster is the obligation to show empathy
towards those directly affected. Media texts have particular ways of presenting the suffering others designed to draw out these reactions, as I
show through an analysis of two news programs, one reality television show, and one documentary film devoted to Hurricane Katrina and the
Virginia Tech shootings. This empathy
for the suffering of distant others is rehearsed today even in nondisaster related media programming, but it is particularly prevalent when large-scale tragedies result
in not only live television news broadcasts, but also the many commemorative events and products
whose proceeds are supposed to benefit those distant others. Consuming such experiences and
products marks one as an ethical, moral person with the capacity to understand the pain of others.
Unlike classical forms of Enlightenment sympathy, however, in which detached spectators sought to actually alleviate the suffering of
unfortunate others whose causes they found worthy, the empathy on display when one buys a Virginia Tech t-shirt or a record benefitting New
Orleans musicians, or when one watches television programs devoted to these disasters, seems to be as much about self-improvement as the
improvement of the conditions of those less fortunate. This is not to say that such consumption is not driven by sincere concern for disaster
victims, but simply that mass culture tends to direct such concern towards viewing habits and consumption practices that help the self-image of
the viewer or purchaser at least as much as they help any disaster-stricken communities.
The consumption of disaster thus encourages a kind of “political anesthesia” that reduces one’s ability
to recognize the collective solutions to problems, as well as one’s willingness to work towards them
(Szasz, 2007). Instead, the authentically threatening quality of disasters often nurtures a paradoxically
fantastic desire to secure the safety of oneself and one’s family through private acts of consumerism.
But these fantasies are often backwards looking; they envision the next disaster as a similar chain of
catastrophic events that, having recently happened, is actually unlikely to happen again due either to
officialdom’s new awareness of this problem or simply to the remote odds of two similar disasters
happening in such close succession. Of course, in the current American political moment of ascendant
neo-liberal governance, such individualistic strategies of preventative consumption may constitute the
only preventative measures being taken on one’s behalf.
Climate change rhetoric depoliticizes solutions – scientific consensus,
apocalyptic framing, emergency status, responsibilization, fear tactics, nature
problematization
Macgregor 13 [Sherilyn – Senior Lecturer in Environmental Politics at Keele University, PhD in
Environmental Studies from York University, “Only Resist: Feminist Ecological Citizenship and the Postpolitics of Climate Change”, 10/11/13, Hypatia, ]//JH
The driving force behind the depoliticization process, the post-political analysis goes, is the “hegemonic grip
that neoliberal ideas have over public affairs” (Catney and Doyle 2011, 178). In particular, the economic reasoning
of neoliberalism, as expressed by such institutions as the World Bank and the IMF, makes good governance synonymous
with arrangements that maximize efficient policy solutions while minimizing obstacles to their
implementation. Dissent interferes with the free running of markets; the capitalist market economy is the
foundation of socioeconomic order and individual freedom. Governing has become all about promoting consensus so
that policy processes can be left to experts and bureaucrats. Citizens may be invited into governance
processes via participatory mechanisms (for example, stakeholder consultations), but these are meant to
manufacture popular consent to decisions that serve the interests of an elite minority rather than to
promote democracy (Catney and Doyle 2011). Swyngedouw quotes Žižek to explain that “the ultimate sign of post-politics in all
Western countries is the growth of a managerial approach to government: government is reconceived
as a managerial function, deprived of its proper political dimension” (Swyngedouw 2011, 266). When the aim
of management is to avoid making decisions that cause social unrest, compromise and expert
administration are central. And this amounts to the end of politics (Rancière 2001).
How might we understand climate change through this post-political lens? Doing so requires
acceptance of a constructivist analysis of climate change, seeing it as a “normatively charged” social construction where the
scientific facts about climate change are “facts for social purposes” (Nicholas Onuf in Pettinger 2007, xiv). This
analysis uncovers the interests and power relations operating behind an issue that, on the surface, appears
to be highly politicized. Swyngedouw lists four key characteristics or symptoms to explain how the
social construction of climate change can be presented as a process of depoliticization. First , there is
widespread consensus that the global climate crisis is real, an imminent threat to the future of human
civilization, and that it requires radical changes in how we live. It is “a consensus that is now largely shared by most
political elites from a variety of positions, business leaders, activists, and the scientific community. The few remaining sceptics are
increasingly marginalized as either maverick hardliners or conservative bullies ” (Swyngedouw 2010, 215). If
there is legitimate disagreement, then it is primarily about which technologies to use, how to
implement adaptation policies, and what arrangements provide the most effective policing. Although
there may be competing interpretations of, and uncertainty about, the scientific data, there is little serious
debate about the framing of the crisis itself or about the kinds of socio-ecological futures that might
result from climate policy.
Second , the climate crisis is increasingly presented as a threat to humanity as a whole, as a “universal
humanitarian threat” in which “we are all potential victims” (Swyngedouw 2011, 268). In 2009 UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon said that, “amid all our difficulties,” we must remember that climate change is “the one true
existential threat to our planet” (UN Press Release 2009; my emphasis). Even though there are competing
framings of climate change, some of which foreground global divisions and disparities between
colonizing and colonized people in the global North and South (the discourse of ecological debt and of “common but
differentiated responsibilities” are good examples), the rhetoric of common existential threat suggests that material
and ideological differences between people are well-nigh irrelevant in the face of natural forces beyond our control.
It says that, when we are all in the same leaking boat careening toward the apocalypse, there is no
space, time, or need for politics. Swyngedouw argues that this universalizing discourse currently drowns out
the rest.
Third , scientific experts present climate change as a crisis that requires immediate action,
predominantly in the form of governance-beyond-the-state. National political processes and
international negotiations have proven to be too slow and cumbersome to deal with urgent needs:
what is needed is decentered, participatory governance that rests on “self-management… and
controlled self-disciplining, under the aegis of a non-disputed liberal-capitalist order” (Swyngedouw 2011,
270). So, rather than operate in the public spaces of politics, individuals are admonished to accept
personal responsibility for reducing CO2 emissions. Through a neoliberal, disciplining process that
some have called “responsibilization” (Rose 1999), we pledge to change our behavior rather than
question the global and local asymmetries and inequities that create, sustain, and legalize
institutional forms of environmental exploitation.
The fourth sign that the dominant framing of climate change is post-political, according to Swyngedouw, can
be found in the power of scientific discourse not only to define the problem itself but also how we
ought to relate to the natural world. Here I will sidestep the philosophical debate about whether there is such a thing as “nature”
and how discursive constructions and the material facts presented by the natural sciences may or may not be related (but see Morton 2007).
The main issue for the post-political thesis is that dominant climate narratives have fear as a central
trope, which leads to a profoundly depoliticized imaginary. Swyngedouw writes: “apocalyptic imaginaries are
extraordinarily powerful in disavowing or displacing social conflict and antagonisms. As such,
apocalyptic imaginations foreclose a proper political framing” (Swyngedouw 2011, 263). Dystopian and
apocalyptic narratives of natural disasters, chronic resource shortages, global pandemics and
perpetual war—such as those shown vividly in The Age of Stupid—help to create acceptance of the need for extreme
measures and radical policies (for example, on population growth). These narratives are not merely the stuff of science fiction:
further examples can be found in the communications of UN conferences and grassroots organizations. One could look, for example, at the
opening ceremony of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, which included Please Save the World, a video depicting a child's nightmare about climate
change, or at the publications of the Transition Town Movement, which is founded on predictions of civilizational collapse (Smith 2011). It
has been argued that levels of public concern about climate change have declined in the US as a result
of “apocalypse fatigue” (Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2008). Not only do apocalyptic climate narratives create a
sense of emergency, they also cast the human–nature relationship as one of antagonism and conflict,
where nature is threatening and out of control, and where societies must prepare themselves to
withstand its wrath (Doyle and Chaturveydi 2010). Although Swyngedouw does not make this point, I would argue that this
narrative gives rise to the concept of “climate resilience” that now pervades UN and NGO discourse.
There has been a gradual policy shift from mitigation to resilience, which can be read as prioritizing
the protection of people from climate-related disasters over the protection of the environment from
human-related disasters of contamination, extraction, and extinction. As such, the dominant framing of
climate change has produced a depoliticizing view of nature as the enemy, which can only serve to
reduce further the political potential of environmentalism as a social movement that is dedicated to
remedying destructive human–nature relations.
Climate change debates encourage depoliticization by framing the problem as a
global threat to humanity
Swyngedouw 10 [Erik – professor of geography at the University of Manchester in the School of
Environment and Development; “Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of
Climate Change”, Theory Culture Society, May 24th, Sage \\NL]
Environmental politics and debates over ‘sustainable’ futures in the face of pending environmental
catastrophe signal a range of populist maneuvers that infuse the post-political post-democratic
condition. In this part, we shall chart the characteristics of populism (see, among others, Canovan, 1999; 2005; Laclau,
2005; Mudde, 2004; Žižek, 2006a) as they are expressed in mainstream climate concerns. In other words, to the
extent that consensual climate change imaginaries, arguments and policies reflect processes of
depoliticization, the former are sustained by a series of decidedly populist gestures. Here, I shall
summarize the particular ways in which climate change expresses some of the classic tenets of
populism.
First, the
climate change conundrum is not only portrayed as global, but is constituted as a universal
humanitarian threat. We are all potential victims. ‘THE’ Environment and ‘THE’ People, Humanity as a
whole in a material and philosophical manner, are invoked and called into being. Humanity (as well as large
parts of the non-human world) is under threat from climatic catastrophes. However, the ‘people’ here are not
constituted as heterogeneous political subjects, but as universal victims, suffering from processes
beyond their control. As such, populism cuts across the idiosyncrasies of different, heterogeneously constituted,
differentially acting, and often antagonistic human and non-human ‘natures’; it silences ideological and other
constitutive social differences and disavows conflicts of interests by distilling a common threat or
challenge to both Nature and Humanity. As Žižek puts it:
. . . populism
occurs when a series of particular ‘democratic’ demands [in this case, a good environment, a retroenchained in a series of equivalences, and this
enchainment produces ‘people’ as the universal political subject . . . and all different particular
struggles and antagonisms appear as part of a global antagonistic struggle between ‘us’ (people) and
‘them’ [in this case ‘it’, i.e. CO2]. (Žižek, 2006a: 553)
fitted climate, a series of socio-environmentally mitigating actions] is
The system ensures that scientific technocrats and political elites influence
populist movements – leads to depoliticization and political apathy
Swyngedouw 10 [Erik – professor of geography at the University of Manchester in the School of
Environment and Development; “Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of
Climate Change”, Theory Culture Society, May 24th, Sage \\NL]
Fourth, populism
is based on a politics of ‘the people know best’ (although the latter category remains often empty,
by a scientific technocracy assumed to be neutral, and advocates a direct
relationship between people and political participation. It is assumed that this will lead to a good, if not optimal,
unnamed), supported
solution, a view strangely at odds with the presumed radical openness, uncertainty and undecidability of the excessive risks associated with
Beck’s or Giddens’ second modernity. The
architecture of populist governing takes the form of stakeholder
participation or forms of participatory governance that operates beyond the state and permits a form
of self-management, self-organization and controlled self-disciplining (see Dean, 1999; Lemke, 1999), under the
aegis of a non-disputed liberal-capitalist order.
populist tactics do not identify a privileged subject of change (like the proletariat for Marxists, women for
feminists or the ‘creative class’ for competitive capitalism), but instead invoke a common condition or predicament, the
need for common humanity-wide action, mutual collaboration and cooperation. There are no internal social
tensions or internal generative conflicts; the ‘people’, in this case global humanity, are called into being as political subject,
thereby disavowing the radical heterogeneity and antagonisms that cut through ‘the people’ . It is
exactly this constitutive split of the people, the recognition of radically differentiated if not opposed social, political or
ecological desires, that calls the proper democratic political into being .
Fifth,
Sixth, populist
demands are always addressed to the elites. Populism as a project addresses demands to the ruling elites
is not about replacing the elites, but calling on the elites to
undertake action. The ecological problem is no exception. It does not invite a transformation of the
existing socio-ecological order but calls on the elites to undertake action such that nothing really has
(getting rid of immigrants, saving the climate . . .); it
to change, so that life can basically go on as before. In this sense, environmental populism is inherently
reactionary, a key ideological support structure for securing the socio-political status quo. It is inherently
non-political and non-partisan. A Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ has taken place over the past few years, whereby the elites
have not only acknowledged the climate conundrum and, thereby, answered the call of the ‘people’ to
take the climate seriously, but are moving rapidly to convince the world that, indeed, capitalism can not
only solve the climate riddle but also that capitalism can make a new climate by unmaking the one it
has co-produced over the past few hundred years through a series of extraordinary techno-natural
and ecomanagerial fixes. Not only do the elites take these particular demands of the people seriously, it also mobilizes them in ways
that serve their purposes.
Impact – Ignores Structural Ecological Impacts
The dominant frame of global warming as the direst impact we face
marginalizes other ecological impacts – ensures the long term inevitability of
destruction.
Crist 7 [Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech
University, 2007, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume
141, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Telos Press, p. 35-36]//JH
The dominant frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically
addressing global warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge
on the environmental and political agenda today that it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the
ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of the oceans by industrial fishing,
continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification, endocrine disruption, incessant
development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with
“dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system.
In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change
discourse encourages the continued marginalization of
the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly described as a holocaust,22 and which despite decades of
scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures . Several works
on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global warming for
biodiversity, 23 but rarely is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous greenhouse-gas
buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a technological resolution of
global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem losses—indeed, is doing so already. But while technologically
preempting the worst of climate change may temporarily avert some of those losses, such a
resolution of the climate quandary will not put an end to—will barely address—the ongoing
destruction of life on Earth.
Specifically, focus on warming destroys any chance of solvency for ongoing
biodiversity decline.
Crist 7 [Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech
University, 2007, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume
141, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Telos Press, p. 39]//JH
And yet, the
current framing of climate change as the urgent issue encourages regarding the unwinding
of biodiversity as a less critical matter than the forthcoming repercussions of global warming.
Attention to the long-standing ruination of biodiversity underway is subverted in two ways in climatechange discourse: either it gets elided through a focus on anthropocentric anxieties about how climate
change will specifically affect people and nations; or biodepletion is presented as a corollary of
climate change in writings that closely consider how global warming will cause biodiversity losses.
Climate change is undoubtedly speeding up the unraveling of life’s interconnectedness and variety. But if global warming has such potential to
afflict the natural world, it is because the latter’s “immunity” has been severely compromised. It is on
an already profoundly
wounded natural world that global warming is delivering its blow. Focusing on the added blow of climate change is
important, but this focus should not come at the expense of erasing from view the prior, ongoing, and
climate-change-independent wounding of life on Earth.
Visions of environmental apocalypse are used by Western environmentalists to
justify the sidelining of other environmental problems that oppress the third
world.
Stefano Nespor, lawyer and environmental law expert, 01 [UCLA Journal of Environmental Law &
Policy, "Environmentalism and the Disaster Strategy," 2001, p.216-217]//JH
Why has environmentalism adopted a disaster strategy? I suggest two main reasons: a) Environmentalism
emerged in
postindustrial countries and bears heavy marks of this origin. For wealthy people in rich countries the
concern over possible ruinous events somewhere in a distant future is more important than the
gigantic environmental problems now oppressing the large underdeveloped parts of the world.
Western environmentalists are much readier to invest money and energy to prevent a risk that might
affect their distant offspring, like the potential (and controversial) warming of the climate that might
happen sometime next century, than to finance efforts in out-of-sight areas of the world. There
present huge environmental problems need to be solved (air pollution, water pollution and water
shortage). These problems destroy the environment and kill thousands of people each year. For
wealthy people in rich countries the future environment is "our environment," while the present
environment where underdeveloped people live is "their environment."'14 In other terms, environmentalism and
environmental policy sell what can be sold. The purchasers of this merchandise live - with few exceptions - in Europe, North America and
Australia. They receive what they are willing to buy. b) Another important reason is that the disaster-strategy is not
particularly new or unique to the environmental movement: on the contrary, it fits perfectly in what H.L. Mencken considered a common aim of
practical politics: to
keep people under alarm by describing an endless series of artificially built-up
dangers.15 Environmentalism has adopted the practice, in an attempt to transform real or not-so-real
global problems into epochal issues apt to catch the attention and the support of the public and of
international organizations.
Catastrophism is detrimental to environmental movements – people begin to
ignore warnings & blame is shifted to third world countries
Davidson 2000 — Professor of Environmental Studies, San Francisco State University, [Carlos
Davidson, “Economic Growth and the Environment: Alternatives to the Limits Paradigm,” BioScience,
May, Vol. 50 Issue 5, p433]//JH
Environmentalists have often predicted impending catastrophes (e.g., oil depletion, absolute food shortages and mass starvation, or biological collapse). This
catastrophism is ultimately damaging to the cause of environmental protection. First, predictions of
catastrophe, like the boy who cries wolf, at first motivate people's concern, but when the threat
repeatedly turns out to be less severe than predicted, people ignore future warnings. Secondly, the belief
in impending catastrophe has in the past led some environmentalists to support withholding food and
medical aid to poor nations (Hardin 1972), forced sterilization (Ehrlich 1968), and other repressive measures. Not
only are these positions repulsive from a social justice perspective, they also misdirect energy away
from real solutions. And, by blaming poor and third world people for global environmental problems,
these views have tended to limit support for environmentalism to the affluent in the first world.
Fortunately, environmentalists of widely differing political perspectives, including some leading limits thinkers, now see alleviating human
misery and poverty as essential to solving global environmental problems (Athanasiou 1996, Daily and Ehrlich 1996,
Ehrlich 1997). In addition to recognizing the need to address poverty and inequality, recent limits writing has reduced its focus on catastrophe.
Environmentalism socially homogenizes entire populations – commodifies
poverty
Swyngedouw 10 [Erik – professor of geography at the University of Manchester in the School of
Environment and Development; “Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of
Climate Change”, Theory Culture Society, May 24th, Sage \\NL]
this universalizing claim of the pending catastrophe is socially homogenizing. Although geographical and
social differences in terms of effects are clearly recognized and detailed, these differences are generally mobilized to
further reinforce the global threat that faces the whole of humankind (see Hulme, 2008). It is this sort of
argumentation that led the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to infer that the
poor will be hit first and hardest by climate change (IPCC, 2009), which is of course a correct assertion –
the poor are by definition illequipped to deal with any sort of change beyond their control – but the
report continues that, therefore, in the name of the poor, climate change has to be tackled urgently.
Second,
Impact – Undermines Movements
Apocalyptic predictions only work to undermine the environmentalism
movement and cause warnings to be ignored, destroying any chance for
solvency.
Frank B. Cross, Professor of Business and of Law @ the University of Texas, 02 [Winter 2002, Case
Western Reserve Law Review, "Symposium on Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: the
Naive Environmentalist"]//JH
In some environmentalist laments, it is easy to see the public intellectual pathologies identified by Richard Posner. n38 While there is no precise
definition for the public intellectual, they are generally those with some expertise who bring ideological ideas to bear on matters of public
concern. There is a market for the writings of such public intellectuals from publishers, so long as they can communicate their ideas in an
attention-getting fashion. One obvious approach for commanding such attention is the prediction of doom (or at least some sort of dire
consequences), which Posner terms the "jeremiah school." n39 Environmentalism fits nicely into this category, because it enables
the public intellectual to project [*482] horrors on a global scale. Posner counts environmentalists, such as Paul Ehrlich,
as prominent examples of this type. n40 Of course, as jeremiahs mount, it takes increasingly dramatic predictions in order to gain the public
attention required of a public intellectual.
The existence of the controversy over The Skeptical Environmentalist should not be terribly surprising. Lomborg gives the environmental
jeremiahs a convenient foil for another round of debate. He has exploited his status as a former environmentalist to promote his book, and that
has surely further provoked the ideological ire of the jeremiahs, who picture him as a traitor to the true cause of environmentalism. Some
environmentalists seem to divide up the world into friendly members of their own "green team" and enemies to be attacked.
The jeremiah approach may profit the individual public intellectual, who gains prominence, prestige and cash from success, as public
intellectuals may be punished for ideological error but not for simply "being wrong." n41 The jeremiahs are fueled by a media industry that can
use drama to sell papers. n42 A Defenders of Wildlife representative recognized that the "best way to get on TV is to take an extreme position."
n43 Thus, the inducement to sell scientific accuracy and credibility for attention and advocacy.
The radical and erroneous claims of environmental doomsayers hardly advance the overall interests
of the underlying environmental policy, however. The loss of credibility is a profound cost to an
advocate. n44 The logical effects of the most extreme jeremiahs are "to discredit its side of the political
spectrum," to dissipate the energies of allies in "battles over symbols and cultural institutions," and
"to provide a raison d'etre for the polemics of the opposite [*483] fringe." n45 The jeremiahs are therefore no friends
to the environmental movement. By "crying wolf" repeatedly and falsely, they only undermine the credibility of
the movement and may cause its warnings to go ignored when a true wolf is in the fold. n46
Environmentalists could establish some credibility by abandoning the jeremiahs and rejecting their
unsupported claims. Yet the movement has scarcely done so and clings to fellow members of its "green
team" who urge environmental action, regardless of the merits of their particular claims. The
movement continues to embrace the very doomsayers, such as Ehrlich, whose past predictions were
absurdly wrong. They may even be regarded as heroes of the movement. However, such "movement environmentalists"
form only a small percentage of the population. The more typical American, or "median voter," has seen the litany of
doomsaying and seen the projections proved false. For them, the association of environmentalism with the jeremiahs
only undermines environmentalism and renders suspicious even well-founded environmental
problems. This is the effect that Lomborg apparently seeks to combat.
Extreme claims about climate change distort scientific evidence and undermine
environmental movements.
Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre, 09 ["Scientists must rein in
misleading climate change claims," The Guardian, 11 February 2009]//JH
News headlines vie for attention and it
is easy for scientists to grab this attention by linking climate change to
the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of
climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate
combine with long-term climate change. This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make
this clear without the wider audience switching off.
Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much in the past few years that it has reached a tipping point
and will disappear very quickly. The truth is that there is little evidence to support this. Indeed, the
record-breaking losses in the
past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer sea ice
increasing again over the next few years. This diverts attention from the real, longer-term issues. For
example, recent results from the Met Office do show that there is a detectable human impact in the long-term decline in sea ice over the past
30 years, and all the evidence points to a complete loss of summer sea ice much later this century.
This is just one example where scientific evidence has been selectively chosen to support a cause. In the 1990s,
global temperatures increased more quickly than in earlier decades, leading to claims that global warming had accelerated. In the past 10 years
the temperature rise has slowed, leading to opposing claims. Again, neither claim is true, since natural variations always occur on this
timescale. For example, 1998 was a record-breaking warm year as long-term man-made warming combined with a naturally occurring strong El
Niño. In contrast, 2008 was slightly cooler than previous years partly because of a La Niña. Despite this, it was still the 10th warmest on record.
The most recent example of this sequence of claim and counter-claim focused on the Greenland ice sheet. The melting of ice around south-east
Greenland accelerated in the early part of this decade, leading to reports that scientists had underestimated the speed of warming in this
region. Recent measurements, reported in Science magazine last week, show that the speed-up has stopped across the region. This has been
picked up on the climate sceptics' websites. Again, natural variability has been ignored in order to support a particular point of view, with
climate change advocates leaping on the acceleration to further their cause and the climate change sceptics now using the slowing down to
their own benefit. Neither group is right and all that is achieved is greater confusion among the public. What is true is that there will always be
natural variability in the amount of ice around Greenland and that as our climate continues to warm, the long-term reduction in the ice sheet is
inevitable.
For climate scientists, having to continually rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme is all due
to climate change is, at best, hugely frustrating and, at worst, enormously distracting. Overplaying natural
variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of the science as underplaying
them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening. Both undermine the basic facts that
the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are
not cut drastically and swiftly over the coming decades.
When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we "believe in climate change".
Quite simply it is not a matter of belief. Our concerns about climate change arise from the scientific evidence that humanity's activities are
leading to changes in our climate. The scientific evidence is overwhelming.
Environmental apocalyptic discourse wrecks scientists’ credibility and
undermines environmental action.
Frank B. Cross, Professor of Business and of Law @ the University of Texas, 02 [Winter 2002, Case
Western Reserve Law Review, "Symposium on Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: the
Naive Environmentalist"]//JH
It may well be that the contemporary environmental jeremiahs are in fact correct about biodiversity,
or global warming, or some future-oriented environmental problem; I lack the scientific training to evaluate their
claims with confidence. The vast majority of voters and policymakers share my position of limited expertise. But when the jeremiahs
of the past have been wrong about pesticides, wrong about numerous forms of pollution, wrong
about food shortages, wrong about oil and mineral shortages, and wrong about overall human health,
why should we credit their predictions about future environmental problems? Environmentalists have
burned their credibility. One of the most prominent spokesmen on global warming, Stephen Schneider, declared that he saw the need
to "offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubt[]," in order to strike a balance
between "being effective and being honest." n83 Thus,
advocates must advance the goals of the "green team," even if
science must be misrepresented. When Schneider says that Cambridge University Press shouldn't have published The Skeptical
Environmentalist, n84 is that because the book is inaccurate or because it is inconvenient for his personal policy ends? Somewhat less explicitly
than Schneider, the sponsors of the Club of Rome reversed course shortly after their publication and called for greater economic growth in
language suggesting that they had "sponsored and disseminated untruths in an attempt to scare us" into action. n85 This
approach is
arrogant and patronizing, and anti-democratic, as public intellectual advocates assume that we
"unwashed masses" can't be trusted with the truth but must be manipulated into the political policies
that the advocates prefer. It enables conservatives to [*490] credibly claim that environmentalists do
not defend science but only use it as "a weapon to advance the cause." n86
It is distinctly possible that at least some aspect of environmental
threats, such as climate change, are real ones that should
command policy attention. The response may have been delayed, if anything, by "this 'cry wolf' track record of prediction of
atmospheric events," which meant that it was "not surprising that many meteorologists have deep reservations about taking costly actions on
the basis of the predictions." n87 Not only does the
exaggeration of the harm of warming make any effort appear
futile, n88 the past litany of failed predictions hands a sword to critics of taking any action on climate.
n89 Relying on predictions of doom potentially undermines environmental action in other ways as well. The
focus on "disasters" may also distort environmental law, policy, and budgets and thereby hamper
effective regulation. n90
Posner's cynical theory of the public intellectual suggests that such intellectuals are largely pursuing egoistic interests of fame and money. They
may have some measure of concern for the cause they espouse, but they are foremost in it for themselves. While it is impossible to see within
the hearts of the doomsayer jeremiahs, their behavior seems consistent with the hypothesis. n91 The criticisms they make of Lomborg, such as
his occasional use of non-peer reviewed sources, apply far better to the environmental doomsayers themselves. Yet when the "green team"
doomsayers publish their unreliable and unsupported jeremiahs, those who responded to Lomborg are sadly silent. This is the sort of
hypocritical or naive ideological double standard that undermines their credibility and potentially undermines the scientifically-based
environmental movement. As The Economist notes, "if
scientists want their views to be accorded the respect due to
science, then they must speak as scientists, not as lobbyists." n92 It may well be [*491] that some of Lomborg's claims
are inaccurate or even biased (a sort of anti-litany), but who can we trust to tell us?
For decades, environmentalists have projected a series of growing problems and sometimes horrible
disasters. Cornucopians have predicted that none of these would occur. The track record over this period is pretty one-sided in favor of the
Cornucopians, at least on matters for which there is extensive information. None of the major disasters have come to pass. Most of the
measurable environmental problems have declined, and human health and wellbeing has broadly improved. Of course, this improvement has
not been universal. But if
environmentalists continue to predict doom in every direction and are unwilling to
discriminate among potential problems or police their own claims, what can a reasonable person go
on but the general historic pattern?
Impact – Turns Case/Plan Can’t Solve
Turns the case - neorealist hypotheses on the causes of environmental conflict
ignore problematic global structural conditions that accelerate exploitation of
the environment.
Ahmed 11—Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is an international security analyst. He is Executive Director at
the Institute for Policy Research and Development, and Associate Tutor at the Department of IR,
University of Sussex, where he obtained his DPhil. [“The international relations of crisis and the crisis of
international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society,” Global
Change, Peace & Security, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2011, Taylor and Francis Online, p.344]//JH
Ultimately, this theoretical
hypothesis on the causes of environmental or resource-related conflict is
incapable of engaging with the deeper intersecting global structural conditions generating resource scarcities,
independently of insufficient government management of the internal distribution of resources in
weak states. It simplistically applies the Hobbesian assumption that without a centralised ‘Leviathan’ state structure, the persistence
of anarchy in itself generates conflict over resources. Under the guise of restoring the significance of
the biophysical environment to orthodox IR, this approach in effect actually occludes the environment
as a meaningful causal factor, reducing it to a mere epiphenomenon of the dynamics of anarchy in the
context of state failure. As a consequence, this approach is theoretically impotent in grasping the systemic
acceleration of global ecological, energy and economic crises as a direct consequence of the way in
which the inter-state system itself exploits the biophysical environment.
Apocalyptic representations of global warming demobilize solutions
Nordhaus & Shellenberger 9 [Ted – environmental policy expert, chairman of The Breakthrough Institute, Vice
President of Evans/McDonough (one of the country’s leading research firms) & Michael – environmental policy expert,
president of Breakthrough Institute; 11/16 “Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change”,
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/apocalypse_fatigue_losing_the_public_on_climate_change/2210/ \\NL]
Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll of public attitudes on global warming. On its face, the news was not good: Belief
that global
warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October — an astonishing drop
in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36
percent. While some pollsters questioned these numbers, the Pew statistics are consistent with the findings by Gallup in March that public concern about
global warming had declined, that the number of Americans who believed that news about global warming was exaggerated had increased, and that the number of
Americans who believed that the effects of global warming had already begun had declined. The reasons offered for these declines are as varied as opinion about
climate change itself. Skeptics say the gig is up: Americans have finally figured out that global warming is a hoax. Climate activists blame skeptics for sowing doubts
about climate science. Pew’s Andrew Kohut, who conducted the survey, says it’s (mostly) the economy, stupid. And some folks have concluded that Americans, with
our high levels of disbelief in evolution, are just too stupid or too anti-science to sort it all out. The truth is both simpler and more complicated. It is simpler in the
sense that most Americans just aren’t paying a whole lot of attention. Between being asked about things like whether they would provide CPR to save the life of a
pet (most pet owners say yes ) or whether they would allow their child to be given the swine flu vaccine (a third of parents say no), pollsters occasionally get around
to asking Americans what they think about global warming. When they do, Americans find a variety of ways to tell us that they don’t think about it very much at all.
Three years after it seemed that “An Inconvenient Truth” had changed everything, it turns out that it didn’t. The current Pew survey is the latest in a series of
studies suggesting that Al Gore probably had a good deal more effect upon elite opinion than public opinion. Public opinion about global warming, it turns out, has
been remarkably stable for the better part of two decades, despite the recent decline in expressed public confidence in climate science. Roughly two-thirds of
Americans have consistently told pollsters that global warming is occurring. By about the same majority, most Americans agree that global warming is at least in
part human-caused, with this majority roughly equally divided between those believing that warming is entirely caused by humans and those who believe it to be a
combination of human and natural causes. And about the same twothirds majority has consistently supported government action to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions since 1989. This would be good news for action to address climate change if most Americans felt very strongly about the subject. Unfortunately, they
don’t. Looking back over 20 years, only about 35 to 40 percent of the U.S. public worry about global warming “a great deal,” and only about one-third consider it a
“serious personal threat.” Moreover, when asked in openended formats to name the most serious problems facing the country, virtually no Americans volunteer
global warming. Even other environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, are often rated higher priorities by U.S. voters than global warming, which is
less visible and is experienced less personally than many other problems. What is arguably most remarkable about U.S. public opinion on global warming has been
both its stability and its inelasticity in response to new developments, greater scientific understanding of the problem, and greater attention from both the media
and politicians. Public opinion about global warming has remained largely unchanged through periods of intensive media attention and periods of neglect, good
economic times and bad, the relatively activist Clinton years and the skeptical Bush years. And majorities of Americans have, at least in principle, consistently
supported government action to do something about global warming even if they were not entirely sold that the science was settled, suggesting that public
understanding and acceptance of climate science may not be a precondition for supporting action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The more complicated
questions have to do with why. Why
have Americans been so consistently supportive of action to address climate
change yet so weakly committed? Why has two decades of education and advocacy about climate change had so little discernible impact on
public opinion? And why, at the height of media coverage and publicity about global warming in the years after the release of Gore’s movie, did confidence in
climate science actually appear to decline? Political
psychology can help us answer these questions. First, climate
change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and
space. It is difficult to visualize. And it is difficult to identify a clearly defined enemy. Coal executives may deny
that global warming exists, but at the end of the day they’re just in it for a buck, not hiding in caves in Pakistan plotting new and exotic ways to kill us. Second,
the dominant climate change solutions run up against established ideologies and identities. Consider
the psychological concept of “system justification.” System justification theory builds upon earlier
work on ego justification and group justification to suggest that many people have a psychological
need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself,
not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and
desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.
Many observers have suggested that Gore’s leading role in the global warming debate has had much to do with the rising partisan polarization around the issue.
And while this almost certainly has played a part, it is worth considering that there may be other significant psychological dynamics at play as well. Dr. John Jost, a
leading political psychologist at New York University, recently demonstrated that much
of the partisan divide on global warming can
be explained by system justification theory. Calls for economic sacrifice, major changes to our
lifestyles, and the immorality of continuing “business as usual” — such as going on about the business
of our daily lives in the face of looming ecological catastrophe — are almost tailor-made to trigger
system justification among a substantial number of Americans. Combine these two psychological
phenomena — a low sense of imminent threat (what psychologists call low-threat salience) and system justification —
and what you get is public opinion that is highly resistant to education or persuasion. Most Americans
aren’t alarmed enough to pay much attention, and efforts to raise the volume simply trigger system
justifying responses. The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are
relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities,
not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority
concerns for most people . In fact, the louder and more alarmed climate advocates become in these
efforts, the more they polarize the issue, driving away a conservative or moderate for every liberal
they recruit to the cause. These same efforts to increase salience through offering increasingly dire
prognosis about the fate of the planet (and humanity) have also probably undermined public confidence in
climate science. Rather than galvanizing public demand for difficult and far-reaching action, apocalyptic visions of global warming
disaster have led many Americans to question the science . Having been told that climate science
demands that we fundamentally change our way of life, many Americans have, not surprisingly, concluded
that the problem is not with their lifestyles but with what they’ve been told about the science. And in
this they are not entirely wrong, insofar as some prominent climate advocates, in their zeal to
promote action, have made representations about the state of climate science that go well beyond
any established scientific consensus on the subject, hyping the most dire scenarios and most extreme
recent studies, which are often at odds with the consensus of the I ntergovernmental P anel on C limate C hange.
These factors predate but appear to have been exacerbated by recession. Pew’s pollster Kohut points to evidence indicating that the recession has led
many Americans to prioritize economic over environmental concerns and that this in turn has
probably translated into greater skepticism about the scientific basis for environmental action. But notably,
both the Pew and Gallup data show that the trend of rising skepticism about climate science and declining concern
about global warming significantly predate the financial crisis. Pew found that from July 2006 to April 2008, prior to the
recession, belief that global warming was occurring declined from 79 percent to 71 percent and belief that global warming was a very or somewhat serious problem
declined from 79 percent to 73 percent. Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who believed that news of global warming was exaggerated rose from 30
percent in March of 2006 to 35 percent in March of 2008. So while these trends have accelerated over the last 18 months, they were clearly present in prior years.
Perhaps we should give the
American public a little more credit. They may not know climate science very well, but they
are not going to be muscled into accepting apocalyptic visions about our planetary future — or
embracing calls to radically transform “our way of life” — just because environmentalists or climate
scientists tell them they must. They typically give less credit to expert opinion than do educated elites, and those of us who tend to pay more
attention to these questions would do well to remember that expert opinion and indeed, expert consensus, has tended to have a less sterling track record than
most of us might like to admit. At
the same time, significant majorities of Americans are still prepared to support
reasonable efforts to reduce carbon emissions even if they have their doubts about the science. They may
be disinclined to tell pollsters that the science is settled, just as they are not inclined to tell them that evolution is more than a theory. But that doesn’t stop them
from supporting the teaching of evolution in their schools. And it
will not stop them from supporting policies to reduce carbon
emissions — so long as the costs are reasonable and the benefits, both economic and environmental,
are well-defined.6
Apocalyptic rhetoric destroys aff solvency - presents an endpoint to global
warming but ignores the possibility of human action, this limits the will of
people to address the underlying causes of warming.
Foust et al. 8 [Christina R. Foust, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication
Studies at the University of Denver, et al., with William O. Murphy, Doctoral Student and Graduate
Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver,
and Chelsea Stow, Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human
Communication Studies at the University of Denver, 2008, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A
Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper Submitted to the
Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association Convention in San
Diego, November 20th, p.15-16]//JH
Here, the
end-point of global climate change is perpetuated through a “self-reinforcing” cycle. This cycle
builds momentum toward the narrative’s conclusion, to the point that there is little or no space for
human agency in forestalling the anticipated telos. Even more disturbing, the average person does not begin
to worry until after the self-reinforcing feedback kicks in, suggesting that human involvement in changing
the narrative will not come until it is too late. While the articles do not all suggest that human agency or
adaptation is impossible, the narrative temporality limits the will of people to tackle the underlying
cause of global warming— increased greenhouse gas emissions.
The affirmative’s model for risk assessment turns the case – humans attempt to
manage the environment by only analyzing how much we can exploit nature
without causing irreversible harm and this leads to constant degradation of
ecosystems.
Peter Montague, director of the Environmental Research Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, 2000
[Foreward of Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk Assessment by Mary
O’Brien, MIT Press 2000, p. viii – ix]//JH
The nation's new risk-based regulatory system was founded on three unspoken assumptions, summarized
by Theodore Taylor and Charles Humpstone in The Restoration of the Earth (Harper & Row, 1973). Paraphrased, these assumptions
are as follows:
• Humans
can manage the environment by deciding how much of any destructive activity the Earth (or
any portion of the Earth) can safely absorb Without harm. Scientists call this the "assimilative capacity" of an ecosystem or a
human being or a population of fish. According to this assumption, scientists can reliably decide how much damage a river or a human or the
Florida panther can absorb without suffering irreversible harm. The purpose
limits of this "assimilative Capacity”
Of every risk assessment is to predict the
• Once
an ecosystem's "assimilative capacity" for a particular toxicant (or destructive activity, such as road building in grizzly
habitat) has been decided, then we can and will impose limits so that irreversible harm will not occur. We
will set restrictions, river by river, forest by forest, factory by factory, chemical by chemical, everywhere on the planet, so that the total,
cumulative effects do not exceed the "assimilative capacity" of the Earth or any of its ecosystems or inhabitants.
• We already know which substances and activities are harmful and which are not; or, in the case of
substances or activities that we never suspected of being harmful, we will be warned of their possible
dangers by traumatic but sub-lethal shocks that alert us to the danger before it is too late.
Unfortunately, with the benefit of 30 years' hindsight we now know that all three assumptions are
dead wrong.
For 30 years we have relied on a risk-based environmental-protection apparatus based on these incorrect assumptions. As
a result, the
world's ecosystems and its human inhabitants have suffered major damage. Think of ozone depletion,
global warming, acid rain, lead poisoning of tens of millions of children, mercury buildup in the
atmosphere and subsequently in fish, industrial poisons (such as PCBs) measurable throughout the
vastness of die oceans, the rising incidence of many cancers (including brain cancers, lymphomas, and
childhood cancers), escalating immune system disorders (including asthma and diabetes), the rising
incidence of nervous system diseases (such as Parkinson's Disease and Lou Gehrig's Disease), coral
reefs dying worldwide, and numerous species gone extinct. This list could be extended readily as new evidence of harm
pours in. All this damage has resulted from our "innocent until proven guilty" approach to destructive
activities, including the massive ongoing release of industrial poisons. If our risk assessments told us
some activity would cause only "acceptable damage," we plunged ahead on that basis. Now we wake
up to find that the cumulative effects of our risk-based decisions have severely degraded many of the
planet's biological systems.
Representations of environmental apocalypse only alienates conservationists
from the public – means the aff can’t solve.
Mikryukova no date Evgenia Mikryukova: University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Political Science, Graduate Student [The Politics of
Environment and Apocalyptic Narrative] (Pg.18-22)//MC
(https://www.academia.edu/2775072/Working_Paper_The_Politics_of_Environment_and_Apocalyptic_Narrative)
Generally, the same transformations can be traced in Western environmental critique. As Carol Stabile narrates in her overview of the evolution
of the environmental rhetoric in mass culture, the
notion of nature starts to change its character in the 70s, from a
passive environmental setting of human activity to an active subject, responding to our actions .31 Stabile
suggests the rhetoric of viral epidemics, newly discovered diseases, floods and earthquakes as an
example of the notion of the counter‐actions of nature, and of the punishment for human arrogance.
The general notion of the punishing nature concurs with the narrative of the ongoing human delusion;
of the mistake, that, once made in the past, has since been affecting the general course of human history. And this is when the earlier
mentioned circularity of human nature becomes problematized, as in the second half of the 20th century we encounter a general crisis of
modern humanism.
The pluralism of interpretations of the modern project combined with the imperative tone of the logic
of humanization result in a variety of great political catastrophes of the 20th century: the Second
World War, the Cold War, genocide, totalitarianism, and repression. Fascism was also a modern project after all.32
Thus, Peter Sloterdijk contends in the Rules for the Human Zoo, that the project of humanism ultimately represents the discourse of self‐
domestication and an algorithm of self‐ constrain, and that after the tragic events of the 20th century, it becomes clear, that humanism as
salvation from barbarianism clearly does not work, and will have to be reconsidered.33 The
general narratives of post‐
modernity and posthumanism derive exactly from the image of contemporary society as the post‐War and
post‐Holocaust society, and in this sense the problem is accurately summarized by Jean‐François Lyotard, who, following Adorno,
famously argues that Modernity is impossible after Auschwitz, and that we are now living in the postmodern age.34 If Modernity is
impossible, then the universal modern project of human nature is also impossible, and, thus, was
delusional from the very beginning: a wrong concept, a false belief, a placebo.
It is important to emphasize again, that as a (presumably) false epistemological paradigm not only the
Modern humanism is considered to fail to provide social transcendence, but it is believed to have
dreadful practical outcomes. The postmodern society is thus (as its condition is imagined to be) the society that “has gone too
far” in its optimistic and arrogant delusions about the power of civilization. This cultural logic partly explains
the radical tone of the post‐war philosophy and environmental critique. The increasingly popular narrative
of sustainability is, thus, often seen as the ultimate alternative to modern narrative; as the opposing logic
that should eventually come to the place of the logic of progress, or in other words, as another medicine for human
condition. The ultimate message of the radical environmental philosophy implies that progress and
humanism did not save us from the apocalypse. We are still heading in this direction, and to reverse
the movement we need to change these false outdated concepts to the ones of sustainability and
posthumanism.
There are multiple versions of posthumanism, with some of them being more radical (like the Deep Ecology movement) and other representing
more moderate versions (like the one that can be found in Jane Bennet’s Vibrant Matter35 or in some ethical reconsiderations of the concept
of ‘Home’). The general theme of these conceptions, however, always contains the expansion of ethic and reasoning beyond humanity to the
natural world.36 And in this way the family of posthumanist conceptions often falls into Modern logic (ironically while criticizing it), as long as
they imply the fatal flaw in the preceding paradigms of human place in the world and suggest a once and for all decision for the problems of
humanity. I will not analyze the content of various posthumanist conceptions and ponder their perspectives for the future development of
humanity in this paper.
Let me, however, briefly summarize the outcomes of the apocalyptic rhetoric, in which
the concepts of sustainability and posthumanism are wrapped. Generally speaking, the perceptual shift is
still delivered within the utopian/dystopian dichotomy, as it employs the same logic of the teleological temporal
movement: if the old remedy did not cancel the apocalypse, we need to find a new one. Herein lies the point
where arise the eventual conversational difficulties, as we encounter two radical salvationist rhetorics clashing.
There are multiple examples of this problem that can be found in the very structure of the political ecological discourse. As the
apocalypse, in words of Jacques Derrida, is essentially a “non‐event” (i.e. it cannot be really encountered, until it is
encountered), then it cannot be scientifically or analytically proved. Thus, application of the apocalyptic logic
from both sides results in nothing, but constant mutual accusation in false prophecies. Let us take for
example the aforementioned article by James Lovelock, who in 2006 predicted that the ongoing climate change would dramatically affect the
planet’s conditions in the near future, and eventually would signify the end of current civilizations. When four years later the scientist corrected
his prognosis, stating that over the course of time we have proved not to have enough data for such predictions, the headlines of the
newspapers invariably contained the word “alarmist” and the reviews without exception sounded bitterly.
There is, however, a more serious problem of the rhetorical clash, than an ongoing mutual skepticism. The
apocalyptic temporality
and teleological tone of the environmental critique combined with some radical versions of
posthumanism have resulted in labeling the narrative of sustainability as extremism, or even as a form of
anti‐modern fundamentalism. Thus, there has emerged a new figure in the corpus of modern apocalyptic anxieties — the Mad
Scientist. The ecologists nowadays often get to be placed on the spot of the “hidden enemies”, perceived
as the opponents of the social order. For example, Ronald Bailey states in his book Ecoscam: The False Prophets of Ecological
Apocalypse, that ecological critics are essentially equivalent to the contemporary self‐proclaimed chosen
people, who are the only ones able to see the hidden signs of the coming punishment. “[I]t is a
“paranoid” type of politics”, he writes, one that “believes that all of humanity's ills can be traced to a single center and hence can be
eliminated by some kind of final act of victory over the evil source… There is a chilling similarity between the old Marxist aspiration of molding a
“New Soviet Man” and the deep ecologist's desire to create a “New Ecological Person””.37 Another author, Deepak Lal, concludes in his article
Eco‐Fundamentalism, “[whereas] it may appear that the environmental movement is 'scientific' and hence 'modern' while the religious
fundamentalists are 'non‐scientific' and 'pre‐modern', they share a fear and contempt of the modernity whose central features are rightly seen
to be an instrumental rationality which undermines humanity's traditional relationship with God or Nature”.38 He thus accuses ecological
critics in attempting to impose their particular teleological values onto the neutrally structured modern international institutions.
In short, it is noticeable, that apocalyptic
logic in general does not do any good for the political ecology, as it
ultimately places it into a specific marginalized spot within modern discourse. Progressivism and sustainability,
the two competing ideologies, ultimately speak the same millenarian language, but claim to evoke incompatible modes of political action.
Jacques Derrida in his analysis of the apocalyptic philosophy comes to the conclusion that it is ultimately the problem of the two opposing
temporalities: a modern time set from the start (as the vector), and a postmodern time set to the end (as the countdown).39 The
central
obstacle for productive politics appears to be this conflict of temporalities and the following from it
teleological clash, not the futuristic fantasies themselves. Thus, following the solution, suggested by the French
philosopher, I believe we need to get rid of any teleology, to set a common zero hour, and to leave the future open for the people, nature and
the world.
Environmental crisis rhetoric erases possibility for solutions to climate change –
prioritization over other issues, creates reliance on government solutions, and
leads to disbelief, disempowerment, and withdrawal.
Hodder & Martin 9 [Patrick Hodder and Brian Martin, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong,
Australia, “Climate crisis? The politics of emergency framing” Published in Economic and Political
Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 36, 5 September 2009, pp. 53-60.]//JH
Should climate change be considered an emergency? Our aim here is to present some cautionary comments. Most discussion has approached
the issue in terms of whether climate change really is an emergency. For example, does the evidence show that warming is proceeding faster
than previously thought? Is there a tipping point beyond which climate change is irreversible? How soon and how drastically must carbon
emissions be reduced?
This way of thinking seems to be concerned with scientific matters, but actually it builds in social assumptions. Many of those who talk of a
climate crisis or emergency assume that evidence about climate processes means that addressing climate change is the most urgent social
issue, that the solution is policy change at the top, and that thinking of the issue as an emergency is an effective way of bringing about change.
It is not the use of the word "emergency" that is necessarily significant here but rather the
assumptions that so commonly go along with the word. We think these assumptions need to be brought
out into the open and discussed.
Let us be clear. We believe climate change is a vitally important issue. We believe action should be taken, the sooner and the more effective the
better, to prevent the adverse consequences of global warming. Calling climate change an emergency might be a good approach - but on the
other hand it might not be, indeed it might be counterproductive. We think both the advantages and disadvantages of emergency framing
should be discussed.
The emergency frame implicitly prioritises climate change above other issues. On the other hand, some critics,
like Lomborg (2006), argue that other issues should have higher priority. We think it can be a mistake to prioritise one issue
over others, because this may encourage competition between activists rather than cooperation.
There are plenty of issues of vital importance in which millions of lives are at stake, among them nuclear war, global poverty, HIV, inequality and smoking, which could kill one billion people this century (Proctor 2001). It is natural to expect campaigners on other vitally important issues
- such as torture, sexual slavery and genocide - to remain committed to their concerns. Rather
than prioritise climate change as
more urgent, it may be more effective for climate change activists to work with other social justice
campaigners to find ways to help each other - indeed, some are doing this already.
Emergency framing can be used to sideline dissent within the climate change movement itself. For
example, those who advocate highly ambitious targets for CO2reduction may seek the high ground, presenting their position as the only option
for humanity and stigmatising others as selling out. Internal
democracy, divergent approaches and openness to new
viewpoints can be dismissed as unaffordable luxuries when the future is at stake. Our view, instead, is that
because climate change is such an important issue, maintaining democracy, diversity and dialogue within the movement is even more vital.
One of the consequences of framing climate change as an emergency is an orientation to solutions
implemented at the top, usually by government. The assumption is that only governments have the
capacity to create change quickly enough. The subtext is that change must be imposed on a reluctant
population. In the longer term, this is not good politics, because the way to lasting change is through popular
mobilisation, with as many people as possible supporting the change and getting behind it. Imposing policies from the top runs the risk of
provoking a backlash, with gains in the short-term reversed later on.
With climate change, the
additional shortcoming of focusing on governments - as opposed to building a mass movement
that governments are the least reliable sources of support. Some are
captives of fossil fuel lobbies; some operate massive fossil fuel industries themselves . More deeply,
governments depend on economic growth to maintain tax revenues used to maintain functions that
perpetuate government itself - various bureaucracies, including the military, police and prisons - and to
that governments feel obliged to follow - is
pacify constituencies and lobbies through expenditure, for the rich as much as the poor. Few
governments are keen to promote
a steady-state economy, a necessity for long-term ecological sustainability.
A third major shortcoming of emergency framing is that it is not effective. Psychologically, calling
something a crisis may lead to disbelief - if immediate evidence of dramatic effects is not apparent - or disempowerment
and withdrawal because there seems to be little an individual can do to address an overwhelming
problem. Large numbers of people already think climate change is important, so to get them active the key is to provide practical ways of
engaging. Saying that the problem is even bigger and more urgent than before is not likely to make
people do more if they cannot already see practical ways to act.
Emergency framing is risky. It is, ironically enough, not a good way to create a sustainable movement - a
movement that continues to be strong a decade or more down the track after the media have moved on to other issues. The movements
against nuclear war fell into this trap: most activists concentrated on protesting in the here and now, demanding short-term change. But the
problem of nuclear weapons, part of the wider problem of the mobilisation of science and technology for warfare, was never going to go away
in a few years. The movement rose and fell, leaving only a few persistent campaigners attempting to keep the issue alive in the intervening
years.
The same applies to the climate change movements. They are active now in many countries, but will they be just as active in five or ten years?
The challenge is to build a long-term movement, cooperating with other movements, that will persist
after media attention declines should climate change not occur as rapidly as scientists anticipate, and
will also persist should some of the more calamitous scenarios eventuate. The world needs a
sustainable climate change movement built not on fear but on widespread commitment.
Ecological crisis rhetoric disincentivizes activism – leads to humanity turning
their back on nature because the problem is too large to be dealt with.
Frederick Buell, professor of English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY, 03 [From
Apocalypse to Way of Life, 2003, p.201]//JH
Yet another
pitfall for the full and sustained elaboration of environmental crisis is, though least discussed,
perhaps the most deeply ironic. A problem with deep cultural and psychological as well as social effects, it is embodied in a
startlingly simple proposition: the worse one feels environmental crisis is, the more one is tempted to turn
one's back on the environment. This means, preeminently, turning one's back on "nature"-on traditions of
nature feeling, traditions of knowledge about nature (ones that range from organic farming techniques to the different
departments of ecological science), and traditions of nature-based activism. If nature is thoroughly wrecked these days, people
need to delink from nature and live in postnature-a conclusion that, as the next chapter shows, many in U.S. society drew at the end of the
millenium.
Explorations of how deeply "nature" has been wounded and how intensely vulnerable to and
dependent on human actions it is can thus lead, ironically, to further indifference to nature-based
environmental issues, not greater concern with them.
Desired solutions are unnamed – this creates post-political populism because
the problem is merely shifted elsewhere, not solved
Swyngedouw 10 [Erik – professor of geography at the University of Manchester in the School of
Environment and Development; “Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of
Climate Change”, Theory Culture Society, May 24th, Sage \\NL]
Seventh, no
proper names are assigned to a post-political populist politics (Badiou, 2005). Post-political
populism is associated with a politics of not naming, in the sense of giving a definite or proper name to its domain or field
of action. Only ‘empty’ signifiers like ‘climate change policy’, ‘bio - diversity policy’ or a vacuous
‘sustainable policy’ replace the proper names of politics. These proper names, according to Rancière (1998; see
also Badiou, 2005), are what constitute a genuine democracy, that is, a space where the unnamed, the
uncounted and, consequently, unsymbolized become named and counted. Consider, for example, how class
struggle in the 19th and 20th century was exactly about naming the proletariat, its counting, symbolization, narration and consequent entry
into the technomachinery of the state. In the 20th century, feminist politics became named through the narration, activism and symbolization
of ‘woman’ as a political category. And, for capitalism, the ‘creative class’ is the revolutionary subject that sustains its creatively destructive
transformations. Climate change has no positively embodied name or signifier; it
does not call a political subject into being
that stands in for the universality of egalitarian democratic demands. In other words, the future of a
globally warmer world has no proper name. In contrast to other signifiers that signal a positively embodied content with
respect to the future (like socialism, communism, liberalism), an ecologically and climatologically different future world
is only captured in its negativity; a pure negativity without promises of redemption, without a positive
injunction that ‘transcends’/sublimates negativity and without proper subject. The realization of this
apocalyptic promise is forever postponed, the never-land of tomorrow’s unfulfilled and unfulfillable promises. Yet the gaze on
tomorrow permits recasting social, political and other pressing issues today as future conditions that
can be retroactively rescripted as a techno-managerial issue.
The final characteristic of populism takes this absence of a positively embodied signifier further. As
particular demands are
expressed (get rid of immigrants, reduce CO2) that remain particular, populism forecloses
universalization as a positive socio-environmental injunction or project. In other words, the environmental
problem does not posit a positive and named socio-environmental situation, an embodied vision, a
desire that awaits realization, a fiction to be realized. In that sense, populism does not solve problems,
it moves them elsewhere. Consider, for example, the current argument over how the nuclear option is again portrayed as a possible
and realistic option to secure a sustainable energy future and as an alternative to deal both with CO2 emissions and peak-oil. The redemption
of our CO2 quagmire is found in replacing the socio-ecologically excessive presence of CO2 with another socio-natural object, U235/238, and
the inevitable production of all manner of socio-natural transuranic elements. The nuclear ‘fix’ is now increasingly staged (and will undoubtedly
be implemented) as one of the possible remedies to save both climate and capital. It hardly arouses expectations for a better and ecologically
sound society.
Impact – Military Conflict/Violence
The affirmative’s neorealist logic views climate change as a new threat on the
security agenda – destroys any chance of prevention or mitigation of the threats
and leads to global systemic insecurity, normalization of political violence, and
militarization of foreign and domestic policy
Ahmed 11—Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is an international security analyst. He is Executive Director at
the Institute for Policy Research and Development, and Associate Tutor at the Department of IR,
University of Sussex, where he obtained his DPhil. [“The international relations of crisis and the crisis of
international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society,” Global
Change, Peace & Security, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2011, Taylor and Francis Online, p.345]//JH
Under traditional neorealist logic, a strategic response to global environmental crises must involve the
expansion of state-military capabilities in order to strengthen the centralised governance structures
whose task is to regulate the international distribution of natural resources, as well as to ensure that a
particular state’s own resource requirements are protected. Neorealism understands inter-state competition, rivalry
and warfare as inevitable functions of states’ uncertainty about their own survival, arising from the anarchic structure of the international
system. Gains
for one state are losses for another, and each state’s attempt to maximise its power
relative to all other states is simply a reflection of its rational pursuit of its own security. The upshot is
the normalisation of political violence in the international system, including practices such as overexploitation of energy and the environment, as a ‘rational’ strategy – even though this ultimately
amplifies global systemic insecurity. Inability to cooperate internationally and for mutual benefit is
viewed as an inevitable outcome of the simple, axiomatic existence of multiple states. The problem is that
neorealism cannot explain in the first place the complex interdependence and escalation of global crises.
Unable to situate these crises in the context of an international system that is not simply a set of states, but a transnational global structure
based on a specific exploitative relationship with the biophysical environment, neorealism
can only theorise global crises as
‘new issue areas’ appended to already existing security agendas.59
Yet by
the very act of projecting global crises as security threats, neorealism renders itself powerless to
prevent or mitigate them by theorising their root structural causes. In effect, despite its emphasis on the
reasons why states seek security, neorealism’s approach to issues like climate change actually guarantees
greater insecurity by promoting policies which frame these ‘non-traditional’ issues purely as
amplifiers of quite traditional threats. As Susanne Peters argues, the neorealist approach renders the
militarisation of foreign and domestic policy a pragmatic and necessary response to issues such as
resource scarcities – yet, in doing so, it entails the inevitable escalation of ‘resource wars’ in the name of
energy security. Practically, this serves not to increase security for competing state and non-state actors,
but to debilitate international security through the proliferation of violent conflict to access and
control diminishing resources in the context of unpredictable complex emergencies.60 Neorealism thus
negates its own theoretical utility and normative value. For if ‘security’ is the fundamental driver of
state foreign policies, then why are states chronically incapable of effectively ameliorating the global
systemic amplifiers of ‘insecurity’, despite the obvious rationale to do so in the name of warding off
collective destruction, if not planetary annihilation?61
Crisis based IR is inherently reductionist and technocratic – the environment is
securitized, leads to the problematisation of populations and culminates in
violent conflict. We must first analyze our own value systems as the origins of
structural failings.
Ahmed 11—Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is an international security analyst. He is Executive Director at
the Institute for Policy Research and Development, and Associate Tutor at the Department of IR,
University of Sussex, where he obtained his DPhil. [“The international relations of crisis and the crisis of
international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society,” Global
Change, Peace & Security, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2011, Taylor and Francis Online, p. 336]//JH
While it is increasingly acknowledged that cross-disciplinary approaches are necessary, these have largely failed to recognise just how
inherently interconnected these crises are. As Brauch points out, ‘most studies in the environmental security debate since 1990 have ignored or
failed to integrate the contributions of the global environmental change community in the natural sciences. To a large extent the latter has also
Underlying this problem is the lack of a holistic systems approach to
thinking aboutnot only global crises, but their causal origins in the social, political, economic, ideological
and value structures of the contemporary international system. Indeed, it is often assumed that these
contemporary structures are largely what need to be ‘secured’ and protected from the dangerous
impacts of global crises, rather than transformed precisely to ameliorate these crises in the first place.
Consequently, policy-makers frequently overlook existing systemic and structural obstacles to the
implementation of desired reforms
failed to integrate the results of this debate.’2
In a modest effort to contribute to the lacuna identified by Brauch, this paper begins with an empirically-oriented, interdisciplinary exploration
of the best available data on four major global crises – climate change, energy depletion, food scarcity and global financial instability –
illustrating the systemic interconnections between different crises, and revealing that their causal
origins are not accidental but inherent to the structural failings and vulnerabilities of existing global
political, economic and cultural institutions. This empirical evaluation leads to a critical appraisal of
orthodox realist and liberal approaches to global crises in international theory and policy. This critique
argues principally that orthodox IR reifies a highly fragmented, de-historicised ontology of the international
system which underlies a reductionist, technocratic and compartmentalised conceptual and
methodological approach to global crises. Consequently, rather than global crises being understood
causally and holistically in the systemic context of the structure of the international system, they are
‘securitised’ as amplifiers of traditional security threats, requiring counter-productive militarised
responses and/or futile inter-state negotiations. While the systemic causal context of global crisis convergence and
acceleration is thus elided, this simultaneously exacerbates the danger of reactionary violence, the
problematisation of populations in regions impacted by these crises and the naturalisation of the
consequent proliferation of wars and humanitarian disasters. This moves us away from the debate
over whether resource ‘shortages’ or ‘abundance’ causes conflicts, to the question of how either can
generate crises which undermine conventional socio-political orders and confound conventional IR
discourses, in turn radicalising the processes of social polarisation that can culminate in violent
conflict.
The securitization of climate change makes military conflict inevitable - reduces
efforts to find peaceful solutions, jumpstarts arms races.
Brzoska 8 —Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of
Hamburg [Michael Brzoska, 2008, “The Securitization Of Climate Change And The Power Of Conceptions
Of Security,” Paper Prepared for the International Studies Association Convention in San
Francisco, March 26-29]//JH
In the literature on securitization it is implied that when
a problem is securitized it is difficult to limit this to an increase in
attention and resources devoted to mitigating the problem (Brock 1997, Waever 1995). Securitization regularly
leads to all-round ‘exceptionalism’ in dealing with the issue as well as to a shift in institutional localization
towards ‘security experts’ (Bigot 2006), such as the military and police. Methods and instruments
associated with these security organizations – such as more use of arms, force and violence – will gain in
importance in the discourse on ‘what to do’. A good example of securitization was the period leading to the Cold War (Guzzini 2004 ). Originally a political conflict
over the organization of societies, in the late 1940s, the East-West confrontation became an existential conflict that was overwhelmingly addressed with military
means, including the potential annihilation of humankind. Efforts to alleviate the political conflict were, throughout most of the Cold War, secondary to improving
military capabilities.Climate change could meet a similar fate. An essentially political problem concerning the distribution of the costs of prevention and adaptation
and the losses and gains in income arising from change in the human environment might be perceived as intractable, thus necessitating the build-up of military and
police forces to prevent it from becoming a major security problem .
The portrayal of climate change as a security problem
could, in particular, cause the richer countries in the global North, which are less affected by it, to
strengthen measures aimed at protecting them from the spillover of violent conflict from the poorer
countries in the global South that will be most affected by climate change. It could also be used by
major powers as a justification for improving their military preparedness against the other major
powers, thus leading to arms races. This kind of reaction to climate change would be counterproductive in various
ways. Firstly, since more border protection, as well as more soldiers and arms, is expensive, the financial means to compensate for the negative economic effects of
reducing greenhouse gas emission and adapting to climate change will be reduced. Global military expenditure is again at the level of the height of the Cold War in
real terms, reaching more than US $1,200 billion in 2006 or 3.5 percent of global income. While any estimate of the costs of mitigation (e.g. of restricting global
warming to 2 ° C by 2050) and adaptation are speculative at the moment, 1 they are likely to be substantial. While there is no necessary link between higher military
expenditures and a lower willingness to spend on preventing and preparing for climate change, both policy areas are in competition for scarce resources. Secondly,
the acceptance of the security consequences of climate change as an intractable problem could well
reduce efforts to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts that will inevitably come with climate change.
Climate change will have major consequences, particularly in countries where living conditions are already precarious (IPCC 2007, WBGU 2007). The consequences
of climate change on some basic foundations of life, such as fresh water supplies, arable land and agricultural productivity in various parts of the world can already
be roughly estimated for various global-warming scenarios. There are also more or less well founded predictions of the consequences of reduced availability of
natural resources such as arable land and water on hunger and disease, even though such consequences are highly dependent on counter-measures and adaptation
efforts in affected regions. There is no inevitability about these consequences.
Impact – Alienation/Domination
Apocalyptic fears simply begin another chapter of colonization and domination
of nature – leads to human alienation from our biosphere, enables more climate
change driven damage to occur.
Crist 7 [Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech
University, 2007, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume
141, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Telos Press, p. 50-51]//JH
Domination comes at a huge cost for the human spirit, a cost that may or may not include the scale of
physical imperilment and suffering that apocalyptic fears conjure. Human beings pay for the
domination of the biosphere—a domination they are either bent upon or resigned to— with
alienation from the living Earth.60 This alienation manifests, first and foremost, in the invisibility of the
biodiversity crisis: the steadfast denial and repression, in the public arena, of the epochal event of mass
extinction and accelerating depletion of the Earth’s biological treasures. It has taken the threat of climate change (to
people and civilization) to allow the tip of the biodepletion iceberg to surface into public discourse, but even that has been woefully inadequate
in failing to acknowledge two crucial facts: first, the biodiversity crisis has been occurring independently of climate change, and will hardly be
stopped by windmills, nuclear power plants, and carbon sequestering, in any amount or combination thereof; and second,
the
devastation that species and ecosystems have already experienced is what largely will enable more
climate-change-driven damage to occur.
Human alienation from the biosphere further manifests in the recalcitrance of instrumental
rationality, which reduces all challenges and problems to variables that can be controlled, fixed,
managed, or manipulated by technical means. Instrumental rationality is rarely questioned substantively, except in the
flagging of potential “unintended consequences” (for example, of implementing geoengineering technologies). The idea that instrumental
rationality (in the form of technological fixes for global warming) might save the day hovers between misrepresentation and delusion: firstly,
because instrumental rationality has itself been the planet’s nemesis by mediating the biosphere’s constitution as resource and by condoning
the transformation of Homo sapiens into a user species; and secondly, because instrumental
rationality tends to invent,
adjust, and tweak technical means to work within given contexts—when it is the given, i.e., human
civilization as presently configured economically and culturally, that needs to be changed.
Alternatives
Alt – Criticism/Reframing
Vote negative to endorse a radical critique of fatalist thinking, this is key to
breaking down the dominance of industrial consumer civilization over our
environment.
Crist 7 [Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech
University, 2007, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume
141, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Telos Press, p. 53-55]//JH
In fatalistic thinking, the trajectory of industrial-consumer civilization appears set on tracks that
humanity cannot desert without derailing; it is implied that while the specifics of the future may elude us, in broad outline it is
(for better or for worse) a fixed direction of more of the same. Fatalism projects the course of human history (and concomitantly of natural
display, from a
fatalistic viewpoint,66 present patterns of global economic expansion, consumption increase,
population growth, conversion and exploitation of the land, killing of wildlife, extinction of species,
chemical contamination, depletion of oceans, and so on, will more or less keep unfolding.67 We glimpse
here what Horkheimer and Adorno had in mind when they pointed out that “logical necessity . . . remains tied to domination,
as both its reflection and its tool.”68
history) as the inevitable unfolding of the momentum of present trends. By virtue of the inertia that massive forces
Indeed fatalism is a mind-set that strengthens the trends that generate it by fostering compliance to those very trends. The compliance
that fatalism effects is invisible to the fatalistic thinker, who does not regard him or herself as a
conformist, but simply as a realist.69 But the conceptual and pragmatic fortification of the
socioeconomic establishment by fatalistic reasoning is incontestable, arising as an effect cognate to
what is called “positive feedback” in cybernetics,70 “looping action” in philosophy,71 and “ self-fulfilling prophesy” in sociology.72
The complicity of fatalism in sustaining the dominance of industrial consumer civilization merits close
scrutiny: fatalism may be the most cinctly recaptured the concept, “serves to impede making the foundations of society the object of thought
and reflection.”73 The declaration that we live in the Anthropocene (to stay with this key example) has the
ideological effect of discouraging deep questioning and dismissing even discussion of revolutionary
action. Rather, we are indirectly advised, our fate is to live our days in the “Age of Modern Man,” within which we must manage ourselves
and the world as best we can. Further, the narrow and technical conception of climate change as “the problem” is
beholden to the same fatalistic mind-set. The real problem—the industrial-consumer complex that is
overhauling the world in an orgy of exploitation, overproduction, and waste—is treated with kid gloves, taken
as given, and regarded as beyond the reaches of effective challenge.
But this
civilization is not beyond the reaches of radical action—and it is certainly not beyond the
reaches of radical critique.74 If the price of “think[ing] in terms of alternatives to the dominant order
[is to] risk exclusion from polite intellectual society,” as social theorist Joel Kovel observes about our times, then let us
pay the price while preserving our clarity about the unredeemable socioeconomic reality in which we
live.
Vote neg to endorse a reexamination of the way we view environmental issues
– key to understand the political, economic, and social forces responsible for
environmental destruction.
Davidson 2000 — Professor of Environmental Studies, San Francisco State University, [Carlos
Davidson, “Economic Growth and the Environment: Alternatives to the Limits Paradigm,” BioScience,
May, Vol. 50 Issue 5, p433]//JH
to better understand and challenge environmental
destruction, it is necessary to examine the multiple factors shaping consumption and production and
move beyond the singular focus of the limits perspective on aggregate population and resources. This
approach means examining economic structures, social relationships of power and ownership, control of
state institutions, and culture. For example, in the limits perspective, urban sprawl in western US cities is viewed as attributable
The multiple threads of a tapestry together form a picture. Similarly,
principally or solely to population growth. Although population is an important factor, the limits perspective's focus on population leaves out
other, equally important factors: economic incentives for developers to build large houses at low density, real estate interests' dominance of
zoning and land-use planning decisions, and government funding for sprawl-inducing freeways instead of urban mass transit. All of these
political, social, and economic factors are key for understanding sprawl, and, more important, for doing something about it.
The political–ecological approach is part of a growing body of research by geographers, anthropologists, economists, and biologists that draws
on biological and social sciences to understand environmental problems. An excellent example is from Vandermeer and Perfecto (1995), who
analyze the political and ecological causes and consequences of deforestation in Costa Rica. Other examples from very different perspectives
include a collection by Painter and Durham, The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America (1994), Richard Norgaard's
Development Betrayed (1994) about the Amazon, and a recent critical review by Peet and Watts (1996).
Conclusions
The claim that, for the most part, there are not biophysical limits to economic growth may disturb many environmentalists. Dropping the
limits/catastrophe paradigm is unattractive if one believes that appealing to people's rational desire to avoid a crash is the only way to motivate
change and stop environmental destruction. The tapestry metaphor and the related political–ecological approach may be seen as pessimistic
because they suggest that there are no external limits that are going to force a stop to environmental destruction. Without the threat of
catastrophic limits, there is no guarantee of a fundamental commonality of interests to stop destructive practices. If environmental degradation
is often gradual and continuous rather than catastrophic, then those in power who benefit materially from our current destructive economic
system will fight to maintain the status quo.
the tapestry metaphor and the political–ecological approach have a hopeful side. Halting
destructive processes is a political struggle that requires people to see beyond the aggregate numbers
of resources, consumption, and population to understand the political, economic, and social forces
responsible for environmental destruction. A political–ecological analysis often reveals that levels of
consumption and destructive production processes are not fixed and inevitable but rather the result
of political, economic, and cultural decisions that are subject to change. Environmental movements in many
However,
countries have been successful in bringing about significant changes, often against powerful political interests. For example, the US Clean Air
and Clean Water Acts have greatly reduced air and water pollution. A
political–ecological approach can illuminate
possible solutions to environmental problems that may be obscured by the limits perspective. Finally, a
political–ecological approach ties environmental issues to broader struggles for social justice and
points to potential allies for conservation.
Alt –Environmental Appreciation
The alt is a prerequisite to solve the case – recognizing our own embeddedness
and embodiment in earth’s ecosystems leads to a deeper sense of connection to
our environment, key to disincentivize environmental exploitation.
Frederick Buell, professor of English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY, 03 [From
Apocalypse to Way of Life, 2003, p.206-208]//JH
Thoroughgoing and persistent awareness
of"embodiment" and "embeddedness" in ecosystems-key to a
psychologizing and politicizing of environmental crisis-has been clearly elaborated and advocated in ecofeminism for
some time. It is, to translate it into my terms, a way of dwelling actively within rather than accommodating
oneself to environmental crisis. It brings with it a number of benefits, but most important here is that it helps people to
live in their senses even when to do so is hard. Highlighting just how vulnerable people are to environmental damage
because they are all embedded in ecosystems and embodied themselves, this awareness makes people experience in their senses the full
impact of dwelling in environmental and ecosocial deterioration and rising risk.
Further, emphasizing
embodiment and embeddedness makes people pay particular attention in their
lives to what ecofeminists and Marxists call the work of reproduction as opposed to the work of production, of
producing goods. This labor focuses attention on the environments one actually dwells in (environments
that are local, regional, national, and global) rather than what one might produce from them. One focuses therefore on
ecological and social health-on concerns such as safe food and water, nurturing children, nursing the elderly, and tending bodies, and on
education, sanitation, nutrition, and community creation. Doing so serves to correct old environmental as well gender biases. Further, growth,
development, and risk-taking can no longer seem primary and environmental protection secondary.
No longer can one use the
phrase "sustainable development" (as ecological modernization is tempted to do) as a ploy for proceeding with
business as usual· valuation of the work of reproduction ruts teeth into the term "sustainable." It guides personal choices,
but it also generates public policy-such as calling for internalizing all the costs of reproduction in every
economic activity and calculation.
This agenda also urges people to entertain and internalize a new economy of personal and communal
environmental feeling today. Formerly, Aldo Leopold helped extend ethics to include species and ecosystems,
just as ethics had formerly been extended to include women and "other" peoples.62 The era of conquest (of people, of nature) was over; an era
of citizenship and ethics commenced. People
needed to recognize and respect the integrity of species and
ecosystems-their integrity and their agency as self-willed, selforganizing, spontaneous, wild entities.
With the elaboration and the growing perception that people inhabit an already-damaged world, a more intimate relationship between people
and their biotic (and social) environments become desirable, even as it-has been forced upon people as a necessity. A
new economy of
feeling that accents intimate connections and relational otherness rather than independent
coexistence must come into play. People's bodies are vulnerable to ecosystems, as ecosystems are
vulnerable to people; environmental and ecosocial deterioration is increasingly an intimate matter;
the closed circle has brought people and environment closely together. To achieve sustainability., to
dwell in crisis, then, people need to work with a new economy of feeling, one that extends a variety of
affects and affective practice to environmental contexts. People need to extend erotic, marital, parental, filial, and other
kin feelings to environmental relationships. They also need to consider intimacy, nurturing, education, caring,
embeddedness, embodiment, exposure, and vulnerability as crucial aspects of environmental as well
as social-human, experience.
If antienvironmental thought could once sneer at wilderness passions as inhumanly purist-as focusing care on wild, pristine, nonhuman places
and not giving a damn about the reworked/worked-over human ones-the ecofeminist economy of feeling yields just the opposite response. As
humanity’s sense of connection with its damaged biosphere and increasingly environmentally
stressed societies increases, so does its need to care. Indeed, the worse damage means the more care. A child's sickness
intensifies the desire to nurture; something of the same is evoked by wounded environments felt intimately. Equally, a renewed ferocity
about the damage they have suffered emerges. If one is reluctant, as McKibben wisely noted, to make friends from among
the terminally ill, one is equally fierce about close kin put at risk by what society has done. Perception of deepened environmental crisis thus
does not have to lead to political passivity, to calls for inhumanist authoritarian solutions, or to trying to walk away from the damage.
Dwelling in crisis that is firmly perceived as such, coupled with the exploration of a new economy of
feeling, opens up a very different set of possibilities for care, commitment, and doing all one can.
Vote neg to endorse a new system of ecological appreciation and sustainability
– viewing crisis as the only means for incentivizing action rules out possibility for
fundamental change.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p. 50-53]//JH
A Crisis People won't change until there's a crisis. They're stuck in their ways. They're comfortable. They won't do anything, even with daily reports of melting ice
and starving children. That's just human nature-selfish, greedy, short-sighted. It is true that when there is a crisis people come together. When the town floods,
everyone pitches in to stack sandbags and evacuate the elderly. But to
conclude that people will only act when there's a crisis
defies logic-and a whole lot of history. I will give an example of such history, but first let's put the general point right up front : Fundamental
social change starts with (1) a few committed people, (2) new understandings, and (3) small acts that
eventually confront the structures of power. And for motive, fundamental change draws on people's basic
need for meaning, engagement, and fairness. Take slavery. For the great bulk of human history, across cultures, from India and China to
Europe and the Americas and Africa, slavery was a perfectly normal practice. Indeed, it was an institution-a set of widely shared norms and principles, rules and
procedures. And what people back then shared-rulers and commoners alike-was the idea that some people, by virtue of birth or race or nationality, would be slaves.
That's just the way it was, and everyone knew it; it was beyond questioning. Always has been, always will be. Then a dozen shopkeepers and clergy got together in a
print shop in London in 1787 and said, in effect, no more; this is wrong; it must stop. So they set about gathering information on what was really happening on slave
ships and on the plantations. They distributed brochures and pamphlets and lectured across England and abroad. And they introduced legislation in Parliament and
lobbied parliamentarians. Maybe most significantly, they systematically undercut arguments defending the normalcy and necessity of slavery-the economic
arguments (the British Empire and all who depend on it around the world will collapse), the political arguments (this is just an attempt by the opposition party to
take control of the government), the moral arguments (the slaves rejoice when they leave the Dark Continent).1 Today we take the abolition of slavery to be
perfectly reasonable, moral, inevitable. But notice that for the early abolitionists, there was no crisis: They were quite comfortable. Their country was riding high.
Life was good. Those shopkeepers and clergy and a few noblemen simply concluded that slavery was wrong. Others might have foreseen slavery's demise due to
economic trends or movements for democracy and individual rights. But for much of this early history of abolition, there was no crisis. Instead, a few people
acquired new understandings, took a strong moral stance, and confronted power. They took on one of the most pervasive, most accepted, most "necessary"
structures in human history-slavery. And they did not back down when defenders ridiculed them, when some claimed that the economy would collapse and people
would be thrown out of work, that the empire required it. The abolitionists spoke truth to power. And the truth was that Britain and the world as a whole would do
quite well without slavery. In fact, if one accepts the maxim that slavery degrades slave and slaveholder alike, Britain and the world did better without slavery. But
notice: there was nothing normal or inevitable, and certainly nothing moral, about slavery. Today
there is nothing normal or inevitable
about unending growth on a finite planet. There is nothing normal or inevitable about 10 percent of
the world's population holding 85 percent of global household wealth 2 while a billion or two struggle
day to day just to survive. There is nothing normal or inevitable about knowingly degrading
ecosystems, permanently extinguishing entire species, causing irreversible changes in climate, or
dislocating millions of people by failing to stop the resultant rise in sea levels. And there is nothing
normal or inevitable about justifying all this in the name of "economic growth" or "progress" or
"consumer demand" or "efficiency" or "jobs" or "return on investment" or "global competitiveness." So
yes, many people in advanced industrial countries are comfortable. They appear unlikely to change until a crisis affects them personally. They have done well by the
current structures, economic and political. But just a bit of reflection, a glimmer of foresight, a glance at the biophysical trends, not to mention at financial trends
where mounting debt threatens the entire confidence game, and the path's end point is clear: collapse. All the market forces and technological wizardry will not
change some basic facts: we have one planet, one set of ecosystems, and one hydrologic cycle; and each of us has just one brain, one body, and one lifetime. Limits
are real. If
the current system cannot continue on one planet, just as slavery could not continue with
trends in democracy and free markets and religious rights and human rights, then the action is with
those with a bit of foresight, those with a vision of a different way of living on the planet, of living
with nature, not against nature. The action is with those who can accept limits indeed, embrace them.
So readers of this book, I assume, may be comfortable, but they are not content. They are looking ahead, they are concerned, they are looking for change. And they
know that a fundamental shift is inevitable. They know that all systems, from organisms to ecosystems, from household economies to global economies, have limits.
They are the ones preparing the way, laying the groundwork, devising the principles and, yes, the
technologies and markets that will allow everyone to live within immutable ecological constraints . They
are the ones making sure the sand and the sandbags are on hand so that others can pitch in when the time comes. They are the ones building the compost piles,
collecting the information, experimenting with new forms of community, speaking truth to power. The others, the people who need a crisis to act, are not the
leaders. They will eventually act, to be sure; they
will act when personally threatened. But they will need guidance. They will need
role models, concrete examples, opportunities to engage and do good as they protect themselves.
And they will need enabling language. That's where the real leaders come in. And now is the time to prepare-not
when the crisis hits home and hits hard. So make no mistake, some people will act when there's a crisis. But many others will be getting ready now. These are the
concerned and committed, the
"moral entrepreneurs" who are already discovering that acting now is very
satisfying, very engaging. It's hard, yet at times quite simple.
Alt – Reject the notion of ‘Nature’
Nature and culture are inseparable – the aff’s attempt to separate and control
nature de-politicizes it by ignoring its unpredictable and always changing
nature. Only a rejection of the notion of “nature” can solve.
Swyngedouw 11, Erik Swyngedouw – Geography @ School of Environment and Development University of Manchester
[Whose environment? The end of nature, climate change and the process of post-politicization]
(http://www.scielo.br/pdf/asoc/v14n2/06.pdf) //MC
The death of Nature: emergent natures The death or the end of Nature has been
announced many
times1. The proclaimed end of Nature does not, of course, imply a de-materialization of human life, the
apogee of modern "man's" quest to severe the ties that bind him to Nature. On the contrary, humans and non-humans
are ever more entangled through myriad interactions and transformative processes
(LATOUR, 1993). The death of Nature signals rather the demise of particular imaginings of Nature, of a set of symbolic inscriptions
that inferred a singular Nature, at once external and internal to humans and human life.
In Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton calls Nature "a transcendental term in a material mask
[that] stands at the end of a potentially infinite series of other terms that collapse into it"
(MORTON, 2007: 14). He distinguishes between at least three interrelated places or meanings of Nature in our symbolic universe.
First, as a floating signifier, the 'content' of Nature is expressed through a range of
diverse terms that all collapse in the Name of Nature: DNA, elephants, mineral water, The
Andes, hunger, hart-beat, markets, desire, profits, CO2, greed, competition, ... . Such metonymic
lists, although offering a certain unstable meaning, are inherently slippery, and show a stubborn
refusal to fixate meaning consistently and durably. Slavoj Zizek makes a similar point when he states that
"Nature does not exist"! (ZIZEK, (1992) 2002). His Lacanian perspective insists on the difference "between [a] series of
ordinary signifiers and the central element which has to remain empty in order to serve as the underlying organizing principle of the
series" (ZIZEK, 2000: 52). Nature constitutes exactly such central (empty or floating) element whose
meaning can be gleaned only by relating it to other more directly recognizable signifiers.
Nature becomes a symbolic tapestry, a montage, of meaning, held together with quilting points. For example,
"biodiversity", "eco-cities", "CO2", or "climate change" can be thought of as quilting points (or
points de capiton) through which a certain matrix of meanings of Nature is articulated. These quilting points are also more than mere
anchoring points; they refer to a beyond of meaning, a certain enjoyment that becomes
structured in fantasy (in this case, the desire for an environmentally balanced and socially harmonious order)2. In other
words, there is always a remainder or excess that evades symbolization.
Second, Morton argues, Nature has "the force of law, a norm against which deviation is measured" (MORTON, 2007: 14), for
example when Nature is summoned to normalize heterosexuality and to think queerness
as
deviant and unnatural or to see competition between humans as natural and altruism as
a produce of "culture" (or vice versa), or when a particular climatic condition is normatively posited as ideal.
Normative power inscribed in Nature is invoked as an organizing principle that is
transcendental and universal, allegedly residing outside the remit allocated to humans and non-humans alike but
that exercises an inescapable performative effect and leaves a non alienable imprint. This is
a view that sees Nature as something given, as a solid foundational (or ontological) basis from which we act and
that can be invoked to provide an anchor for ethical or normative judgments of ecological, social, cultural, political, or economic
procedures and practices. Consider for example how the vision of a stable climate is elevated to a
"public good", both by the British parliament and by the UNHCHR: "[T]he delivery of a stable climate, as
an essential public good, is an immediate security, prosperity and moral imperative, not
simply a long-term environmental challenge."3
And, third, Nature contains a plurality of fantasies and desires, like, for example, the dream of a sustainable
nature, a balanced climate, the desire for love-making on a warm beach under the setting sun, the fear for the revenge
of Nature if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Nature is invoked here as the
stand-in for other, often repressed or invisible, longings and passions - the Lacanian object petit
around which we shape our drives and that covers up for the lack of ground on which to base our subjectivity (ZIZEK, 1999). It is
the sort of fantasy displayed in calls for restoring a true (original but presumably presently lost)
humane harmony by retro-fitting the world to ecological balance and in the longing for a
Nature that functions as the big "Other", the one that suggests the pathway to redeem our predicament. Here,
Nature is invoked as the "external" terrain that offers the promise, if attended to properly,
for finding a truly harmonious life4, but also from which threat of disaster emanates if we perturb its internal
functioning.
In sum, these
three uses of Nature imply simultaneously an attempt to fixate its unstable
meaning while being presented as a fetishized "Other" that reflects or, at least, functions
as a symptom through which our displaced deepest fears and longings are expressed. As
such, the concept of Nature becomes ideology par excellence and functions ideologically, and by that I
mean that it forecloses thought, disavows the inherent slippery of the concept and ignores the multiplicities, inconsistencies, and
incoherencies inscribed in its symbolization (MORTON, 2007: 24). For Slavoj Zizek, any attempt to suture the
meaning of empty signifiers is a decidedly political gesture. The disavowal or the refusal to
recognize the political character of such gestures, the attempts to universalize and suture the situated and
positioned meanings inscribed metonymically in Nature lead to perverse forms of de-politicization, to
rendering Nature politically mute and socially neutral (SWYNGEDOUW, 2007). The disavowal of the
empty core of Nature by colonizing its meaning, by filling out the void, staining it with inserted meanings that are subsequently
generalized and homogenized, is the gesture par excellence of de-politicization, of placing Nature outside the
political, that is outside the field of public dispute, contestation, and disagreement. In
addition, such symbolizations of Nature disavow the Real of natures, the heterogeneous,
unpredictable, occasionally catastrophic, acting out of socio-ecological processes that
mark the Anthropocene. It is these un-symbolized natures that haunt in their excessive acting: droughts,
hurricanes, tsunamis, oil-spills, recombinant DNA, floods, globalizing diseases,
disintegrating polar ice are a few of the more evocative markers of such socio-natural processes.
Bruno Latour, albeit from a rather different perspective, equally proposes to abandon the concept of Nature
and suggests instead considering the world as filled with socio-natural quasi-objects. For
Latour, there is neither Nature nor Society (or Culture) outside the cultural and discursive
practices that produced this binary formulation (LATOUR, 1993). For him, the imbroglios of human and non-human
things that proliferate in the world consists of continuously multiplying nature-culture hybrids that stand between the poles of nature
and culture (LATOUR, 2005).Think of, for example, greenhouse gases, Dolly the cloned sheep, dams, oil-rigs, or electromagnetic
waves. They are simultaneously social/cultural and natural/physical, and their coherence, i.e. there relative spatial and temporal
sustainability, is predicated upon assembled networks of human and non-human relations (SWYNGEDOUW, 2006). Nature is
always already social (JANKOVIC, 2000). This perspective, too, rejects retaining the concept of
Nature and suggests in its stead to consider the infinite heterogeneity of the procedures
of assembling — dissembling — reassembling the rhizomatic networks through which things, bodies, natures and cultures
become enmeshed and through which relatively stable quasi-objects come into purview (CASTREE, 2003; BRAUN, 2006). This
gesture also attempts to repoliticize the “environment”, to let quasi-objects enter the public assembly of
political concerns.
Eminent natural scientists echo these critical social theory perspectives. Harvard biologists Levins and Lewontin, for example, argue
too that Nature has been filled in by scientists with a particular set of universalizing meanings that ultimately de-politicize Nature and
facilitate particular mobilizations of such “scientifically” constructed Nature (LEVINS, 1985; LEWONTIN, 2007). In contrast, they
insist that the biological world is inherently relationally constituted through contingent, historically produced, infinitely variable forms
in which each part, human or non-human, organic or nonorganic, is intrinsically bound up with the wider relations that make up the
whole6. Levins and Lewontin abhor a simplistic, reductionist, teleological and, ultimately, homogenizing view of Nature. They concur
with the view that a singular Nature does not exist, that there is no trans-historical and trans-
geographical transcendental natural state of things, of conditions or of relations, but
rather are there a range of different historical natures, relations, and environments that
are subject to continuous, occasionally dramatic or catastrophic, and rarely, if ever, fully
predictable changes and transformations. They eschew such expressions as “it is in the Nature of things” to
explain one or another ecological or human behavior or condition. Both individuals and their environments are co-produced and coevolve in historically contingent, highly diversified, locally specific and often not fully accountable manners7. For Levins and
Lewontin, therefore, no universalizing or foundational claim can be made about what Nature is, what it should be or where it should
go. This is also the view shared by the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould who saw evolution not as a gradual process,
but one that is truncated, punctuated, occasionally catastrophic and revolutionary but, above all, utterly contingent (GOULD, 1980).
There is no safety in Nature – Nature is unpredictable, erratic, moving spasmodically and blind. There is no final guarantee in Nature
on which to base our politics or the social, on which to mirror or dreams, hopes or aspirations.
In sum, and in particular as a result of the growing global awareness of “the environmental
crisis”, the inadequacy of our symbolic representations of Nature becomes more acute
as the Real of Nature, in the form of a wide variety of ecological threats (global warming,
new diseases, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, pollution) invades and unsettles our
received understandings of Nature, forcing a transformation of the signifying chains that
attempt to provide “content” for Nature, while at the same time exposing the impossibility of
capturing fully the Real of natures (ZIZEK, 2008). The point of the above argument is that the natures we see and
work with are necessarily radically imagined, scripted, and symbolically charged as Nature. These inscriptions are always
inadequate, they leave a gap, an excess or remainder, and maintain a certain distance from the co-produced natures that are there,
which are complex, chaotic, often unpredictable, radically contingent, historically and geographically variable, risky, patterned in
endlessly complex ways, ordered along “strange” attractors8. In other words, there is no Nature out there that needs or requires
salvation in name of either Nature itself or a generic Humanity. There is nothing foundational in Nature that
needs, demands, or requires sustaining. The debate and controversies over Nature and
what do with it, in contrast, signal rather our political inability to engage in directly
political and social argument and strategies about re-arranging the socio-ecological coordinates of everyday life, the production of new socio-natural configurations, and the arrangements of socio-metabolic
organization (something usually called capitalism) that we inhabit. In the next section, we shall exemplify and deepen further this
analysis by looking at climate change policies and arguments as depoliticizing gestures, predicated upon a growing concern for a
Nature that seems to veer off-balance.
Only accepting the variability of nature can solve for the current problems.
Swyngedouw 11, Erik Swyngedouw – Geography @ School of Environment and Development University of Manchester
[Whose environment? The end of nature, climate change and the process of post-politicization]
(http://www.scielo.br/pdf/asoc/v14n2/06.pdf) //MC
6. Conclusion: From Environmentalizing Politics to Politicizing the Environment Taking the
environmental and climatic
catastrophe seriously requires exploding the infernal process of de-politicization marked by the dominance
of empty signifiers like Nature, and urges us to re-think the political again. The claim made above to abandon
Nature in no way suggests ignoring, let alone forgetting , the Real of natures or, more precisely, the diverse,
multiple, whimsical, contingent and often unpredictable socio-ecological relations of which we are part.
Rather, there is an urgent need to question legitimizing all manner of socio-environmental politics, policies and
interventions in the name of a thoroughly imagined and symbolised Nature or Sustainability, a procedure that
necessarily forecloses a properly political frame through which such imaginaries become constituted
and hegemonised, one that disavows the constitutive split of the people by erasing the spaces of agnostic encounter. The above
re-conceptualisation urges us to accept the extraordinary variability of natures, insists on the need to make 'a
wager' on natures, forces to chose politically between this rather than that nature, invites us to plunge in
the relatively unknown, expect the unexpected, accept that not all there is can be known, and, most
importantly, fully endorse the violent moment that is inscribed in any concrete socio-environmental
intervention. Indeed, the ultimate aim of political intervention is to change the given socio-environmental ordering in a certain manner.
Like any intervention, this is a violent act, erases at least partly what is there in order to erect something new and different. Consider, for
example, the extraordinary effect the eradication of the HIV virus would have on sustaining livelihoods (or should we preserve/protect the virus
in the name of biodiversity?). Proper
political interventions are irredeemably violent engagements that rechoreograph socio-natural relations and assemblages, both distant and nearby; that always split the consensus and produce inegalitarian outcomes. Engaging with natures, intervening in socio-natural orders, of course, constitutes a
political act par excellence, one that can be legitimised only in political terms, and not - as is customarily
done - through an externalised legitimation that resides in a fantasy of Nature. Any political act is one
that re-orders socio-ecological co-ordinates and patterns, reconfigures uneven socio-ecological
relations, often with unforeseen or unforeseeable, consequences. Such interventions signal a totalitarian moment, the
temporary suspension of the democratic, understood as the presumed equality of all and everyone
qua speaking beings in a space that permits and nurtures dissensus. The dialectic between the
democratic as a political given and the totalitarian moment of policy intervention as the suspension of the
democratic needs to be radically endorsed. While the democratic political, founded on a presumption
of equality, insists on difference, disagreement, radical openness, and exploring multiple possible
futures, concrete environmental intervention is necessarily about closure, definitive choice, a singular
intervention and, thus, certain exclusion and silencing. The democratic political process dwells, therefore, in two spheres
simultaneously. Jacques Rancière (RANCIÈRE, 1995; MARCHART, 2007) define these spheres respectively as 'the political' and 'the police' (the
policy order). The (democratic) political is the space for the enunciation and affirmation of difference, for the cultivation of dissensus and
disagreement, for asserting the presumption of equality of all and everyone in the face of the inegalitarian function of the polic(y)e order. Any
policy intervention, when becoming concretely geographical or ecological, is of necessity a violent act
of foreclosure of the democratic political (at least temporarily), of taking one option rather than another, of producing one sort
of environment, of assembling certain socio-natural relations, of foregrounding some natures rather than others, of hegemonizing a particular
metonymic chain rather than another. And the legitimation of such options cannot be based on corralling Nature into legitimizing service. The
production of socio-environmental arrangements implies fundamentally political questions, and has to be addressed and legitimized in political
terms. Politicizing environments democratically, then, become an issue of enhancing the democratic political content of socio-environmental
construction by means of identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more egalitarian mode of
producing natures can be achieved. This requires reclaiming proper democracy and proper democratic public spaces (as spaces for the
enunciation of agonistic dispute) as a foundation for and condition of possibility for more egalitarian socio-ecological arrangements, the naming
of positively embodied ega-libertarian socio-ecological futures that are immediately realisable. In other words, egalitarian
ecologies
are about demanding the impossible and realising the improbable, and this is exactly the challenge
the Anthropocene poses. In sum, the politicization of the environment is predicated upon the
recognition of the indeterminacy of nature, the constitutive split of the people, the unconditional
democratic demand of political equality, and the real possibility for the inauguration of different
possible public socio-ecological futures that express the democratic presumptions of freedom and
equality.
Tapestry Metaphor
A metaphor based on a tapestry accurately portrays the relationship between
economic growth and the environment – there is no sudden collapse, only slow
degradation that gradually diminishes the function and beauty of the tapestry.
Davidson 2000 — Professor of Environmental Studies, San Francisco State University, [Carlos
Davidson, “Economic Growth and the Environment: Alternatives to the Limits Paradigm,” BioScience,
May, Vol. 50 Issue 5, p433-435]//JH
The relationship between economic activity and environmental quality is extremely complex. It is difficult to define, let alone meaningfully
measure, the size of the economy or environmental quality. Consequently, our
understanding of the interaction
between the economy and the environment is primarily conceptual. Basic conceptual assumptions
often take the form of metaphors (or conceptual models). Metaphors are not merely in the words we use but in the very
concepts; therefore, they can shape the way we think and act (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Often, we are not even aware of the content and
power of our metaphors.
What is meant by ecological limits to economic growth can best be seen in the rivet metaphor developed
by Paul and Anne Ehrlich (1981). In this well-known metaphor, an airplane is analogous to Earth. Each act of
environmental destruction (loss of a species, in the original metaphor) is like pulling a rivet from the plane's wing.
The wing has lots of rivets, so nothing happens when the first few rivets go. But eventually and
inevitably, as more rivets are pulled, the wings break off and the plane crashes. In a related metaphor,
environmental destruction is likened to speeding toward a cliff in a car. If the car does not stop, it will eventually go over the cliff. Figure 1a
presents a graphical representation of these limits metaphors.
aspects of the rivet and cliff metaphors shape thinking about environmental problems. First, the
initial changes have little effect contributes to a false sense of
security and unwillingness to recognize limits and change course. Second, when limits are reached, the results are
catastrophic—the plane crashes, the car goes over the cliff. Limits theorists generally predict that, if limits are reached
or exceeded, there will be an ecological collapse which will in turn force a collapse of the human
economy (in Figure 1a, both economic scale and environmental quality collapse when limits are reached). Limits are seen as
absolute constraints on economic activity, not just as points beyond which economic growth results in
environmental degradation. For example, Ludwig (1996) writes, “Either we will limit growth in ways of our choosing or it will be
Three essential
transition from no effect to effect is abrupt. That
limited in ways not of our choosing” (p. 16). The third essential component of these metaphors is that, in the event of a catastrophe, everyone
suffers and therefore everyone has a clear self-interest in avoiding a crash.
The limits concept has been heavily criticized by neoclassical economists who believe that technical change will allow the economy to overcome
all resource constraints and expand indefinitely (Nordhaus 1992). The basic neoclassical conceptual model, however, predicts either no
environmental destruction or destruction only until the economy reaches a certain level of affluence (Figure 1c; Grossman and Krueger 1993);
because of this prediction and others, this model has been criticized by ecological economists (e.g., Daly 1996).
A metaphor based on a tapestry provides a more accurate and useful view of the relationship
between economic activity and the environment than either the limits metaphors of rivets and cliffs or the
technological optimist model of neoclassical economics . Tapestries have long been used as metaphors for the richness and
complexity of biological systems (e.g., the tapestry of life). As a metaphor for environmental degradation, each
small act of destruction (akin to removing a rivet) is like pulling a thread from the tapestry. At first, the results
are almost imperceptible. The function and beauty of the tapestry is slightly diminished with the
removal of each thread. If too many threads are pulled—especially if they are pulled from the same
area—the tapestry will begin to look worn and may tear locally. There is no way to know ahead of
time whether pulling a thread will cause a tear or not. In the tapestry metaphor, as in the cliff and rivet metaphors,
environmental damage can have unforeseen negative consequences; therefore, the metaphor argues
for the use of the precautionary principle. The tapestry is not just an aesthetic object. Like the airplane wing in
the rivet metaphor, the tapestry (i.e., biophysical systems) sustains human life.
However, the tapestry
metaphor differs from the rivet and cliff metaphors in several important aspects.
First, in most cases there are not limits. As threads are pulled from the tapestry, there is a continuum of degradation
rather than any clear threshold. Each thread that is pulled slightly reduces the function and beauty of the tapestry. Second,
impacts consist of multiple small losses and occasional larger rips (nonlinearities) rather than overall
collapse. Catastrophes are not impossible, but they are rare and local (e.g., collapse of a fishery) rather than
global. The function and beauty of the tapestry are diminished long before the possibility of a
catastrophic rip. Third, there is always a choice about the desired condition of the world—anywhere
along the continuum of degradation is feasible, from a world rich in biodiversity to a threadbare
remnant with fewer species, fewer natural places, less beauty, and reduced ecosystem services. With
the rivet and cliff metaphors, there are no choices: no sane person would choose to crash the plane or go
over the cliff. This difference is key for the political implications of the metaphors . Finally, in the rivet or cliff
metaphors, environmental destruction may be seen primarily as loss of utilitarian values (ecosystem services to humans). In the tapestry
metaphor, environmental destruction is viewed as loss of utilitarian as well as aesthetic, option, and
amenity considerations. (See Sagoff 1995 for a critique of conservation strategies that focus too narrowly on utilitarian values.)
Actual environmental destruction: limits or continuums?
How useful are the rivet and tapestry metaphors in describing actual experiences with the relationship between economic growth and
environmental destruction? This question can be examined by looking at the variety of biological and physical limits to economic activity that
have been proposed by ecologists, environmentalists, and ecological economists. In this article, I discuss five types of possible limits: input
limits, limits on waste assimilation, entropy/thermodynamic limits, limits on human use of the products of photosynthesis, and limits
attributable to the loss of biodiversity.
The limits metaphor is a statement about the nature of both biophysical
and human economic systems; therefore, limits need to be analyzed from both natural and social
science perspectives. And, because human economies transport both inputs and wastes across the
globe, the issue of biophysical limits to economic activity is best examined at a global scale.
K Prior
Discourse First
Framing must come first – analysis of apocalyptic rhetoric acts as a mediating
frame in global warming discourse.
Foust and Murphy 9 (Christina Foust , Assistant Professor in the Department of Human
Communication Studies at the University of Denver, William Murphy, a doctoral student in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, “Revealing and Reframing
Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse” A Journal of Nature and Culture, 3:2, p. 153-154)//JH
While frames ‘‘cannot guarantee how a reader will interpret or comprehend’’ an issue or text, they ‘‘play
a fundamental role in
structuring the range of likely decodings’’ (Greenberg & Knight, 2004, p. 157), often in ways that support
dominant ideologies. For instance, Antilla (2005) found that US press coverage framed climate change in terms of
controversy, skepticism, and uncertainty. Such framing upholds prevailing ideologies of ‘‘free-market
capitalism and neo-liberalism’’ (Carvalho, 2005, p. 21). It has impacts beyond individual readers’
interpretations, as Boykoff (2007b) argues, opening ‘‘spaces for US federal policy actors to defray
responsibility and delay action regarding climate change’’ (p. 486). Given its power to shape interpretations, policy, and
action, close attention to how the press frames the issue is crucial to building a political will to mitigate
climate change.
Apocalyptic rhetoric, we argue, represents a mediating frame in global warming discourse. Certain versions
of this frame may stifle individual and collective agency, due to their persistent placement of
‘‘natural’’ events as catastrophic, inevitable, and outside of ‘‘human’’ control. Analyzing them could
help explain why some individuals take a fatalistic attitude toward, or consider their agency very
small in comparison to, the challenge of climate change (Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole & Whitmarsh, 2007). Moreover,
apocalyptic framing helps us understand two vocal minorities who might well stand in the way of
building a collective will*the alarmists, who believe global warming’s ‘‘catastrophic consequences’’
are veritably unstoppable, and the naysayers, who view global warming as a conspiracy created by
environmentalists and the media (Leiserowitz, 2005, p. 1440).
Overheated climate rhetoric drowns out any chance for rational discussion –
leads to despair and hopelessness.
Gary Mason, Globe and Mail Columnist, 07 ["Climate change discourse has ring of boy-cried-wolf," The
Globe and Mail (Canada), April 12, 2007]//JH
At a recent dinner party, the
conversation turned to climate change. And then to despair.¶ It seems the recent
spate of stories warning of famine and heat waves and violent storms that will kill millions have
begun to take their toll. And the reaction they're causing is not all good.¶ The dire warnings by climate-change
scientists are meant to wake the world up to the potential impacts of global warming. But the unrelenting pace of their grim prophecies has
some people crying - Enough!¶ When the UN climate panel that released its report this month predicted that greenhouse gases would cause
desertification, droughts and rising seas that would kill hundreds of thousands, you could almost hear the reaction: "Yes, we know. If we don't
die from starvation or by getting swallowed up in a tsunami, we stand a good chance of frying to a crisp."¶ The
apocalyptic reports
have become as predictable as the February rain here. There is a sameness, a nothing-new feel about the
stories on global warming these days. They are all accompanied by a familiar, semi-shrill, semihysterical tone. The litany of catastrophic consequences that will be unleashed on the planet is
repeated again and again and again.¶ People have begun to stop listening.¶ Few argue any more that climate
change is not real and that nothing needs to be done to reverse the impacts of global warming. We know what's going to happen if we ignore
the warning signs. But screaming: "We're all going to die," day after day after day is doing us no good.¶ The
voices of doom have
begun to drown out the thoughtful, rational discussion that needs to take place around solutions. We
need to consider how we're going to get out of this mess while not plunging the world into economic chaos at the same time.¶ It doesn't help
when so-called experts are yelling "the sky is falling" every day.¶ "I think the whole climate-change discussion is getting pretty embarrassing,
quite honestly," says Michael Howard, professor of anthropology at Simon Fraser University.¶ "Some of it
is just over the top. It has
a ring of boy-who-cried-wolf about it, and I think there's a real fear it may discredit the whole
conversation."¶ Prof. Howard, who has edited a book on Asia's environmental crisis, believes ideologues with a political agenda have
hijacked the climate-change debate.¶ I'm not sure about that.¶ But there are certainly scientists who have dwelled in obscurity the past couple
of decades now enjoying the attention and notoriety their field of interest is experiencing.¶ And they don't want to leave the stage.¶ Dale
Marshall, climate-change policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation, is concerned the
public is becoming desensitized to
the dangers of global warming because of all the overheated rhetoric.¶ He worries people will go from
denial to utter hopelessness.¶ "There are some who are guilty of talking in such huge, apocalyptic terms, people start
feeling like there's nothing they can do," he said in a phone interview from Ottawa.¶ "And, quite frankly, I'd put Al Gore in that
category. There's no question he's done a lot to raise awareness of the issue, but I've seen both his movie and his presentation and it's
overwhelming, especially for people who don't know a lot about the issue."¶ Mr. Marshall said that at the end of one of Mr. Gore's
presentations, he thought there were some in the audience who were going to "slit their throats."¶ "People
hear a disconnect
between the apocalyptic vision that some are predicting while at the same time being told that they
can help by changing the kind of light bulbs they use," Mr. Marshall said.¶ "It's like: 'Don't tell me I can change a light bulb
and fix climate change because that just doesn't make sense.' "¶ The impact we, as individuals, can have is a whole other
discussion. And one we should be having. It makes more sense than retreating into some hole, waiting
for the world to end.¶ Climate change is real, we know that. But it's a problem we can do something about.¶ It will involve more than
changing the type of light bulbs we use, but it's not insurmountable. And that's what we need to focus on now.¶ Fear mongering is just
getting in the way of licking this thing.
A discursive approach is key to understanding the dynamics of climate security
and building a new perception of the environment.
Maria Julia TROMBETTA Delft University of Technology ‘8 [“The meaning and function of climate
security” Paper prepared for the second WISC Conference Lujbljana 23-26 July 2008]//JH
And yet, even
if the materiality and the extend of human impacts on the climate system are undeniable
and increasingly growing, the transformation of environmental problems and climate change into a
security issue is not only the result of a growing awareness of their impacts. As Hulme argues ‘an emerging
discourse of climate catastrophe reveals more about the struggle for ascendancy between the
institutions of science, government, business and civil society than it does about a physical reality
waiting to strike” (Hulme 2008, 18).
A discursive approach can help understanding these dynamics. “A discourse is “a shared way of apprehending the
world. Embedded in language it enables subscribers to interpret bits of information and put them
together into coherent stories or accounts. Each discourse rests on assumptions, judgements and
contentions that provide the basic terms for analysis, debates, agreement and disagreements ” (Dryzek
1997, 8, as quoted in Hulme 2008). In Klein’s words, a discourse is “a way of producing something as real, as identifiable, classifiable, knowable
and therefore meaningful. Discourses creates the condition of knowing” (Klein, quoted in George, 1994, 30). The
construction of a
discourse about global climate change is based on the interaction between material changes in
environmental conditions and a growing awareness of environmental issues which affects public
values.
This suggests a transformation which does not only involve a different perception of the environment,
first from a relatively stable background to a fragile system and then from a linear system
characterised by slow, incremental transformations to a non linear one, characterised by tipping
points and sudden changes. Discourses about climate change also challenge what is understood as
security; who deservers protection, the means that should be employed and who is supposed to
provide security. The possibility of understanding this transformation however is limited by the
tendency of associating security with a set of problematic practices which are supposed to be rather
fixed. To understand why this is the case it is necessary to explore how discourses and practices about what counts as security have been
framed.
Environmental Values First
Privilege environmental values over securitization against environmental threat
– values are a prerequisite to determining the significance of security.
Hugh Dyer, School of Politics and Director of International Studies @ Leeds, 01 [“Theoretical Aspects of
Environmental Security,” In: Petzold-Bradley E; Carius A; Vincze A (eds.) Responding to Environmental
Conflicts: Implications for Theory and Practice. NATO Science Partnership Sub-Series: 2.Springer.
p.78]//JH
it now seems more likely
that the security of the global environment - incorporating localities within it - constitutes the basic condition
for human security, and this may be better conceived in terms of the sustainability of life ways . Nevertheless, while such a
perspective on security may permit an escape from the tyranny of state-centric discourses, it does not
resolve the problem of making provision for security once that value has been redefined, and paradoxically,
Where the territorial security of delimited groups may once have been fundamental to human betterment,
“the successful promotion of ‘universal’ or ‘global’ values, even if they are to some degree genuinely shared, will often depend on the
willingness of particularly powerful states to promote them” (Hurrell and Woods 1995). The
question remains as to whether
sovereign states have the residual capacity to represent such global values without undermining their
particular interests and hence their traditional raison d'étre. If they are not able to perform the role of effective political actors in
respect of environmental security and assuming ‘deregulation’ of the environment is inappropriate (perhaps a big assumption given limited
regulation at present), we must then look elsewhere, to non-state actors such as inter- governmental bodies, environmental NGOs or
communities of people (not constituted as ‘citizens') even if there are problems of authority and formal accountability. Of course,
we must
ask the same question of any pretender that we would ask of a state or other potential actor, and that is not
which actor will promote ‘our’ interests (they will probably promote their own), but to which actor(s) shared
values about the future of the planet are to be entrusted.
We can not readily solve this problem without focusing on environmental values rather than on
environmental threats to national interest, since the values will determine the significance of
‘environmental security‘ and such a set of values must underwrite any political interests.
AT: Aff Args
AT: But Science! and environmental groups know things!
Large environmental groups are biased – they have incentives to hyperbolize
data.
Nordhaus & Shellenberger 4 [Ted – environmental policy expert, chairman of The Breakthrough Institute, Vice
President of Evans/McDonough (one of the country’s leading research firms) & Michael – environmental policy expert,
president of Breakthrough Institute; “The Death of Environmentalism”, 2004, The Breakthrough Institute \\NL]
One of the reasons environmental leaders can whistle past the graveyard of global warming politics is that the membership rolls and the
income of the big environmental organizations have grown enormously over the past 30 years — especially since
the election of George W. Bush in 2000. The institutions that define what environmentalism means boast large
professional staffs and receive tens of millions of dollars every year from foundations and individuals .
Given these rewards, it’s no surprise that most environmental leaders neither craft nor support proposals
that could be tagged “non-environmental.” Doing otherwise would do more than threaten their
status; it would undermine their brand.
AT: Perm
Overheated climate rhetoric drowns out any chance for rational discussion –
leads to despair and hopelessness.
Gary Mason, Globe and Mail Columnist, 07 ["Climate change discourse has ring of boy-cried-wolf," The
Globe and Mail (Canada), April 12, 2007]//JH
At a recent dinner party, the
conversation turned to climate change. And then to despair.¶ It seems the recent
spate of stories warning of famine and heat waves and violent storms that will kill millions have
begun to take their toll. And the reaction they're causing is not all good.¶ The dire warnings by climate-change
scientists are meant to wake the world up to the potential impacts of global warming. But the unrelenting pace of their grim prophecies has
some people crying - Enough!¶ When the UN climate panel that released its report this month predicted that greenhouse gases would cause
desertification, droughts and rising seas that would kill hundreds of thousands, you could almost hear the reaction: "Yes, we know. If we don't
die from starvation or by getting swallowed up in a tsunami, we stand a good chance of frying to a crisp."¶ The
apocalyptic reports
have become as predictable as the February rain here. There is a sameness, a nothing-new feel about the
stories on global warming these days. They are all accompanied by a familiar, semi-shrill, semihysterical tone. The litany of catastrophic consequences that will be unleashed on the planet is
repeated again and again and again.¶ People have begun to stop listening.¶ Few argue any more that climate
change is not real and that nothing needs to be done to reverse the impacts of global warming. We know what's going to happen if we ignore
the warning signs. But screaming: "We're all going to die," day after day after day is doing us no good.¶ The
voices of doom have
begun to drown out the thoughtful, rational discussion that needs to take place around solutions. We
need to consider how we're going to get out of this mess while not plunging the world into economic chaos at the same time.¶ It doesn't help
when so-called experts are yelling "the sky is falling" every day.¶ "I think the whole climate-change discussion is getting pretty embarrassing,
quite honestly," says Michael Howard, professor of anthropology at Simon Fraser University.¶ "Some of it
is just over the top. It has
a ring of boy-who-cried-wolf about it, and I think there's a real fear it may discredit the whole
conversation."¶ Prof. Howard, who has edited a book on Asia's environmental crisis, believes ideologues with a political agenda have
hijacked the climate-change debate.¶ I'm not sure about that.¶ But there are certainly scientists who have dwelled in obscurity the past couple
of decades now enjoying the attention and notoriety their field of interest is experiencing.¶ And they don't want to leave the stage.¶ Dale
Marshall, climate-change policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation, is concerned the
public is becoming desensitized to
the dangers of global warming because of all the overheated rhetoric.¶ He worries people will go from
denial to utter hopelessness.¶ "There are some who are guilty of talking in such huge, apocalyptic terms, people start
feeling like there's nothing they can do," he said in a phone interview from Ottawa.¶ "And, quite frankly, I'd put Al Gore in that
category. There's no question he's done a lot to raise awareness of the issue, but I've seen both his movie and his presentation and it's
overwhelming, especially for people who don't know a lot about the issue."¶ Mr. Marshall said that at the end of one of Mr. Gore's
presentations, he thought there were some in the audience who were going to "slit their throats."¶ "People
hear a disconnect
between the apocalyptic vision that some are predicting while at the same time being told that they
can help by changing the kind of light bulbs they use," Mr. Marshall said.¶ "It's like: 'Don't tell me I can change a light bulb
and fix climate change because that just doesn't make sense.' "¶ The impact we, as individuals, can have is a whole other
discussion. And one we should be having. It makes more sense than retreating into some hole, waiting
for the world to end.¶ Climate change is real, we know that. But it's a problem we can do something about.¶ It will involve more than
changing the type of light bulbs we use, but it's not insurmountable. And that's what we need to focus on now.¶ Fear mongering is just
getting in the way of licking this thing.
The mindset of securitization that is maintained by government policy hinders
any development of effective solutions.
Trenell, 6 [September, 2006, Paul Trenell, Department of International Politics, University of Wales,
“The (Im)possibilty of Environmental Security,”
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2160/410/5/trenellpaulipm0060.doc.txt]//JH
The most immediately striking mismatch between the security framework and environmental needs is
the fact that the notion of security is so closely entangled with the territorially bound nation state.
Waever has noted that ?[t]here is no literature, no philosophy, no tradition of ?security? in non-state terms; it exists only as a critical idea? (1995: 48-9). Since
its inception security has been the business of the state, for it is at the heart of the social contract
which brought the state into existence that citizens sacrifice freedoms and liberties to the sovereign in
order that security be provided in return (Hobbes, 1651: 91ff). As such, at the mention of security one?s focus is invariably turned towards
the state as the great protector. As far as the environmental sector is concerned the focus on the state is
detrimental in a number of ways.
Firstly, for many years the security of states has been achieved at the expense of other states. Security is innately linked with the ?identification of others which
threaten the purpose and cohesion of the state? (Barnett, 2001: 30). This stems from the project of nation building, for which security proved to be an important
tool. By focussing attention on the threats posed by outsiders, national elites found that the domestic populace could be more easily homogenized and managed. As
Huysmans has detailed ?fear-of-the-power-of-the-other to kill me splits the human species, or better, unites atomic individuals in communities? (1998: 235).
Therefore, states in the process of providing security have a tendency to focus on external enemies in order to unite the internal population. There
is a
danger that a security framework could import this type of ?us versus them? thinking into the
environmental realm to detrimental effect. By searching only the external realm for the causes of
insecurity ?our complicity in evil is erased? (Campbell, 1993: 3) and the faults in our own actions are
overlooked. This aspect of security logic would be unwelcome in the environmental sector, for as Ulrich Beck has
emphasised in his analysis of the present ecological threat ?[t]his threat to all life does not come from outside? It emerges
within, enduringly as the reverse side of progress peace and normality? (Beck, 1995: 163). Put simply ?society
today is confronted by itself? (Beck, 1992a: 183). Any discursive association which obscures this fact is likely
to prove counterproductive in the quest to address environmental issues.
Secondly, the
zero-sum mindset of conventional security may hinder the development of effective
solutions by preventing transnational cooperation. Ken Conca has suggested ?the concept of security invokes images of
insulation? (1994: 18) whereby one takes care of one?s own land and people by any means necessary, and generally disregards the impact of this on other
countries. This may lead to a response whereby states attempt to forestall environmental damage by
?target hardening?; protecting their own territory rather than confronting the root of the problem . For
example, it is not inconceivable that developed nations could protect against the threat of rising sea levels by utilising their technological and engineering expertise
to construct offshore dams to divert water away from major cities (Myers, 1993: 196). This is an expensive but real possibility, and such action would fulfil the
obligation of the state to provide security for its citizens. The problem lies with the fact that ? as
far as we try to find national solutions for
environmental problems we do not really solve them but manage them instead? (Kakonen, 1994: 3). Environmental
problems are international in terms of both scope and impact, and therefore only truly international solutions are likely to prove true solutions.
Thirdly, it can be claimed that the
security mindset channels the obligation to address environmental issues in an
unwelcome direction. Due to terms laid out by the social contract ?security is essentially something done by states?there is no obligation or moral duty
on citizens to provide security?In this sense security is essentially empty?it is not a sign of positive political initiative?
(Dalby, 1992a: 97-8). Therefore, casting an issue in security terms puts the onus of action onto governments,
creating a docile citizenry who await instructions from their leaders as to the next step rather than
taking it on their own backs to do something about pressing concerns. This is unwelcome because governments
have limited incentives to act on environmental issues, as their collectively poor track record to date reveals. Paul Brown notes that
?at present in all the large democracies the short-term politics of winning the next election and the need to increase the annual profits of industry rule over the long
term interests of the human race? (1996: 10; see also Booth 1991: 348). There is no clearer evidence for this than the grounds on which George W. Bush explained
his decision to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol: ?I told the world I thought that Kyoto was a lousy deal for America?It meant that we had to cut emissions below 1990
levels, which would have meant I would have presided over massive layoffs and economic destruction? (BBC: 2006). The
short-term focus of
government elites and the long-term nature of the environmental threat means that any policy which
puts the burden of responsibility on the shoulders of governments should be viewed with scepticism
as this may have the effect of breeding inaction on environmental issues.
Moreover, governmental
legislation may not be the most appropriate route to solving the problem at
hand. If environmental vulnerabilities are to be effectively addressed ?[t]he routine behaviour of
practically everyone must be altered? (Deudney, 1990: 465). In the case of the environmental sector it is not large scale and intentional
assaults but the cumulative effect of small and seemingly innocent acts such as driving a car or taking a flight that do the damage. Exactly how a
legislative response could serve to alter ?non-criminal apolitical acts by individuals? (Prins, 1993: 176- 177)
which lie beyond established categories of the political is unclear. Andrew Dobson has covered this ground in claiming that
the solution to environmental hazards lies not in piecemeal legislation but in the fostering of a culture
of ?ecological citizenship?. His call is made on the grounds that legislating on the environment, forcing people to
adapt, does not reach the necessary depth to produce long-lasting change, but merely plugs the
problem temporarily. He cites Italian ?car-free city? days as evidence of this, noting that whilst selected cities may be free of automobiles on a single
predetermined day, numbers return to previous levels immediately thereafter (2003: 3). This indicates that the deeper message underlying the policy is not being
successfully conveyed. Enduring
environmental solutions are likely to emerge only when citizens choose to
change their ways because they understand that there exists a pressing need to do so. Such a
realisation is unlikely to be prompted by the top-down, state oriented focus supplied by a security
framework.
Militarization A further association of conventional security practices that could be misguidedly imported into the environmental realm is the use of military force to
attain security. Security has for centuries been the preserve of the military, and the provision of security remains highly entangled with military institutions. As such
concern has been expressed that casting the environment in security terms may lead to greater military involvement in addressing environmental problems. For
their part the military have been keen to involve themselves in environmental matters due to the fact that, in the aftermath of the Cold War, this represents a good
way to ensure continued status and funding (Conca, 1994: 16). Yet further military involvement in the environmental sector would be unwelcome and
counterproductive in numerous ways, not least because ?there are of course, no military solutions to environmental insecurity? (WCED, 1987: 301). One cannot
bomb the environment back into good health, and the secretive and hierarchical structures that dominate military organisations are fundamentally unsuited to
environmental challenges which demand cooperative and innovative solutions (Deudney, 1991: 24). More than just hinder the search for solutions, military
organisations actively exacerbate environmental problems. Jon Barnett has claimed that ?militarization is arguably the single biggest risk to human beings? (2001:
19). There is the obvious point that military conflict rarely passes without high numbers of fatalities. However, the preparations and conduct of military conflict also
have hugely detrimental environmental impacts. For example it is estimated that the burning of oil fields during the 1991 Gulf War produced one hundred times the
carbon dioxide emissions emitted by an entire year of global economic trading (Brock, 1991: 411). Similarly devastating environmental damage is sustained via
nuclear testing and military preparations. Legitimising a military role in addressing environmental problems by framing environmental concerns in terms of security
may serve only to enshrine the military?s status as ?protected polluters? (Dalby, 1992b: 512) and thereby create further environmental damage. Moreover, should
the military succeed in hijacking a role in addressing environmental issues, the funding that it would receive for this function would represent serious ?opportunity
costs? to environmental initiatives by siphoning off funds that could be spent on more environmentally oriented solutions (Stern, 1995: 222) . In sum, in the quest to
address environmental vulnerability it would seem counterproductive to follow any strategy that may give further justification to the existence and dominance of an
industry that does so much to harm the environment.
Status Quo Mindset The final mismatch
between the conditions invoked by security and the demands of
environmental degradation is one of the mindset induced. As Brock notes ?[s]ecurity policies are essentially
status quo oriented? (1991: 418, see also Dalby, 1992: 98). The conventional metaphor for tackling a security issue
may be said to be that of a ship battening down the hatches and sailing through a storm in order to
return to its normal, pre-storm course. The environment demands a different approach, a permanent
changing of course in order to avoid the coming storm. Security may be unable to provide the
backbone for such a shift because as a concept it is ?basically defensive in nature, a status quo concept
defending that which is? (Waever, 1995: 64). Securing the existing order, ?that which is?, would be a self-defeating
enterprise in the environmental realm. Simon Dalby expresses this point in noting that ?in so far as security is premised
on maintaining the status quo it runs counter to the challenges needed to alleviate many
environmental and ecological problems because it is precisely the status quo that has produced the
problems? (1994: 33). Security does not convey the necessity for society to alter in order to prosper, and
therefore the wisdom of framing the environment in security terms is ultimately questionable.
If we don’t first evaluate our own environmental values, we can’t determine the
value of environmental security – the alternative as a prerequisite is key.
Hugh Dyer, School of Politics and Director of International Studies @ Leeds, 01 [“Theoretical Aspects of
Environmental Security,” In: Petzold-Bradley E; Carius A; Vincze A (eds.) Responding to Environmental
Conflicts: Implications for Theory and Practice. NATO Science Partnership Sub-Series: 2.Springer.
p.78]//JH
it now seems more likely
that the security of the global environment - incorporating localities within it - constitutes the basic condition
for human security, and this may be better conceived in terms of the sustainability of life ways . Nevertheless, while such a
perspective on security may permit an escape from the tyranny of state-centric discourses, it does not
resolve the problem of making provision for security once that value has been redefined, and paradoxically,
Where the territorial security of delimited groups may once have been fundamental to human betterment,
“the successful promotion of ‘universal’ or ‘global’ values, even if they are to some degree genuinely shared, will often depend on the
willingness of particularly powerful states to promote them” (Hurrell and Woods 1995). The
question remains as to whether
sovereign states have the residual capacity to represent such global values without undermining their
particular interests and hence their traditional raison d'étre. If they are not able to perform the role of effective political actors in
respect of environmental security and assuming ‘deregulation’ of the environment is inappropriate (perhaps a big assumption given limited
regulation at present), we must then look elsewhere, to non-state actors such as inter- governmental bodies, environmental NGOs or
communities of people (not constituted as ‘citizens') even if there are problems of authority and formal accountability. Of course,
we must
ask the same question of any pretender that we would ask of a state or other potential actor, and that is not
which actor will promote ‘our’ interests (they will probably promote their own), but to which actor(s) shared
values about the future of the planet are to be entrusted.
We can not readily solve this problem without focusing on environmental values rather than on
environmental threats to national interest, since the values will determine the significance of
‘environmental security‘ and such a set of values must underwrite any political interests.
Ecodoomsaying Aff Answers
Apocalyptic Rhetoric Good
Apocalyptic rhetoric is good and key to solving for anthropogenic climate
change, but environmental crises are undercovered in our media now.
Romm 12 (Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one
of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010.″ In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 “people who are
reinventing America.” Time named him a “Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential
climate-change blogger.” Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and
renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of lowcarbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.,
2/26/2012, “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday
Messages’ on Climate”, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscarsmedia-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsday-messages-on-climate/#more-432546)//JH
You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the
public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one
explains why they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast
literature on advertising and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any
chance of sinking in and moving the needle.
Because I doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action could possibly occur until these myths are shattered,
I’ll do a multipart series on this subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading experts, and the latest social science research.
Since this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the public are exposed to in popular culture and the
media. It ain’t doomsday. Quite the reverse, climate change
has been mostly an invisible issue for several years
and the message of conspicuous consumption and business-as-usual reigns supreme.
The motivation for this post actually came up because I received an e-mail from a journalist commenting that the “constant repetition of
doomsday messages” doesn’t work as a messaging strategy. I had to demur, for the reasons noted above.
But it did get me thinking about what messages the public are exposed to, especially as I’ve been rushing to see the movies nominated for Best
Picture this year. I am a huge movie buff, but as parents of 5-year-olds know, it isn’t easy to stay up with the latest movies.
That said, good luck finding a popular movie in recent years that even touches on climate change, let alone one a popular one that would pass
for doomsday messaging. Best Picture nominee The Tree of Life has been billed as an environmental movie — and even shown at
environmental film festivals — but while it is certainly depressing, climate-related it ain’t. In fact, if that is truly someone’s idea of
environmental movie, count me out.
The closest to a genuine popular climate movie was the dreadfully unscientific The Day After Tomorrow, which is from 2004 (and arguably set
back the messaging effort by putting the absurd “global cooling” notion in people’s heads! Even Avatar, the most successful movie of all time
and “the most epic piece of environmental advocacy ever captured on celluloid,” asone producer put it, omits the climate doomsday message.
One of my favorite eco-movies, “Wall-E, is an eco-dystopian gem and an anti-consumption movie,” but it isn’t a climate movie.
I will be interested to see The Hunger Games, but I’ve read all 3 of the bestselling post-apocalyptic young adult novels — hey, that’s my job! —
and they don’t qualify as climate change doomsday messaging (more on that later). So, no, the movies certainly don’t expose the public to
constant doomsday messages on climate.
Here are the key points about what repeated messages the American public is exposed to:
The broad American public is exposed to virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on
climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online). There is not one single TV show on any network
devoted to this subject, which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue we face.
The same goes for the news media, whose coverage of climate change has collapsed (see “Network News
Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011“). When the media do cover climate change in recent years, the
overwhelming majority of coverage is devoid of any doomsday messages — and many outlets still
feature hard-core deniers. Just imagine what the public’s view of climate would be if it got the same coverage as, say,
unemployment, the housing crisis or even the deficit? When was the last time you saw an “employment denier” quoted on TV or in a
newspaper?
The public is exposed to constant messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing
conspicuous consumption. See, for instance, “Breaking: The earth is breaking … but how about that Royal Wedding?
Our political elite and intelligentsia, including MSM pundits and the supposedly “liberal media” like, say, MSNBC, hardly
even talk about climate change and when they do, it isn’t doomsday. Indeed, there isn’t even a single
national columnist for a major media outlet who writes primarily on climate. Most “liberal” columnists rarely
mention it.
At least a quarter of the public chooses media that devote a vast amount of time to the notion that
global warming is a hoax and that environmentalists are extremists and that clean energy is a joke. In
the MSM, conservative pundits routinely trash climate science and mock clean energy. Just listen to, say, Joe Scarborough on
MSNBC’s Morning Joe mock clean energy sometime.
The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious
pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money. As noted above, the one time they did run a
major campaign to push a climate bill, they and their political allies including the president explicitly did NOT talk much about climate
change, particularly doomsday messaging
Environmentalists when they do appear in popular culture, especially TV, are routinely mocked.
There is very little mass communication of doomsday messages online. Check out the most popular websites.
General silence on the subject, and again, what coverage there is ain’t doomsday messaging. Go to the front page of the
(moderately trafficked) environmental websites. Where is the doomsday?
If you want to find anything approximating even modest, blunt, science-based messaging built around
the scientific literature, interviews with actual climate scientists and a clear statement that we can
solve this problem — well, you’ve all found it, of course, but the only people who see it are those who
go looking for it.
Of course, this blog is not even aimed at the general public. Probably 99% of Americans haven’t even seen one of my headlines and
99.7% haven’t read one of my climate science posts. And Climate Progress is probably the most widely read, quoted, and reposted
climate science blog in the world.
Anyone dropping into America from another country or another planet who started following popular culture and the news the way
the overwhelming majority of Americans do would get the distinct impression that nobody who matters is terribly worried about
climate change. And, of course, they’d be right — see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2.”
It is total BS that somehow the American public has been scared and overwhelmed by repeated
doomsday messaging into some sort of climate fatigue. If the public’s concern has dropped — and
public opinion analysis suggests it has dropped several percent (though is bouncing back a tad) — that is
primarily due to the conservative media’s disinformation campaign impact on Tea Party conservatives
and to the treatment of this as a nonissue by most of the rest of the media, intelligentsia and popular
culture.
Apocalyptic framing is good – offers a heuristic for solving climate change.
John J. Morrell, Ph.D. in English @ Vanderbilt University, studies American Literature from the 19th,
20th, and 21st centuries, with a focus on environmental literature, ’12 [“THE DIALECTIC OF CLIMATE
CHANGE: APOCALYPSE, UTOPIA AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION,” May, 2012, p.33-39]//JH
There is a distinctively apocalyptic strand to discussions of climate change. As an example, consider that Dipesh Chakrabarty begins his theses
on climate change with a meditation on Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. Weisman’s book builds from a thought experiment of human
extinction: “Picture a world from which we have all suddenly vanished.” It is interesting that Chakrabarty begins from this example -Weisman’s thought experiment comes closer to the rapture of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series than it does to any global warming scenario
published by the IPCC. I take Chakrabarty to be making a narrative point about climate change and the limits of imagination – we
perceive
climate change as a kind of break in the historical narrative, or in scenario planning terms, a branch
point in history. The future on the other side of this break remains, to a certain extent, unimaginable. And yet, Chakrabarty’s use of
Weisman’s thought experiment also illustrates, in ways that he leaves largely unpacked, how popular conceptions of climate change intersect
with older and deeper anxieties about the end of the world.
Apocalypse is an older idea than climate change. For at least 3,000 years, ecocritic Greg Garrard writes, “a fluctuating proportion of the world’s
population has believed that the end of the world was immanent” (85). Garrard locates the origins of apocalypticism in Zoroastrianism:
“Notions of the world’s gradual decline were widespread in ancient civilizations, but Zoroaster bequeathed to Jewish, Christian, and later
secular models of history a sense of urgency about the end of the world” (85). Importantly, however, the word apocalypse has not always
referred to the end-times. The etymological root of apocalypse is the Greek apokalypsis, meaning “unveiling” or “uncovering.” I want to
emphasize this etymological understanding of apocalypse.
Climate change might best be understood as apocalyptic in
this sense; rather than bringing about the end of the world, climate change offers a kind of heuristic
frame. Through this narrative frame, we are made aware of formerly invisible structures of power,
offering opportunity for scrutiny and revision.
The eschatological connotation of apocalypse developed as it became associated with the book of Revelation in the New Testament, which
records the revelation of St.John of Patmos. As a part of the Christian canon, the Revelation of St. John has contributed a set of images and a
language through which Western culture has come to understand the end-times. Perhaps more importantly, the book of Revelation offers a
way to understand the present as the end-times, and this is a powerful political narrative. In his History of the End of the World, Jonathan
Kirsch writes that “the words and phrases of Revelation, its stock figures and scenes, have been recycled and repurposed by artists and poets,
preachers and propagandists—all in service of some religious or political or cultural agenda” (3).
The apocalyptic genre as we know it today is the product of sociopolitical crisis, and it is a story of the end of empire. John of Patmos was likely
a Jewish war refugee, viewing the occupying Roman army with contempt. In highly symbolic language, the book of Revelation prophesies the
downfall of the Roman empire, and it played particularly well with audiences who resented Roman occupation. It is for this reason that D.H.
Lawrence writes that Revelation “is above all what some psychologists would call the revelation of a thwarted “superiority” goal, and a
consequent inferiority complex” (73). Lawrence argues that the book of Revelation “resounds with the dangerous snarl of the frustrated,
suppressed collective self, the frustrated power-spirit in man, vengeful. But it contains also some revelation of the true and positive Powerspirit” (73). We shall return to Lawrence’s acknowledgement of the positive side of Revelation, but let us remain with the critical side a little
longer.
There is a deep psychological dimension to thinking about the end-times. According to Frank Kermode,
apocalypse is “a pattern of anxiety that we shall find recurring, with interesting differences, in
different stages of modernism. Its recurrence is a feature of our cultural tradition, if not ultimately of
our physiology” (96). Kermode’s analysis builds upon D.H. Lawrence’s argument that “We always want a “conclusion”, an
end, we always want to come, in our mental processes, to a decision, a finality, a full-stop. This gives
us a sense of satisfaction. All our mental consciousness is a movement onwards, a movement in
stages, like our sentences, and every full-stop is a mile-stone that marks our “progress” and our arrival
somewhere” (93). Apocalypse, then, is not so much about predicting the end of the world as it is about
making us feel as though we are a part of a critical moment in history. As Kermode succinctly puts it, “Crisis is a way
of thinking about one’s moment, and not inherent in the moment itself.” (101) In Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern
Imagination, Elizabeth Rosen explains that apocalypse
“is an organizing structure that can create moral and
physical order while also holding the possibility of social criticism that might lead to a reorientation in
the midst of a bewildering historical moment” (xiii).
In popular culture, we have come to associate apocalypse with catastrophe, but in the Christian tradition, the apocalypse is both an end and a
new beginning. After the great battle between good and evil, there follows the inheritance of a New Jerusalem and the 1,000 year reign of
Jesus on Earth. Yet as scholars such as Elizabeth Rosen have noted, apocalyptic literature has evolved to include stories that lack this vital
feature of the myth. Rosen argues that postmodern apocalyptic narratives have jettisoned the positive element that characterizes more
traditional stories of apocalypse: these grimmer eschatological tales are strictly stories of endings. Such stories, which I am calling “neoapocalyptic,” are focused on cataclysm. They neither offer nor anticipate a New Jerusalem, per se. This form sees the apocalyptic genre’s
message of hope largely subsumed by its emphasis on destruction, even though the main intent of the traditional story of apocalypse was to
provide its audience with hope of a better world. To this extent, then, neo-apocalyptic literature is a literature of pessimism; it functions largely
as a cautionary tale, positing potential means of extinction and predicting the gloomy probabilities of such ends. If these tales exhibit judgment,
it is of the sort that assumes that no one deserves saving and that everyone should be punished. The traditional optimistic conclusion and
intent to inspire faith disappear in neo-apocalyptic literature, replaced by imaginative but definitive End scenarios. (xv)
The point I want to make here is that apocalypse and utopia are traditionally connected, but that contemporary understandings of apocalypse
have severed that connection. Rosen’s argument about neo-apocalyptic literature coincides with a colloquial conception of apocalypse that
elides any positive vision. I want to make a similar argument in an environmental context. The narrative of climate change is frequently a
narrative of environmental catastrophe, without any positive vision to balance the scales. We tend to think of climate change in terms of
endings, rather than in terms of beginnings.
Much environmentalist discourse deploys apocalyptic rhetoric. Lawrence Buell has argued that “Apocalypse is
the single most powerful master metaphor that the contemporary environmental imagination has at
its disposal” (285). Greg Garrard devotes a chapter of Ecocriticism to apocalypse, and he points to several texts in the environmentalist
canon that make extensive use of the trope, from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), to Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1972), to Al
Gore’s Earth in the Balance (1992) (Garrard 93). And in An Inconvenient Truth and elsewhere, Al Gore frequently refers to watching the evening
news about climate related weather catastrophes as taking “a nature hike through the book of Revelation.”
This apocalyptic rhetoric tends to polarize responses. In From Apocalypse to Way of Life, Frederick Buell explains that “Since Rachel Carson,
environmental crisis has rapidly evolved and substantially changed in form, not just in nature, but also
in human discourse about it. Announcing itself as apocalypse, environmental crisis has been
debunked, resisted debunking, has been reworked, and has been dramatically diversified and
expanded, resurfacing in unusual new forms” (xii). Buell’s analysis explicates the conservative response to environmentalism
that emerged during the 1980s and 1990s. This anti-environmentalism, Buell argues, emerged as an aspect of the larger neo-conservative
resurgence after the 1970s. Buell’s history of anti-environmentalism includes figures and organizations like James Watt, Ronald Regan’s
Secretary of the Interior, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Elizabeth Whelan, co-founder of the American Council on Science and Health, Ron
Arnold, Alan Gottlieb, Julian Simon, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others. Their standard
line of attack has been to vilify environmentalists as “pathological crisis-mongers, Chicken Littles, apocalypse abusers, false prophets, joyless,
puritanical doomsters, chic-apocalyptic neo-primitives, sufferers from an Armageddon complex, and toxic terrorists” (34). Despite this
response, Buell
argues, the discourse of environmental crisis has persisted and evolved, and retains
value.
As powerful a structure as apocalypse is for understanding the world, it is also dangerous. The critique of environmental doomsayers should
prompt at least this reflection. Drawing upon Lawrence, and Kermode, Greg Garrard describes several characteristics of apocalyptic narratives
worthy of consideration:
the social psychology of apocalypticism that has historically inclined such ‘embattled’ movements to paranoia and violence; the extreme moral
dualism that divides the world sharply into friend and enemy; the emphasis upon the unveiling of trans-historical truth and the corresponding
role of believers as the ones to whom, and for whom, the veil of history is rent. But most importantly, for our purposes, apocalypticism is
inevitably bound up with imagination, because it has yet to come into being. To use the narratological term, it is always ‘proleptic’. And if,
sociologically, it is ‘a genre born out of crisis’ it is also necessarily a rhetoric that must whip up such crises to proportions appropriate to the end
of time. This dialectic in which apocalypticism both responds to and produces ‘crisis’ will be important in our evaluation of it as an ecocritical
trope. (86)
Garrard is cautious in his approach to the deployment of apocalyptic rhetoric for environmentalist
purposes. Apocalyptic rhetoric, he argues, polarizes people, engenders violence and paranoia, and produces crisis as much as it responds to
it. At the same time Garrard, like Buell, sees both persistence and value in the narrative of environmental
apocalypse. Garrard also highlights the proleptic character of apocalypse, the way that it is bound up with the imagination of the future.
Apocalypse, in this way, bears a distinct resemblance to science fiction.
Apocalyptic framing of climate change isn’t inherently alarmist – these
narratives are key to engage new publics in the move for environmental
sustainability.
Spoel et. al ’09 [Philippa Spoel, PhD in English @ Laurentian University, David Goforth, Prof. of
Mathematics and Computer Science @ Laurentian University, Hoi Cheu, PhD in English, Prof @
Laurentian University, David Pearson, Prof of Earth Sciences & Engineering @ Laurentian University,
“Public Communication of Climate Change Science: Engaging Citizens Through Apocalyptic Narrative
Explanation”, Jan-Mar 2009]//JH
We have proposed the concept of apocalyptic narrative explanation as a fruitful framework for
understanding the rhetorical forms and effects of communication about climate change science in AIT
and CCS, both at the macro level of each work's story line as well as the micro level of the two episodes we have selected for more detailed
analysis.
According to Killingsworth and Palmer (1996), apocalyptic
narratives in the environmental movement have
appeared at historical moments when the movement is seeking to expand its base of support and
engage new publics. They argue that "millennial rhetoric bears a dialectical relation to public support for
the environmental movement" (p. 22). Its primary aim is "to transform the consciousness that a problem
exists into acceptance of action toward a solution by prefacing the solution wim a future scenario of
what could happen if action is not taken, if the problem goes untreated" (p. 22). By recounting past and
present evidence for climate change and the future scenarios that can be predicted based on mis evidence, and by
using diese predictions to persuade audiences for the need to take action to avoid these scenarios, both
An Inconvenient Truth and Climate Change Show enact basic features of the apocalyptic narrative structure though,
in the latter case, the style and tone are not alarmist.
Our claim is that, in the context of each work's explanation of climate change science, this basic
apocalyptic framework
combines with the communicative strategy of narrative explanation that Norris et al. (2005) have identified as an
important-but not widely recognized or practiced-mode of science education. As a number of professional communication scholars have
demonstrated, narrative
plays a central role in multiple types of science communication, ranging from
stories about the human actors and institutions involved in scientific enterprises, to the narrative
structure of scientific reports and the narrative logic of equation, to narrative explanations of
scientific discoveries in both expert and public contexts, to the narrative invention of scientific
knowledge (e.g., Johnson-Sheehan & Rode, 1999; Myers, 1990, 1994; Bazerman, 1997; Barton & Barton, 1998; Bryson, 2003).
Not only communication scholars but also complex systems scientists argue mat, in
order to understand the natural world,
science must embrace narrative as a valid scientific method. Per Bak (1996) explains in How Nature Works that the
behavior of any nonlinear, self-organizing critical structure (such as a sand pile, a brain network, or an ecological system) can be understood
only in terms of dynamic interrelations, and such complexity cannot be reduced to a sheer cause-effect chain. In such cases, only the
epistemological perspective of narrative or story can describe the emergent property of the scientific subject. For Bak, narrative is
not
just a communication device; like a chemical formula or a mathematical equation, it is a way to describe nature, and,
perhaps more importantly, a method of modeling to predict the future based on existing knowledge.
Apocalyptic rhetoric is necessary to incentivize action to solve climate change.
Jonathan Coward, Graduate student in Geoscience @ University of Edinburgh, no date [‘How’s that
for an ending?’ Apocalyptic narratives and environmental degradation: Foreclosing genuine solutions, or
rhetorical necessity?, no date (latest citation within article is from 2013)]//JH
What, then, is the function of the ‘environmental apocalypse’, and how might it be perceived as a
rhetorical necessity? I perceive it to have two core functions. The first is that apocalypse acts as a
teleological-critical tool and second, that it indeed has a political role in environmentalism.
First, environmental
literatures, such as those specified above, can be seen to have traditionally served the two
primary functions of criticism: diagnostic , and remedial . The inclusion of an apocalyptic tone adds a
third aspect, oriented to the future. Put simply, this teleological-critical function says implicitly or explicitly:
Either the status quo must change, or humanity and nature will end . Second, in uncovering this desire or
need to change, the implementation of the apocalyptic narrative in environmental literature is
political. It is employed both to increase the saliency of environmental issues in the minds of the
public and to encourage change on an individual or collective level. The technique recognizes the fact that although
awareness of environmental issues is now very high, they continue to be low priority for many (Whitmarsh 2011, 691). Killingsworth and Palmer
(1996, 22) succinctly observe that for
political change to actually occur, a transformation in consciousness is
required to translate awareness into action. This is achieved through the teleological-critical function
of apocalypse, thus indicating the link between its two facets.
Apocalyptic climate rhetoric is good - public awareness about environmental
issues fuels activism.
Romm 12 [“Exclusive: “Exciting” Public Opinion Study Debunks Claim Al Gore Polarized the Climate
Debate and Many Other Myths”, Joe Romm, a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate
Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time
magazine named one of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010.″ In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of
100 “people who are reinventing America.” Time named him a “Hero of the Environment″ and “The
Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.” Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for
energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration,
and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D.
in physics from MIT, February 6, 2012]//JH
This new
study confirms that view — that Gore’s movie and his efforts helped drive up public awareness
and concern about this issue across the ideological spectrum. Because this study should inform climate
communications efforts going forward, let me review the key findings: Media coverage is crucial: First, media coverage of
climate change directly affects the level of public concern. The greater the quantity of media coverage
of climate change, the greater the level of public concern. This is in line with the Quantity of Coverage theory of media
effects, and existing individual level research on the impact of television coverage on climate-change concern. The importance the media
assigns to coverage of climate change translates into the importance the public attaches to this issue. Second, in
a society with a
limited amount of “issue space,” unemployment, economic prosperity, and involvement in wars all
compete with climate change for public concern. So are “elite cues”: The most important factor in
influencing public opinion on climate change, however, is the elite partisan battle over the issue. The
two strongest effects on public concern are Democratic Congressional action statements and
Republican roll-call votes, which increase and diminish public concern, respectively. This finding points
to the effect of polarized political elite that is emitting contrary cues, with resulting (seemingly) contrary
levels of public concern. As noted by McDonald (2009: 52) “When elites have consensus, the public follows suit
and the issue becomes mainstreamed. When elites disagree, polarization occurs, and citizens rely on
other indicators, such as political party or source credibility, to make up their minds.” This appears to
be the case with climate change.
A2 Ecoimperialism
Ecoimperialism leads to collaborative pragmatism, not violent securitization.
Hugh DYER School of Politics and Interational Studies @ Leeds ‘5 [Environmental Imperialism: Theories
of Governance and Resistance POLIS Working Paper No. 21
http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/working-papers/wp21hdyer.pdf]//JH
Hierarchy is an abiding problem, and one which may remain unresolved in as much as we can not
easily do without effective authorative allocations of value. There are, of course many proposals for
evading hierarchy in the anarchist literature, and much of this specifically of an ecological orientation
(Bookchin, 1982; Findhorn Foundation, 1996; Naess, 1989). However, all anarchist proposals face the problem of community boundaries,
beyond which the anarchist principles may not extend, and outside of which is a world of more familiar political and economic and ecological
processes on which anarchistic communities may be dependent. There
is also a problem of scale, to the extent that the
local context (where hierarchy can be more easily avoided) would always have to be escaped in order even to coordinate (if not dictate)
global initiatives on issues that are not simply additive but genuinely global in their logic. We haven't yet worked out how to coordinate on a
large scale without some element of hierarchy to give effect to collective choice and action.
Conclusions
All of this suggests some confusion in the traditional map of political, or even human, interests, and in doing so destabilises common points of
reference for either ecological concern or politics - or more likely, both. As it happens, this is a disciplinary issue for the study of international
relations - which may always have been a mixed bag in any case (lacking the clearer disciplinary foundations of, say, natural sciences). Some
have concluded that the
global environment is
'...a crucible for the debates, dialogues, and disputes by which people either re-create or transform
the social institutions that give form to the future. Given the centrality of issues of power, wealth,
legitimacy, and authority to questions of environmental change, we are hopeful that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to ignore the former when discussing the latter' (Lipschutz and Conca, 1993: 342)
Eco-imperialism has been employed here as a device, making use of a well-established discourse in a
novel context to throw up contradictions and problems, from which some insight might be gained: for
example, the critique (and design) of imperialism and colonialism has always implicated both global and local
elites, and so assumptions about both global and local political actors, structures and processes are challenged by such contradictions and
problems - perhaps in the rubble of this deconstructive exercise may be found some opportunity for new
political spaces, rather than simply the temptation to rebuild the old ones.
The fundamental issue raised by the idea of eco-imperialism is the relative importance of, and
emphasis on, economic rights and relationships as opposed to political rights and relationships. This
reflects a well known ideological and theoretical distinction between structuralist or historical
materialist perspectives on the one hand and liberal or realist perspectives on the other. In terms of
governance and resistance relating to the global environment, eco-imperialism is invoked as a critique
of liberal-institutionalist designs or the states whose interests are seen to be reflected in them. The initial
puzzle about strange alliances in this critique is answered by observing a shared concern about hegemony, respectively economic or political,
between those seeking (typically collectivist) economic rights and those seeking (typically individualist) political rights - both may see global
environmental governance as antithetical to their aspirations, if for rather different reasons, and both are likely to see some combination of
commercial, state and institutional vested interests rather than human interests as motivating such governance adventures. In this sense, for
some quite diverse opponents of global environmental governance, the
idea of eco-imperialism expresses a view of
political hierarchy or even a state-centric view – and this may be precisely their point; a shared fear of
distant regulatory bodies. However, the alleged culprit may not match the description: global environmental
governance with all its implied constraints on commerce is not quite the empire described by the contemporary critique of capitalism (which
might address economic rights), and empires of colonial administration (a challenge to political rights) are already in the dustbin of history.
The world is rife with arrogance, ignorance, corruption, inequality, etc, and environmental policy and
practice is not an exception, but all of these need to be tackled directly in concrete terms, while
encapsulating all of these in terms of eco-imperialism suggests that they are intrinsic (even the intention of)
to the political order promoted by environmental concern – and that doesn’t seem quite right. Of course we might still
agree that a range of fundamental questions for the social sciences ‘can really only be answered in relation to each other, that is, from a worldsystems perspective’ (Wallerstein, 1997b).
Terms such as governance, globalization and democratization are every bit as open to rhetorical use and abuse as eco-imperialism is, but the
rhetorical force of the former seems to hang on the hope for incremental change which enhances human interests and human security, where
the force of the latter seems to hang on despair and radical hence unlikely change. Where global environmental governance offers potentially
beneficial policy and planning (whatever the reality), resistance to it is bound to be cast in a negative register. Perhaps this just means that
governance is easier to talk up, and resistance is by definition marginal to existing power structures – but in politics (and in environmental
protection), this also might suggest a winning strategy.
On the one hand it
would be in some respects quite handy to have eco-imperialism of a kind which offered
hegemonic leadership but with an inversion of the usual economic flows – that is, at a cost to imperial powers
without corresponding economic benefits. Even so, it would not be effective without cooperation from those in the
developing world whom the empire purports to 'sponsor' in environmental protection, and for whom
any form of empire would be viewed with deep suspicion. On the other hand, and given such suspicion, it is not
surprising to find eco-imperialism raised as a charge against global environmental policy, even if this might be generalized from particular
circumstances, and used rhetorically to draw an audience for grievances and as a rallying cry for resistance. For all
that we may need
to be alert to the pretensions and conceits of imperialist moves, and for all the hopes for reducing the
effects and actuality of inequality that append to both good governance and democratic resistance,
these purposes may not be well served by deploying the idea of eco-imperialism: this totalizing
structural perspective leaves too little room for agents in complex processes of structuration . Even the
U.S. led Western hegemonic order arguably ‘exhibits far more reciprocity and legitimacy than an order based solely on superordinate and
subordinate relations. American hegemony has a distinctly liberal cast because it has been more consensual, cooperative ad integrative than it
has been coercive’ (Deudney and Ikenberry, 1999: 185). Anyway the prospects for successful empire in respect of environmental governance
seem as dim as for any other putative empire in the 21st century - these are not imperial times.
If any imperialistic
characteristics are to be successfully supported, they will in any case have to be supported from the
bottom up, such that eco-imperialism would be that strangest beast of all: a ‘participatory empire’.
Even this sort of empire could be questioned if ‘participation’ itself is merely an agenda driven from the top-down which reproduces existing
power relations (Cooke and Kothari, 2001), but it increases the potential for legitimacy. As Ikenberry says of American empire, it reflects less an
interest in ruling the world than an interest in a world of rules (Ikenberry, 2004: 630). Of course this leaves the issue of whose rules, and who
benefits from them, in the sense that we might observe procedural justice without satisfying claims to distributive justice. So we
are left
to wonder if grassroots resistance to environmental governance would be sufficiently satisfied by
participatory negotiation of the rules, to provide legitimacy to 'imperial' authority in respect of the
great global environmental challenges.
The governance aspects of environmental imperialism seems to be less egregious than the uneven
economic aspects appending to globalization, such that the points and dynamics of resistance are
focussed on the latter rather than the former - in the latter respects the charge of imperialism is both
fair and revealing. As with the anti-globalization protest directed at the exploitative aspects of
globalization rather than its potentially beneficial or benign aspects, the exploitative and dominating
aspects of environmentalism deserve to be challenged and studied closely - but this may have less bearing on
environmental governance per se than on the economically globalized world in which it evolves. The eco-imperialism critique has
merit, but resistance should inform rather than undermine global environmental governance's
necessary and still fragile collective initiatives, or risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Comic Apocalyptic Framing
The affirmative endorses a comic apocalyptic frame that leaves open possibility
for human intervention to solve climate change – the negative criticizes a tragic
apocalyptic frame that ignores options for solvency.
Foust and Murphy 9 (Christina R., Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication
Studies at the U of Denver, and William O., a doctoral student in the Department of Human
Communication Studies at the University of Denver, “Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in
Global Warming Discourse” A Journal of Nature and Culture, 3:2, p. 159-160)//JH
A comic apocalyptic frame suggests that human beings have agency at different points within the
global warming narrative. Comically framed discourse posits that humans may mitigate the worst
effects of climate change, or that they may adapt to the unchangeable telos. For instance, Kristof (2005)
identifies relatively inexpensive ‘‘initial steps we can take to reduce carbon emissions . . . like encouraging
mass transit, hybrid vehicles, better insulation and energy-efficient light bulbs,’’ which ‘‘could reduce global emissions by
one-third’’ (p. A25). At the same time it leaves open the possibility that humans may influence the future,
apocalyptic rhetoric from a comic frame casts global warming as a material reality, (more or less) ordained
and thus constraining human choices. Empowerment within the comic variation of apocalypse is not a trivial matter,
however. It requires humans to make the right decisions from a limited set of choices: ‘‘Nature
commands humans to adapt or die. The natural world keeps erupting, shifting, storming, collapsing,
whirling. It refuses, despite our entreaties, to become something dependable and constrained and
rational’’ (Achenbach, 2004, p. C1). In other words, a comic apocalypse does not suggest that events are controllable through any or all
human actions. Using the comic frame permits humans to miss the fully tragic telos (which would, presumably, end all time and humanity):
In [climatologist Roger Pulwaty’s] view, a crisis is a point in a story, a moment in a narrative that presents an opportunity for characters to think
their way through a problem. A catastrophe . . . is one of several possible outcomes that follows from a crisis. ‘‘We’re at the point of crisis . . . ’’
Pulwaty concluded. (Gertner, 2007, p. 68)
By distinguishing between ‘‘crisis’’ and ‘‘catastrophe,’’ the comic variation suggests that
the tragic telos is only one potential
ending to the climate change narrative, contingent upon whether humans alter their behavior in an
appropriate manner. Human beings can assume responsibility within a comically constructed
apocalypse, even if the narrative begins tragically. Eilperin (2007) reports that ‘‘the warming of the climate system is
unequivocal . . . even in the best-case scenario, temperatures are on track to cross a threshold to an unsustainable level’’ which ‘‘could’’
produce effects ‘‘irreversible within a human lifetime’’ (p. A1). What begins as a tragically ordained story takes a comedic turn, as humans have
an opportunity to realize that they are mistaken. Eilperin interviews climate scientist Gerald Meehl, who concludes ‘‘that a
sharp cut in
greenhouse gas emissions could still keep catastrophic consequences from occurring: ‘The message is,
it does make a difference what we do’’’ (p. A1). Comically, the telos does not overshadow the significance of
human choice, which may stave off total catastrophe.
Apocalyptic comedy good – creates motivation and prevents alienation
Foust and Murphy 09, [Christina R. Foust – is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver. William O’Shannon Murphy is a doctoral student in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of
Denver] [Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse]
(http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17524030902916624) (pg.162-163)//MC
how might the narrative of global warming be framed to
promote political action? Participants in a recent Environmental Communication forum speak to this question, in light of
But if not through a tragic apocalypse,
Schwarze’s discussion of melodrama (Kinsella, 2008). As Schwarze (2006) argues, the polarizing structure of melodrama may
inspire action: ‘‘Promoting division and drawing sharp moral distinctions can be a fitting response to situations in which identification
and consensus have obscured recognition of damaging material conditions and social injustices’’ (p. 242). Though
melodrama and apocalyptic tragedy differ, they share a tendency to divide audiences, for
instance, into heroes against villains (Schwarze, 2006) or believers against non-believers (Brummett, 1991).
Perhaps the polarizing rhetoric of melodrama may shift the ground of the climate change debate away from economic costs and
benefits, to the moral stakes of decimating the earth, as Peterson suggests (Kinsella, 2008). Drawing clear distinctions
between heroes and villains could motivate identifications to mitigate emissions. As Check counters, the
complex issue of climate change may not lend itself to divisive, melodramatic structure, for it does not have a single clear ‘‘rhetorical
devil that is powerful, ubiquitous, deceitful, and identifiable’’ (Kinsella, 2008, p. 98). We, too, worry that divisive rhetoric,
particularly in the form of tragic apocalypse, has precluded and will continue to suffocate
opportunities for a widespread collective will to form. If we accept the view advocated by a number of
experts*that global warming represents a challenge to every aspect of modern development*it is imperative for as
many different sectors of society as possible to contribute to positive change. Polarizing
the community while denying the potential for action, as in apocalyptic tragedy, seems
an untenable rhetorical strategy for encouraging the public to become active participants in climate change
mitigation.
As a frame, apocalyptic
comedy may promote agency on the issue of global warming more
than tragic polarization. The comic frame promotes humanity as mistaken, rather than
evil. As such, comic discourse allows some space for bringing ideologically disparate
communities together. To the extent that humanity is mistaken, it has agency for making
different choices which may lead to different outcomes. Time is open-ended, with human
intervention possible. Humanity is less likely to be resigned to its fate, and, as such, may
be inspired to take steps to change.
The affirmative’s comic form of apocalyptic rhetoric incentivizes action – what
they criticize is tragic apocalyptic framing.
John J. Morrell, Ph.D. in English @ Vanderbilt University, studies American Literature from the 19th,
20th, and 21st centuries, with a focus on environmental literature, ’12 [“THE DIALECTIC OF CLIMATE
CHANGE: APOCALYPSE, UTOPIA AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION,” May, 2012, p.39-43]//JH
Interrogating further the relationship between positive and negative visions within apocalyptic narratives, Garrard
distinguishes
between tragic and comic apocalypse.Garrard draws upon rhetorician Stephen O’Leary to suggest that “the drama of
apocalypse is always shaped by a ‘frame of acceptance’ that may be either ‘comic’ or ‘tragic.’ The
choice of frame will determine the way in which issues of time, agency, authority and crisis are
dramatized.” (87) O’Leary writes:
Tragedy conceives of evil in terms of guilt; its mechanism of redemption is victimage, its plot moves
inexorably toward sacrifice and the ‘cult of the kill’. Comedy conceives of evil not as guilt, but as error;
it’s mechanism of redemption is recognition rather than victimage, and its plot moves not toward
sacrifice but to the exposure of fallibility. (qtd in Garrard, 87).
Garrard highlights the characteristic features of tragic apocalyptic rhetoric in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, for example: “the warning is
presented in terms of absolute authority; the material threat is ‘evil’, and so, by association, are the authors of it; the consequences of failure to
A comic frame of
acceptance, on the other hand, sees a way through the catastrophe, or learns lessons from the experience
of loss. This comic mode, Garrard argues, is more appropriate for environmental apocalypse, which,
ideally, is “not about anticipating the end of the world, but about attempting to avert it by persuasive
means” (99). Garrard argues that “Eschatological narrative…brings with it philosophical and political problems that seriously compromise its
heed the warning are catastrophic, and the danger is not only imminent, but already well under way” (95).
usefulness, especially in its radical, tragic form” (105).
Garrard asks, “is environmental ‘crisis’ unreal, a discursive construct worthy of deconstruction but not millennial panic?” (107). This is a central
question with regard to climate change discourse. He concludes that Whilst
the strategic dangers of such rhetoric may be
identified along with its somewhat disreputable genealogy, its validity must ultimately be judged by a
careful consideration of historical trends and from the variety of projections of, say, global population
or climate change that legitimate scientific discussion will produce. Ecocritics must assess the scale
and import of scientific consensus, and in the final analysis defer to it, even as they analyse the ways
such results are shaped by ideology and rhetoric. (107)
Garrard argues here for the different kinds of authority that scientists and humanists have with regard to environmental crisis. I wish to qualify
his argument that ecocritics must defer to scientific consensus, however, by suggesting that even the “variety of projections of…global
population or climate change that legitimate scientific discussion will produce” are as much ideology and rhetoric as they are falsifiable
scientific hypotheses. The distinction between the sciences and the humanities does not hold with regard to scenario planning.
In Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, D.H. Lawrence spends time discussing the oracles of the classical world:
The old oracles were not supposed to say something that fitted plainly in the whole chain of circumstance. They were supposed to deliver a set
of images or symbols of the real dynamic value, which should set the emotional consciousness of the enquirer, as he pondered them, revolving
more and more rapidly, till out of a state of intense emotional absorption the resolve at last formed; or, as we say, the decision was arrived at.
As a matter of fact, we do very much the same, in a crisis. When anything very important is to be decided we withdraw and ponder and ponder
until the deep emotions are set working and revolving together, revolving, revolving, till a centre is formed and we “know what to do”. And the
fact that no politician today has the courage to follow this intensive method of “thought” is the reason of the absolute paucity of political mind
today. (93-94)
Lawrence’s description here offers some insight into how we might better understand scenarios about
climate change as well as the apocalyptic frame within which environmentalists communicate global
warming. These narratives are stories meant to help interpret uncertain times. They are not
deterministic nor predictive; rather, they are imagistic, intended to inspire creative reflection.
Warming O/w
Warming outweighs and no root cause – history requires a global context not
just cherrypicking
Morell 12, (John J.: Dissertation for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English @ Vanderbilt University) [THE
DIALECTIC OF CLIMATE CHANGE: APOCALYPSE, UTOPIA AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION] (pg. 21 //MC)
Chakrabarty’s third thesis is that “the geological hypothesis regarding the anthropocene requires
us
to put global histories of capital in conversation with the species history of humans” (212).
Climate change, Chakrabarty argues, forces a species understanding of humans that goes
against the grain of a historical methodology that has emphasized the role of the individual
and the collective in political and economic contexts that do not account for our
geological agency. The ecological limits of the planet are, as yet, an unaccounted factor in histories of globalization;
moreover, those limits are independent of politics and economy. Chakrabarty argues that “whatever our
socioeconomic and technological choices, whatever the rights we wish to celebrate as
our freedom, we cannot afford to destabilize conditions (such as the temperature zone in
which the planet exists) that work like boundary parameters of human existence. These
parameters are independent of capitalism or socialism” (218). Globalization and global
warming might be born from overlapping processes, but they are not reducible to one
another. Climate change, Chakrabarty argues, “will no doubt accentuate the logic of inequality that
runs through the rule of capital…. But the whole crisis cannot be reduced to a story of
capitalism. Unlike the crises of capitalism, there are no lifeboats here for the rich and privileged”
(221). Chakrabarty is surely correct that climate change will accentuate the inequality that characterizes global capitalism, though I
am less convinced of his assertion that the rich will not find ways to escape the damage and capitalize on the crisis.
Pragmatism Good
Even if there isn’t consensus about the origin of environmental problems, the
only ethical course is one of action to mitigate the immediate situation.
Graham Harris Adjunct Prf. @ Centre for Environment University of Tasmania ‘7 [Seeking Sustainability
in an age of complexity p. 9-10]//JH
I am not going to address the global 'litany' at length here. The arguments have been well made by others, especially and most elegantly by E.
O. Wilson. What 1 wish to address here is the question: 'Can we grasp the complexity of it all and, if so, what do we do about it?' Given
the
fundamental nature of the problem the destruction of the biosphere and its ecosystem services
together with the huge changes going on in human societies and cultures driven by globalisation and
technological change the precautionary principle would suggest that even if the epistemology is
flawed, the data are partial and the evidence is shaky, we should pay attention to the little we know
and do whatever is possible to mitigate the situation even if we fundamentally disagree about the
means and the ends. The only ethical course of action is, as John Ral- ston Saul writes," based on 'a sense of the
other and of inclusive responsibility'. We know enough to act. Ethics is about uncertainty, doubt,
system thinking and balancing difficult choices. It is about confronting the evidence. Over the past two
or three decades, as there has been an increasing appre- ciation of the importance of good
environmental management, and as western societies have become more open and the ICT revolution
has made informa- tion much more widely available there has been a growing debate between the
worlds of science, industry, government and the community around environ- mental ethics and
environmental issues and their management. During this period new knowledge has been gained,
ideas have changed (sometimes quite fundamentally) and there have been huge changes in
government and social institutions and policies. We are all on a recursive journey together: we are literally 'making it up as we go along'. This is not easy and there are no optimal solutions. This is an
adaptive process requiring feedback from all parts of the system. Yes, there will be surprises. This is why it is so
important that when we act we constantly reflect on what we know and what we are doing about it
and where it is all going. As we reach the physical limits of the global biosphere the values we place on things are changing and must
change further. A new environmental ethic is required, one that is less instrumental and more embracing.
Traditionally there has tended to be a schism between those who take an anthropocentric view (that the world is there for us to use) and those
who take the non-anthropocentric view (those who value nature in its own right). Orthodox anthropocentrisni dictates that non-human value is
instrumental to human needs and interests. In contrast, non-anthropocentrics take an objectivist view and value nature intrinsically; some may
consider the source of value in non-human nature to be independent of human consciousness.45 What
is required is a more
complex and systems view of ethics which finds a middle ground between the instrumentalist and
objectivist views. Norton '46 for example, proposes an alternative and more complex theory of value - a universal Earth ethic - which
values processes and dynamics as well as entities and takes an adaptive management view of changing system properties. For sustainable
development to occur, choices about values will remain within the human sphere but we should no longer regard human preferences as the
only criterion of moral significance. 'Humans and the planet have entwined destinies"' and this will be increasingly true in many and complex
ways as we move forward. There are calls for an Earth ethic beyond the land ethic of Aldo Leopold.45 The science of ecology is being drawn
into the web .49 Ecologists
are becoming more socially and culturally aware and engaged" and the 'very
doing' of ecology is becoming more ethical.tm' Some scientists are beginning to see themselves more
as agents in relationships with society and less as observers.
Technological and institutional resources are critical to the collection of data
about anthropogenic impacts on populations, this is key to incentivize change in
practice and increase regulation.
Graham Harris Adjunct Prf. @ Centre for Environment University of Tasmania ‘7 [Seeking Sustainability
in an age of complexity p. 235-236]//JH
In global science and remote sensing programmes there is a need for techno- logical, institutional and
intellectual resources to store, conceptualise, process and visualise the data coming in, 'There is a real data
assimilation problem, which has to deal with errors and uncertainties as well as parameterisation and scaling issues. What are required
are sources of data about the present status of resources and trends over time, conceptual models
and prediction engines to assimilate the data and turn it into information, arid institutions and
systems to enable action to be taken where required. With the explosion of data and information systems in the past two
or three decades, it is the institutional arid governance systems that we are lacking the most. Data systems provide infor- mation, institutional
and governance systems allow management action to be taken, but it is values and beliefs that ultimately determine whether anything is done.
In global meteorological observation and weather forecasting we now have some very sophisticated systems to receive the satellite
observations as well as predictive models to assimilate the data as they are received. Models of the global atmospheric circulation are
continuously updated by streams of detailed information about the present state of the atmosphere. Huge investments have been made in
solving some of the problems of data fusion and assimilation across scales and between image and point source data. This improves forecasting skill and, as we can all see in our daily newspapers, four- to five-day forecasts are now routine and accurate. This
is one case
where the necessary science, technology, infrastructure and institutional arrangements are in place to
effectively assimilate the data and turn them into useful products and out- conies. Other examples of
action taken on the basis of monitoring information may be cited. These include the observation of rising
CFC concentrations in the atmosphere and the realisation of a connection to the so-called 'ozone hole'
in the stratosphere. The observations and process understandings were effectively turned into
desirable outcomes through the Montreal protocol and the banning of CFCs in refrigeration and other
industrial processes. Other examples are the reduction in emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides in North America and Europe, which
were shown to cause 'acid rain' and an increase in the acidity of soils and surface waters with consequent damage to forests and fish
populations, and the control of nrstrient discharges to lakes, which caused nutrient enrichment (eutrophication) and widespread toxic algal
blooms. Finally, I may cite the example of the international Whaling Commission, where clear evi- dence of declining whale numbers led to an
international ban on whaling and the declaration of large marine reserves to protect whale species.
So there
are clear examples where data on meteorology, global atmospheric chemistry, water quality
and anthropogenic impacts on the populations of 'charismatic megafauna' have led to changing practices and
regulation lead- ing to desirable outcomes. Success seems to he achieved where the data are clear and
the science is explicit, the models are not complex and easily com- municated to both the public and
managers, the alternatives are simple and effective, the political and economic pain is not too great
and a strong lobby for action exists. In addition, there is a link between strong institutional and
governance mechanisms and effective action. If society decides on a change in management practice,
it is important to be able to make the decision 'stick'.
Climate change is already in motion – proactive policy and action are a logical
necessity.
Schneider 11, Professor of Emergency Management Policy @ of North Carolina-Pembroke [Dr. Robert
O. Schneider (Chair of the Department of Political Science & Public Administration), “Climate change: an
emergency management perspective,” Disaster Prevention and Management, 20. 1 (2011): 53-62]//JH
It is suggested herein that climate change be viewed not as something far off, but as already in motion.
As such, it may be helpful to define it as a multifaceted, multi-event, prolonged, high probability, high-impact global disaster. Its unfolding
will span generations and constitute an ever present threat to be managed by human communities
around the world. Its full magnitude is imperfectly known because that will be in some measure
subject to the intelligent application or the reckless avoidance of strategies to mitigate, adapt, or
respond to it. No matter what we do, or fail to do, there is a high probability that its effects will impose global challenges to human safety
and well being. Viewed thusly, it would be incomprehensible to take a wait and see approach or to gamble that
we can muddle through with the status quo. Proactive policy and action is a logical necessity. At a
minimum, political disputes and any long term uncertainty aside, there are clear steps that can be taken in the
context of global warming just as there would be in any other natural disaster scenario. What follows is an
emergency management perspective on global climate change designed to provide a general conceptual framework for policymakers
responding to climate change. It is a perspective rather than a prescription, but a perspective that might bring order and sensibility to the local,
national, and international efforts to evaluate and respond proactively to climate change. We will build this perspective around the emergency
management processes of mitigation, planning, preparedness, and response as a guide for policymaking.
Framing climate change in terms of environmental management is net
beneficial – creates consensus and enables policymakers to pursue the same
goals.
Schneider 11, Professor of Emergency Management Policy @ of North Carolina-Pembroke [Dr. Robert
O. Schneider (Chair of the Department of Political Science & Public Administration), “Climate change: an
emergency management perspective,” Disaster Prevention and Management, 20. 1 (2011): 53-62]//JH
We have demonstrated that the
evidence and the consensus about climate change are substantial enough to
warrant its being a priority for policy makers. We have offered an emergency management perspective on
climate change and suggested that such a perspective may aid policy makers at all levels in assessing and
responding to the challenges posed by climate change. While emergency planning, mitigation, and response is typically
best implemented at the community level, policy makers at all levels would do well to adopt an emergency management perspective. A
consensus of perspective, so to speak, is required at all levels to the promote actions both local and
across jurisdictional lines that are necessary for success. The remaining question is what does this mean in practice?
Putting the emergency management perspective into practice means putting to rest
counterproductive debates about whether climate change is real or whether it requires a policy
intervention. There may be much to debate or to logically disagree about, but not this central fact. It means focusing on the
scientific evidence that the climate is in fact changing. It means constantly refining and improving
efforts to accurately monitor a changing climate and to enhance our understanding of climate change
impacts. It means targeting for assessment the risks and vulnerabilities that can reasonably be
identified on the basis of the best scientific consensus. It means above all a process that is analytical,
fluid, and proactive. The following is suggested as a guide for policymakers at all levels to utilize as appropriate to their sphere of
responsibility in pursuing these objectives:
(1) Assess climate change impacts in all sectors. The emphasis should be placed on assembling and assessing the best scientific information
available. This should be done with the realization that while sufficient information may not be available to produce consensus on long-term
projections, definite and accurate trends may be observed and there is an indisputable consensus about these.
(2) Conduct hazard identification and hazard vulnerability studies in relation to projected climate change impacts. These will vary from
community to community and region to region, but all will be affected. This will only compliment and enhance the ongoing work already taking
place to assess risks and vulnerabilities and to prepare for natural disasters.
(3) Identify and prioritize actions designed to mitigate identified risks and vulnerabilities in order to reduce impacts of climate change.
Emphasize environmental protection and enhancement and the role that it plays in creating hazard resilient communities and reducing the
impacts of future disasters. Hazard resilience is every bit as important as efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions given the impacts of an
already changing climate and those that are expected.
(4) Improve response capabilities for all natural disasters and expand resources to meet the expected impacts of global climate change. It is also
critical to cast an eye toward planning for unprecedented mega-disasters and worst-case scenarios. These in particular will exceed current
coping strategies and response capabilities.
(5) Foster regional, national, and international cooperation in assessing risks and vulnerabilities and in responding to increasingly probable and
unprecedented mega-disaster scenarios. In essence, national and international consensus together with the development of greater capacity to
cooperate across jurisdictional lines is necessary in the face of what is a global threat or a global crisis already in motion.
(6) Measure progress and update all assessments of climate change impacts. The situation is fluid. Events will unfold. Scientific information will
continue to expand and with it our knowledge base for intelligent policy. Hence, policy must be nimble enough to adjust to changing
circumstances and new evidence.
It is the ultimate conclusion of this analysis that
a consensus of approach that will enable all policy makers to
speak the same language, participate in the same analysis, contribute to the same dialogue, and
pursue the same goals is a logical necessity in the face of the challenges posed by global climate
change. Placing global warming in the context of emergency management, defining it as a natural
disaster already in motion, and applying the basic principles of emergency management planning,
preparedness, response and mitigation as a guide for the policy process may offer the best and least
problematic model for policy makers to incorporate as they seek to make their efforts more
consistent and more responsible in the face of a truly global challenge.
Thinking of environmental ethics in terms of individualism alone can’t preserve
the environment – collaborative government action is key to create policy that
will change individuals’ behavior.
Callicott 11 (Oct. 2011, J. Baird, University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the
Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of
North Texas, “The Temporal and Spatial Scales of Global Climate Change and the Limits of Individualistic
and Rationalistic Ethics,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Volume 69, October 2011, pp 101116, cambridge journals)
The temporal scale of this proposed moral ontology – moral considerability for human civilization per
se – is proportionate to the spatial and temporal scales of global climate change. Global human
civilization thus appears to be the appropriate moral patient for global climate-change ethics. What
about the appropriate moral agent? Global climate change moralists often end their sermons with a list of things that each Jack
and Jill of us can individually and voluntarily do to shrink our individual carbon footprints: replace halogen with compact fluorescent light bulbs,
drive less, bike more, insulate, turn down the thermostat in winter and turn it up in summer … The Jack-and-Jill ethical paradigm is so ingrained
in our thinking that we
seem to suppose that duty-driven voluntary change in individual behavior is all that
global-climate-change ethics is about. If so, catastrophic global climate change and the likely demise
of human civilization is all but inevitable, due to the familiar free-rider problem. If there is a chance at averting
climate catastrophe it lies in scaling up the moral agent as well as the moral patient.
The identity of that moral agent is no mystery: the world’s several governments acting in concert to
create policy and law that will effectively drive changes in individual behavior. The manufacture of halogen light
bulbs might be discontinued through international agreement. A steep excise tax on gas-guzzling SUVs might be globally imposed. A
transnational carbon tax might be imposed or an international cap-and-trade market might be instituted. Research on alternative fuels might
be lavishly subsidized. And so on and so forth. My purpose here is not to provide an inventory of actions that governments can take, but to
identify the effective moral agent for an ethics of global climate change.
Nor do I mean to reject altogether out of hand the efficacy of voluntary individual effort to stem the tide of global climate change. When one
see others undertake lifestyle changes, especially if such changes, as they often do, entrain other personal benefits – such as better fitness
attendant upon biking, better nutrition attendant upon the consumption of local foods, the economic savings of lower domestic energy
consumption – there is a contagious effect. That, in turn, leads to self-organizing communities to promote such things as car pools, urban
gardens, and reforestation projects, not to mention organizing for greener policies and laws. After
all, in a democracy, change in
policy and law must have some degree of support by individual citizens in order to be enacted. And
once enacted into law, the ethical status of the newly mandated behavioral changes is reinforced. Now
that it is against the law, submitting others to second-hand smoke or endangering infants by not restraining them in rearfacing car seats, is
considered to be quite wrong and irresponsible as well as illegal.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to this contagious effect. Environmentalism has created a backlash among certain segmentsof society who feel
that their lifestyles are threatened – the mechanized recreationalist, for example. Even more unfortunately, environmentalism has become
entangled in partisan politics, associated in the US with ‘liberal’ as opposed to ‘conservative’ political allegiance. Thus in the end, whether we
would wish it or not, achieving the changes in human behavior and lifestyle necessary to meet the challenge of global climate change will
require changes in policy and law, because a significant sector of society is likely to resist such changes as one dimension of a complex political
struggle sometimes characterized as ‘the culture war’.
I now conclude. This essay has not been about practical ethics, but about ethical theory. Or to say the same thing in different words, it has been
about moral philosophy, not normative morality. We
most certainly have moral obligations to distant future
generations. However, we cannot – for the reasons I have given here – conceive of those obligations as
obligations to future individuals particularly and severally. Rather, we must conceive of those
obligations as obligations to future generations collectively. In short, the hyperindividualism that has
characterized the ethical theory dominating Jack-and-Jill moral philosophy for more than two
centuries now becomes incoherent when we contemplate our obligations to future generations on
the temporal scale – calibrated in centuries and millennia, not years and decades – of global climate
change. Implied by the abandonment of an individualistic ontology for an ethics of global climate
change is the abandonment of ethical rationalism. Both Kantian deontology and utilitarianism derive our moral obligations
from the most fundamental law of logic, the law of non-contradiction or self-consistency. Both the spatial and temporal scales
of global climate change and the billions of individuals, who have intrinsic value and/or equal
interests with our own, swamp our capacity to treat all individual persons, living now and in the
future, as ends in themselves, and/or our capacity to give equal weight to their equal interests. More
deeply, shifting from an individualistic to a holistic moral ontology, persons are not conceived as
externally related social atoms. Our internal relationships – the relationships that make us the
persons that we are – are multiple and various, each kind of which plays differently on our finely
tuned moral sentiments. Thus we may be passionately concerned for the global climate of the near future because our loved ones, for
whom we passionately care, will have to live in it. We may be passionately concerned about the global climate of the far-flung future because
the now contingent and thus indeterminate individual members of distant future generations will be heirs and custodians of human civilization,
for which we passionately care. Moreover, we
cannot effectively act, as individual moral agents, in such a way as
to significantly benefit or harm near-term future generations or to conserve human civilization in the
long term. The colossal moral problem presented by the prospect of global climate change demands a
shift from ethical individualism to ethical holism in regard to moral agency as well as to patiency. The
only moral agents commensurate with the spatial and temporal scales of global climate change are
national governments and for them to be effective in mitigating global climate change, they must act
in concert.
Perm
Action to restore the environment combined with a new ethical worldview is
the only way to ensure a sustainable future.
Graham Harris Adjunct Prf. @ Centre for Environment University of Tasmania ‘7 [Seeking Sustainability
in an age of complexity p. 274-276]//JH
Pretty well this entire planet is now managed in one way or another; there are few independent pristine areas. From the equator to the poles,
everywhere is affected to some degree by climate change and the global transport of various pollutants Ultimately, restoration
should
be our goal: from an ethical stance, mere management and conservation is not sufficient. This is going to
be a very hard task. Restoration and management require not only understanding of many fundamental
processes in landscapes," but also an ability to observe, understand and predict the outcomes of
purposeful interventions in catchments and landscapes of various kinds. I have argued that there are some
fundamental constraints on what we can know about ecological systems and that we must accept that
we will always have to act on the basis of imperfect knowledge. A deeper understanding of the properties of CAS is
going to be essential. The key paradigm shift has been to begin to understand how to link the local to the
global: how the actions and interactions of individual agents (be they organisms or individual people) can scale up
to system properties .52 Complex systems show the emergence of often quite surprising properties. The traditional approach of
science has been reductionist: to take complex entities apart and to seek simple models. CAS require a quite different approach, which
attempts to understand the statistical ensemble properties of the whole system, together with all the extreme events, surprise, emergence and
hysteresis that we so often see. Merely
complicated answers to truly complex problems do not suffice. The
lessons for sustainability are clear and go beyond science. Human influences on the planet are largely
controlled by individual choices and decisions made by people, usually acting on local knowledge.
Farmers, for example, take individual decisions about paddock and farm management based on the local climate, soil types and their estimates
of risk and financial success The decision making process is complex and recursive, being based on local knowl- edge, on regional patterns of
social, economic and ecological processes and or higher-level emergent patterns arising from ethics, value systems and global commodity
prices. All human societies have a well-defined sense of place and a long-term memory of landscape and culture.54 Giddens argues that in a
world of radicalised modernism our sense of place is disembedded and fragmented because social activity is 'lifted out' of its local context and
set instead in large-scale expert systems of production, transport and marketing It is easy to see how clashes can arise between different
groups (e.g. farmers and conservation- ists) where ethics and values can differ markedly, arising as they do from differ- cut contexts and
contingent histories arid memories. There is a clash of 'sense giving' and 'sense receiving' even when listening to the same words." Trust breaks
clown. Couple this with a degree of indeterminacy and risk management and the stage is set for problems. With ideas of chaos, CAS and the
rejection of pure and instrumental reason floating around in society for the past thirty years or mole it is hardly surpris- ing that the Western
world has moved on beyond the modern era's reliance on concepts of reason, progress and truth. Ecological theory is based on arguments from
design, and on concepts of balance and equilibrium. Thus the
world of radicalised modernity as laid out by Giddens is, as he
asserts, a truly radical departure from past epistemologies: a radically new synthesis is emerging.
Instead of treating the world as simple, linear and seeking universals, the world is now seen as nonlinear-, complex and recursive. Our knowledge is partial and contingent. The modern world has seen
dramatic reorganisation of the human perceptions of space and time Nevertheless, despite the
extreme views of some 'postmodernists', who espouse total epistemological. relativity, there are
relationships and physical laws with great predictive power and generality. These underpin and make possible
the biological world of CAS. We have good foundations to stand on and we must use what we know; even if,
for now, it is partial and incomplete. In the contextual and recursive world of ecology, sociology and economies we should not
expect the same degree of universality and predictive power as we see in physics; but 'physics envy' has long been a problem in biology and
other related disciplines. What
is emerging is a more ethical, contingent set of explanations based more on
the data and on experience than on reason and physical theories w As John Ralston Saul has pointed out, a truly
ethical view recognises the complexity and contingency of this world -- it truly is a form of systems
thinking. An ethical world view is air appropriate view to hold in a world of CAS, recognising as it does context,
relationship and recursive interaction. To quote Saul, ethics is 'a sense of the other and of inclusive
responsibility': an adaptive epistemology based on doubt and on justice, equity and fairness. An
ethical approach is also accepting of doubt and ignorance as a useful characteristic of our reality. For the
iCM process to be successful it requires clear goals and targets for on-ground outcomes, and congruence between the aims and objectives of
the various players. Achieving
sustainable goals at regional scales increases the level of difficulty; first, there
are many players and many aims and objectives to rec- oncile and second, what must result from any
regional resource management plan is a mosaic of land uses and environmental values. This is the challenge
of designing and restoring a complex adaptive system with environmental, social and economic processes and scales overlapping in subtle and
interactive ways. All
this requires an adaptive management and consultation process that is able to
monitor progress, learn from mistakes and move forward accordingly. We begin to see why it is so hard to do this
in practice.
Norton58 has advocated the
development of a more universal Earth ethic, which attempts to bridge the gap
between the two extremes of instrumental and intrinsic values, and moves beyond objectification and
the rise of a globalised 'placeless' set of (largely economic) values. Norton argues that it is essential that we move
beyond the arguments between adherents of the two philosophies, that we cease trying to sort types
of capital and that we value the uniqueness of place. He places value in discussions and debates over
possible trajectories and processes that increase resilience and suggests an 'adaptive management
model as a way of understanding human-nature interactions from the viewpoint of a community
adapting to a larger, changing eco-physical system.59 Strong sustain- ability and intergenerational equity are ensured
through a sense of responsibility ('a sense of the other and of shared responsibility') and through monitoring of progress, deliberative processes
and the inclusion of other values.
A new world order is emerging from the shadows. It is a world with a different set of values
is a more ethical
world - a world of systems thinking - that recognises and indeed exploits bounded complexity and
variability instead of trying to control or eliminate it, A 'triple bottom line' world requires profitability, variability, diversity
and compassion. It will be a world in which CAS are understood and in some cases guided towards more
sustainable futures.
from the instrumentalist, corporatist world of globalisation, economic efficiency, profit and shareholder value. It
A combination of ethical discourse and pragmatic policy is key to mitigate
climate change.
Menno Kamminga IR @ Groningen (Netherlands) ‘8 “The Ethics of Climate Politics: four modes of
moral discourse” Environmental Politics 17 (4) p.673-692]//JH
One might think that climate ‘ethics’ naturally means a moral-philosophical search for (deontological or utilitarian) principles of justice as
regards the distribution of burdens (and benefits) of global climate change between and within generations. Thus, Stephen Gardiner (2004, pp.
578–579) holds that ‘[t]he core ethical issue concerning global warming is that of how to allocate the costs and benefits of greenhouse gas
emissions and abatement’. Peter Singer (2006, p. 415) puts it like this: ‘Climate change is an ethical issue, because it involves the distribution of
a scarce resource – the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb our waste gases without producing consequences that no one wants.’ Yet, taking
to limit the ethics of climate
politics to a ‘technical-ethical’ discourse about justice would be unwarranted. ‘Abstract’ ethical
discourse is not sufficient, although neither is narrative, policy, or prophetic discourse.
climate ethics as an exercise in (international) political philosophy (see Rawls 1999), I argue that
Accordingly,
I propose a conception of climate ethics that is pluralist: broad and interdisciplinary, yet
presumably also conflictual and tragic. While compromises between various perspectives may be
acceptable and perhaps even necessary, an adequate climate ethics is characterised by modes of
moral discourse that each have their strengths and shortcomings, and interact with each other on the
basis of co-existence and competition without the prospect of fusion.
I aim to reconstruct the various positions along the following guidelines. If
they are to operate critically, the moral
discourse positions and the resulting conception of climate ethics must be theoretically founded and
relevant to, but also ultimately independent of, the factual existence of (human-induced) global
warming. A philosophical model of climate politics must have meaning even in the unlikely case that
the ‘climate sceptics’ turn out to be right in the end.
Consumption K Updates
K
Link – ‘Green’ Energy
‘Green’ energy companies simply further the exploitation and commodification
of nature – they open up new areas for engineering of our world and turn
nature into a factory.
Frederick Buell, professor of English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY, 03 [From
Apocalypse to Way of Life, 2003, p.153]//JH
In fact, however, while
making claims like these, postmodern industries often speed up rather than alter
many of the ecologically and socially troubling effects of hypermodernization. They open up dramatic
new areas for human engineering of the physical world; they turn nature more and more into a
factory; make organisms and microbes into machines; distance people further than ever before from
appreciation and experience of nature; erase rurality and urbanize both the agrarian and the microworlds; and reduce biodiversity. As well, they dismantle nature's last barriers to human intervention,
such as the integrity of species, the slowness of evolution, and the "otherness" of "life"; turn more
and more of the commons into the products and property of individuals; open vast new areas of the
environment (globally and microscopically) to capitalist exploitation and commodification; and
consolidate social power and wealth into fewer hands.
Impact – Devaluation of Nature
The affirmative practices climate change risk assessment in a technological
society - confines the phenomenon to a series of scientific and technical
concerns and makes nature incidental to human social existence.
Byrne and Glover 5—*John Byrne Center for Energy and Environmental Policy @ Delaware and
**Leigh Glover Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at Delaware [“Ellul and the Weather,”
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 25, No. 1 p.11-12]//JH
Ellul welcomed Engels’s argument that the
quantitative presence of social practices, values, and ideas can, with
time, alter the qualitative experience of society. Of particular interest for Ellul were several centuries of
promotion of rationality, artificiality and order into every facet of society from philosophy to law,
economic production, state administration, and military organization—and from the realm of ideas
and ideologies to operating principles of institutions. One result of their pervasiveness is an altered sense of
social reality, in which nature becomes incidental to the human drama (Byrne, Glover, et al., 2002). Social
existence outside nature’s constraints and, eventually, its rules, is a defining feature of technological
society for Ellul. What Ellul (1964) referred to as modern technique’s “monism” (pp. 94-111) insulates the ideas of
rationality, artificiality, and order, and their ideal status in modernity, from external assessment—
each is justified in its own terms. Social or ecological effect is measured by these self-same criteria,
leaving no context for social reality (or the experience of social reality) that is apart from the rational, artificial
order automatically being built by self-augmenting technological progress (Ellul, 1964, pp. 79-94). The
cognition of climate change occurs in this monist social reality. Of course, even moderns understand the social
vulnerabilities that might accompany storm surges and sea-level rise, increased climatic extremes, and ecological catastrophe. Still, climate
change, in technological society, is not a problem per se. Having abandoned nature as the arbiter of
social reality in favor of rationality, artificiality, and order, modern thinking confines the phenomenon
to a series of scientific and technical concerns: Can it be proved? What are its physical consequences? Its social
consequences? What are the economic benefits and costs of addressing these consequences? Is adaptation to climate change, or mitigation of
the problem the superior response? The IPCC and FCCC machinery are filled with such questions, and the two processes manage legions of
researchers, modelers, and economists in the quest for answers. In this regard, Ellul’s
analysis of our era points to the
distinctness of climate change. Through this phenomenon, we discover how social reality has overcome
past fears of natural constraints and has even overcome the need to respect nature’s rules. A global
threat from nature can now, confidently, be assigned for study. Modernity is experiencing climate
change as a research question.
Impact - Turns Case
The aff acts through an consumerist economics of depletion – the assumption
that technology will always find substitutes for the parts of nature we destroy is
inherently expansionist and leads to ecological decline.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p. 92-97]//JH
A Mining Economy A
mining economy takes as axiomatic that resources are to be used and, when a rational
calculation can be made, used up. It explores, tests, extracts, manufactures, distributes, consumes,
throws away, then goes back for more. When the stuff is all gone, it goes elsewhere, to new frontiers
where raw materials and places to dump abound. What it leaves behind is waste. In fact, a mining economy
creates waste, unlike nature's economy where, in ecological communities, one organism's excretion is
another's nutrient. Creating waste for which there is no use is one defining feature of this uneconomical economy. Another defining
feature is its intellectual pedigree. Behind it all is a form of reasoning, an analytic framework, a set of sophisticated models. It is called
neoclassical economics, within which resource economics starts with a simple premise: there is an optimal extraction rate for every resource.
"Optimal" refers to that which generates the most benefit over a given time periodin practice, a time period relevant to investors and
politicians. And in practice, "benefit" usually means money, private or public. It
makes little difference whether the resource
is oil (the exemplar for most models) or timber (let alone forests) or water (which can be locally depleted) or fish (which move around
a lot and whose populations look normal until they crash). In this framework, the optimal extraction rate is a function
of consumer demand, interest rates, and available technologies, none of which have ecological
content. The presumed goal is to maximize benefits (for example, revenues, appropriations, return on investment, profit,
market share) over a chosen time period (that is, a period chosen by those who want returns now, or in a few months or years). For
oil the extraction rate is adjusted as demand, interest rates, technologies, and the political environment change, but eventually the oil is, of
course, depleted. Yet timber is modeled in largely the same way, and as a result, it often makes sense (rational, economistic sense) to clear oldgrowth forests and plant mono culture plantations. It's all about depletion, optimal depletion. Perhaps the most telling concept in this entire
intellectual architecture is "optimal extinction." The reasoning, once again, is no different from that of oil and forests: a useful species (whales
are the exemplar in such analyses) should be completely harvested and the proceeds invested whenever the returns on such investments
exceed the benefits of keeping the species. In short, this
is an economics of depletion, of mining. It undergirds much
decision making in business and in public policy making, domestic and international. It assumes
depletion as a natural state of affairs, self-evident for minerals and equally rational for all other
resources, no matter how renewable, how essential to life, how integral to ecosystem functioning or
climate stability. This thinking acts as if there will always be more resources, another forest to clear,
another fishery to fish, another aquifer to pump. Or it assumes that technology will find substitutes. It
is inherently expansionist. It is a fundamental way of thinking and, consequently, of decision making
and policy making. It is a major contributor to current patterns of ecological decline. It rationalizes
and legitimates a mining economy when a sustaining economy is possible. It is inherently uneconomical, wasteful
of all that is, or could be, renewing and life-supporting. So a mining economy tends to mine all: minerals, oil, soil, forests, aquifers. It
decapitates mountaintops for coal, depletes freshwater aquifers for cattle feed, and fills the oceans and atmosphere with climate-disrupting
substances to "keep the economy going." Along the way, it tends to mine families and communities of their self-help, their productive
capacities, their ability to self-provision. It
requires people to assume as their primary economic role that of
consumer, buying more and more so as to be the "engine of economic growth." A Consuming Economy A
mining economy uses up and throws away; it consumes. But in so-called advanced industrial economies, a mining
economy is also consumerist. A farmer who buys fertilizers and herbicides to maximize yields, who buys machines and the fuel to run them,
who hires labor and pays them a wage, all because the scale of operation is too big to do otherwise, is running a consumerist enterprise. It is
more than coincidental that such enterprises also tend to consume the soil and water and biota that surround them. And it is probably more
than coincidental that farming communities disappear as these enterprises consolidate their holdings. By the same token, a householder who
hires plumbers and carpenters and cleaners for every household task (what would otherwise be called a "chore") who eats out, who drives
everywhere, even the corner store, is running a consumerist household. The
consumer can respond only to price and hence
can be responsible for very little else, certainly not the quality of the soil and water or the standards
of labor. The ethics of consumerism is the ethics of smart shopping, getting good deals, employing
others, and substituting technology for disciplined work and care. The consumer is thus burdened by little more than
continuous shopping and hiring. A home economy, by contrast, generates and regenerates; it is self-sustaining. Its roots are producerist
(chapter 9), not consumerist. People are defined not by their shopping but by their producing, by their ability to buy as little as possible. Its
burdens are more substantial-making, creating, caring-and its responsibilities closer to home-wastes either assimilate or are prevented
altogether. In value terms (chapter 6), to emphasize buying is to value ephemeral relationships, relationships with little attachment, little
obligation, little allegiance beyond that prescribed in a contract or through the exchange of money. To
imagine that a consumerist
economy could be sustainable is to believe that there is "good consuming" and "bad consuming" and
that all that is needed is more of the good, less of the bad. In fact, all consuming is using up. Some, of
course, is necessary for life. But the great bulk of consuming in modern industrial consumer economies is "for
the economy." If there is caring in this economy, it is care for the economy, not for its members ; it is care
for abstract measures like GDP and stock market indexes and the shareholder value of absentee owners, not for the resource base on which it
rests, not for the actual work on the ground that keeps it all going. An
economical economy, therefore, does not arise
when its consumption patterns simply become greener and more environmentally friendly. Rather, an
economical economy puts consumption in its proper place, meeting basic material needs, and puts
production in its proper place, meeting basic human needs for making, creating, and caring. In its highest
forms, the practices of an economical economy, its "productiveness"-that very making, creating, and caring-are disciplines, even arts. Unlike the
practices of the consumer economy, where relevant decisions (consumer decisions) are binary-buy or not buy the practices of a producer
economy lie along a continuum of decisions, each with varying opportunities and responsibilities. At one end are the simple productive actsboiling an egg, pulling a weed, writing a letter. At the other end are the disciplines, the spiritual, and the arts. In Michael Ende's children's story
about time, Mama, Beppo Roadsweeper is a simple, kind man who does his work, sweeping roads. But he doesn't just punch a clock and put in
his hours. His work is "a useful job, and he knows it." So he does the job right, as a discipline: He swept his allotted streets slowly but steadily,
drawing a deep breath before every step and every stroke of the broom. Step, breathe, sweep, step, breathe, sweep .... Every so often he
would pause awhile, staring thoughtfully into the distance. And then he would begin again: step, breathe, sweep .... While progressing in this
way, with a dirty street ahead of him and a clean one behind, he often had grand ideas. They were ideas that couldn't easily be put into words,
though-ideas as hard to define as a half-remembered scent or a color seen in a dream . . .. "Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of
you," [Beppo explained,] "you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept .... And then you start to hurry .... You work
faster and faster, and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic,
and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop-and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it." "You must
never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the
broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else." "That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it.
And that's how it ought to be." "And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. What's more, you
aren't out of breath .. . . That's important, toO."2 Farmer and social critic Wendell Berry also sees in disciplined work the bridging of competing
tendencies of the practical and the spiritual. But he cautions against seeing spirituality as the antidote to the modern dilemma: Now that the
practical processes of industrial civilization have become so threatening to humanity and to nature, it is easy for us, or for some of us, to see
that practicality needs to be made subject to spiritual values and spiritual measures. But we must not forget that it is also necessary for
spirituality to be responsive to practical questions. For human beings the spiritual and the practical are, and should be, inseparable. Alone,
practicality becomes dangerous; spirituality, alone, becomes feeble and pointless. Alone, either becomes dull. Each is the other's discipline, in a
sense, and in good work, the two are joined.3 So how would good work help create an economical economy? How would one even begin to
craft such an economy? As the trekkers discovered, a good place to start is with what exists. If it exists, it is possible. Other economies have
existed, and other economies do exist; in fact, they are all around us. There are the household economy, the community economy, the
economies of care (for children, the elderly, and the infirm, on the one hand, and farms, landscapes, art, and artifacts of cultural significance,
on the other). And, of course, there is nature's economy. These warrant the term economy as much as the dominant one, the mining and
consuming economy. These economies are also systems of exchange, of material flow, of value; they just do not have the same metrics as the
dominant economy, let alone the same values. They do not fit into neat equations or align along supply and demand curves, let alone
macroeconomic trajectories of endless growth. Instead, these "other
economies" conjoin the practical and the spiritual.
Unlike the consumerist, industrial economy, they are economical of people and place, of culture and
agriculture, of human nature and nature's nature. And they appear to exhibit a common set of
principles and virtues.
The affirmative’s focus on solving environmental issues with technology ensures
failure – we need to interrogate our own consumption and exploitation of the
environment rather than prioritizing economic growth.
Godhaven 9 – Merrick Godhaven is an environmental writer and activist. He co-authored the
Corporate Watch report [Technofixes: A Critical Guide to Climate Change Technologies. The Guardian,
“Swapping technologies fails to address the root causes of climate change,” July 15, 2009,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/jul/15/technofix-climate-change]//JH
Techno-fixation masks the incompatibility of solving climate change with unlimited economic growth.
Even if energy consumption can be reduced for an activity, ongoing economic growth eats up the
improvement and overall energy consumption still rises. We continue destructive consumption in the
expectation that new miracle technologies will come and save us.
The hope of a future techno-fix feeds into the pass-it-forward, do-nothing-now culture typified by
targets for 2050. Tough targets for 2050 are not tough at all, they are a decoy. Where are the techno-fix plans for the peak in global
emissions by 2015 that the IPCC says we need?
Even within the limited sphere of technology, we have to separate the solutions from the primacy of profit. We need to choose what's the most
effective, not the most lucrative. Investors will want the maximum return for their money, and so the benefits of any climate technologies will,
in all likelihood, be sold as carbon credits to the polluter industries and nations. It would not be done in tandem with emissions cuts but instead
of them, making it not a tool of mitigation but of exacerbation.
Climate change is not the only crisis currently facing humanity. Peak oil is likely to become a major
issue within the coming decade. Competition for land and water, soil fertility depletion and collapse
of fisheries are already posing increasing problems for food supply and survival in many parts of the
world.
Technological solutions to climate change fail to address most of these issues . Yet even without climate
change, this systemic environmental and social crisis threatens society, and requires deeper solutions
than new technology alone can provide. Around a fifth of emissions come from deforestation, more
than for all transport emissions combined. There is no technological fix for that. We simply need to
consume less of the forest, that is to say, less meat, less agrofuel and less wood.
Our level of consumption is inequitable. Making it universal is simply impossible. The scientist Jared Diamond
calculates that if the whole world were to have our level of consumption, it would be the equivalent of
having 72 billion people on earth.
With ravenous economic growth still prized as the main objective of society by all political leaders the world over, that 72 billion would be just
the beginning. At 3% annual growth, 25 years later it would be the equivalent of 150 billion people. A century later it would be over a trillion.
Something's got to give. And indeed, it already is. It's time for us to call it a crisis and respond with the proportionate radical action that is
needed.
We need profound change – not only government measures and targets but financial systems, the
operation of corporations, and people's own expectations of progress and success. Building a new
economic democracy based on meeting human needs equitably and sustainably is at least as big a
challenge as climate change itself, but if human society is to succeed the two are inseparable.
Instead of asking how to continue to grow the economy while attempting to cut carbon, we should be
asking why economic growth is seen as more important than survival.
Alt
We endorse the development of an entirely new economic system – future
questions of consumption should prioritize the conservation of nature over
consumerist economic growth.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p.34-38]//JH
Living within our means is not easy; it's hard. Postponing that day of reckoning by binging and borrowing now is easy. But it can't last. We are
already seeing the effects-job loss, mortgage foreclosures, crumbling infrastructure, collapsed fisheries, global warming. So now let's tackle the
question head-on:
how can we consume less and not hurt the economy? This is probably the most common
question I get in discussions of overconsumption, suggesting that people accept the notion of
overconsumption. They just cannot envision an alternative. Nobody is saying that we should "stop consuming." All
organisms consume. Consumption is essential to life. But there are different kinds and levels of consumption, some that sustain lives without
risking life-support systems-for example, only harvesting the surplus growth in a forest-and some that degrade such systems-for example,
overpumping groundwater to the point that rivers run dry. So the real question is not "How can we continue to increase consumption and not
hurt the economy?" This is like an overweight adult asking how to continue to eat more every day and be healthy. It's
like an addict
asking how to continue to shoot up and not lose her job. It's like a homeowner taking out yet another mortgage with
even higher interest rates and expecting not to lose the house. Rather, the real question is this: how can we consume in a
way that does not undermine our economy, that does not consume the very basis of that economy,
namely, its waters and soils and the atmosphere and the oceans? To ask this question is necessarily to ask how much
is enough, ask how much is too much. It is to ask what kinds of consumption can be sustained, and what kinds cannot. These are hard
questions. Policy mak- ers don't like them. Most citizens in a consumerist society don't either: "Don't tell me what I can and can't buy!" And to
ask these hard questions is to entertain the idea that "the economy" is more than what is captured in measures like GDP and trade flows, let
alone capital flows. It is to consider that the real economy is grounded in "real estate," in natural systems. So the
everyday
observation that we're consuming too much and it can't continue combines with the scientific truth
that no organism or species can increase its material and energy consumption without eventually
crashing. All this then leads to one simple conclusion, one absolutely contrary to what one would take
from the original question: the consumption of vital lifesupport systems cannot continue indefinitely.
The consumption of products of that system can continue indefinitely, provided the system is
maintained, but no advanced industrial society is currently maintaining the system. Nor are the great bulk of
less industrialized societies, all trying to get on the growth bandwagon by exporting their natural wealth. Each is consuming the system. It can't
go on. Part
of what is at issue here is language-not just words and phrases, but perceptions and actions.
It is through language that we understand our world and enact our world, including abstractions like
"the economy" and "consumption." When people speak of the economy as if it is an organism, all of
us cannot help but think of the economy as being natural, a real living being. This way of thinking is typified by
attitudes that now constitute the conventional wisdom: A growing economy is a strong, healthy economy. A weak economy is anemic,
lethargic. It needs a stimulus. It must be revived. In this culture,
all of us tend to think that "the economy" has always
been this way, or that this is the One Right Economy, or that it is the best economy that has ever
existed. We tend to think that if we tamper with it, let alone reorganize it, we will destroy this
wondrous creature, this perfect order. What's more, with current language, we feel the economy (yet
not the biophysical substrate on which it all depends) is something that must be protected, preserved, kept intact,
defended at all costs, even if those costs are disrupted lives, fragmented communities, and
destabilized climate. It is as if this essential creature, so central to our lives, must live forever and grow forever, lest it die and we die
with it. This economy has indeed been fabulously successful-on some grounds (e.g., growing itself and enriching a few). And this economy is
awfully familiar; it is hard to imagine some other economy, including a sustainable one. But the fact is, it
cannot continue. It is not
sustainable. All the evidence, from climate change to freshwater scarcity to declining oil supplies to
displaced peoples, incriminates this beast. Staying with the natural metaphor for a bit longer, no organism lives forever, let
alone grows forever. No species that consumes its base can persist (think of a disease organism that completely destroys its host). It is time
for a new organism, a new species, a new economic order. And it can happen and, I think, will happen, whether we like
it or not, because the economy is not a living being at all; it is entirely a human creation. And we can create a new economy: one that fits
today's needs, not the needs of past centuries, and one that fits this one and only planet. The good news is that such a new creation, a
sustainable economy, is already here, albeit only in small patches. Some patches are long-standing (the odd timber company that has always
restrained its harvest to ensure harvests in perpetuity, for example). And some are emerging (community-supported farms and farmers'
markets, for instance). Everywhere we look (and, yes, sometimes you have to look h<tJgi), people are consciously and conscientiously building
this new sustainable economy, one farm, one store, one vehicle, one locality at a time. So as
the beast cripples itself, creative
people are building a new economic system. What's needed is some appropriate language and a few
good principles to help repel the beast and guide that new construction. But back to the original question,
how do we cut back on consumption, or, better, what should we do about overconsumption? First,
ask the real questions: How can we consume in a way that does not undermine our economy? How can
we live within our means, and live well? How can we tread softly? As hard as it may be to resist the consumerist notion
that the economy depends on endlessly increasing consumption, this is exactly what concerned
people must do. Consume, but only what renews, not the basis of that renewal. Eat the apple; don't
cut down the orchard. Drink what flows into the reservoir; don't drain the reservoir. Burn fossil fuels and emit CO2 (after all, we emit
CO2 with every breath), but no more CO2 than plants absorb. And so on. Second, consider some time-honored maxims: • From farming: Don't
eat the seed corn; don't kill the brood stock. • From fishing: Throw back the little ones and the breeders. • From finance: Spend the interest,
not the principal; diversify your portfolio; don't put all your eggs in one basket. • From engineering: Build to specifications, then add a safety
margm. • From economics: Produce at an optimal scale, not too big, not too small. Third, and this may be the most important point in light of
the fact that living within our means is hard: much about sustainable living is hard, but very simple. Look at the maxims above. They are
intuitive, everyday, ancient, the kind of thing a thoughtful ten-year-old can grasp and explain to others: If the farmer cuts down the orchard, we
can't eat his apples. If our town pumps too much river water, the river dries up. And so on. Fourth, reject the
myth of a consumer
economy (and it is just that, a myth, a story made up to promote certain goals, like rapid industrialization). This myth holds that
consumption feeds the economy and that it is a person's duty to keep on consuming. What beast is
this economy that needs such feeding? How does consuming-using up things-feed anything? Isn't it more sensible to feed
people and animals, not an "economy"? Isn't it more sensible to view "the economy" as a system of exchanges, not a living organism, as some
creature that can be hurt, stimulated, revived, and fed? Isn't it more sensible to see the economy as a system that ultimately depends on other
systems-natural systems and social systems? Why do people have to lose jobs and consume mindlessly "for the economy"?
The affirmative’s focus on producing more energy to fulfill our needs creates a
feedback loop –breaking away from this requires rejection of ‘green’
justifications for consumption.
John Naish, health journalist for The Times (UK), 08 [Enough: Breaking free from the world of more,
2008, p.4-10]//JH
These discoveries, along with advances in evolutionary psychology, show how we
have built a culture that drives us to switch
on all the wrong instincts - ones that respond to excess by seeking even more, that react to
convenience by encouraging us to work harder, that make us hurry more when our leisure time
increases, and that even make us eat more whenever we hurry. All of this creates a feedback loop
where our needless desires drive our culture's economy more, and our culture's economy in turn
drives our needless desires more. We've become like Imelda Marcos and her shoes: the best pair is always the next pair ...
dammit, it's the only pair worth having.
As Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University, says, 'We've
evolved to be maximising machines. There
isn't necessarily a stop mechanism in us that says, "Relax, you've got enough".' But just because our basic brains evolved in the
Pleistocene era, between 130,000 and 200,000 years ago, that doesn't condemn us to blundering around the 21st century like Flintstone
families. So far we've been able to evolve quite quickly to beat newly emerging problems, because our mental hardware can cleverly
reconfigure the bits it came in the box with. There
are circuits in our heads that can enable us to take the next
essential step, although modern society increasingly sidelines these little lifesavers. These circuits can
encourage us to savour, to appreciate and to grow. We need to revive them, to evolve an 'enough'
button in our culture and in our heads, to break the vicious spiral of more, more, more.
Otherwise we're stuck like Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel, perpetually stencilling an extra number on our amplifiers: 'You're on ten all the way up.
Where do you go from there? Eleven.' Hardly. Our new enoughist responses will tell us when we have obtained the optimum amount of any
one thing, to be glad of it, and to stop exhausting our precious, finite personal resources - time, attention and energy - by chasing evermore.
Sustainability is the key - and personal sustainability in particular. All but the most cotton-headed among us now
believe that the Earth's ecosystem is in danger. Trouble is, life is so padded with minor preoccupations that
it's hard to recognise the threat as monstrous enough to make us do anything more than make gestures at it. 'Yeah, it's scary.
Whatever.' Modern technology exacerbates this problem: I'll show later in the book how many of our more-ofeverything
conveniences work in unexpected ways to shortcircuit our ancient drive to improve the world.
Am I downhearted? No. There's hope in the steady flow of surveys reporting how modern life increasingly leaves us miserable, tetchy, fearful
and mad. Amid the global warming, we are seeing more personal warming - more stress and depression, more melting of our circuits. That's
dismal for individuals. But, hey, it's our one hopeful sign of potential cultural shift. It may push growing numbers of us to embrace enoughism,
to balance our personal ecologies in the pursuit of contentment, sanity and sustainability. As individuals, we can try to find balance by seeking
only the things that we truly desire, rather than chasing manufactured rainbows. The knock-ons for our planet would grow if we could shift
focus from ever-more to enoughness. I'm perched on my wobbly moral plinth here by dint of having spent 20 years trying to live this idea. At
first it was the result of personal quirk, of having grown up quite happily in straitened circumstances. My mum was a widow, a child of the
Second World War, and our approach to acquiring things carried a strong air of rationing: 'Is a new xxxx really necessary?' was the family
mantra. Throughout my upbringing we had the same three-piece suite, a relic from my late dad's bachelor days, though we refurbished it in the
pre-green spirit of make do and mend. (I've still got the sofa -though now it's apparently a '1950s design icon'.) Over the past decade, my sense
of having an inner ration-book has become indispensable as the external clamour for more, more, more has multiplied. I've had to put more
effort into deciding what is 'enough' for me, to discriminate between new things that might enhance life, and those that will ultimately- despite
their glister- detract from the good stuff already in it.
Ultimately I had to start becoming somewhat militant. That's why I no longer own a mobile phone. I did for a while. It seemed a good idea, but
then my work colleagues got hold of the number. The little convenience-enhancer turned into a conduit for constant demands. It's the
telecoms equivalent of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea - you set off to catch some tasty sprats, but instead you suddenly find yourself
on one end of the line with a massive fish at the other. It feels like a prize, but it drags your little boat way into the middle of the ocean. Still you
keep hanging on. And then it turns out that the huge fish is no use anyway. Not wishing to live like Hemingway's harried angler, I didn't replace
the mobile when, by accident, it got broken. We don't have a telly at home either. I do, however, manage to work at the sharp edge of
information as a national newspaper journalist and author. Saying 'enough' isn't about selfdenial: in our communications-saturated society, if
you staunch some of the torrent that jet-hoses us every day, you don't end up with less useful knowledge. The opposite happens (as I explain in
the first chapter). Anyway, our house receives a welter of info through broadband, DVDs and radios. How much more does one need? And
what's the price of more, in terms of time, space and inner life? We are now so rich with things that every time we get something extra, we
have to push something aside to make room, and the swaps are getting ever less rewarding.
Practising enoughness may also help make one's finances more sustainable. If you budget for enough, it will hopefully be easier to work to earn
just enough, to liberate life for the nourishing stuff beyond the narrow sphere of getting and spending. Thus the path of enough can lead,
paradoxically, to more. Smugly, enoughism gives me time to practise t'ai chi and meditate daily (let's not be afraid of cliches here). Likewise, the
missus and I can spend hours trudging through fields and drinking flasks of tea on top of drizzlemisted hills - activities that are clinically proven
to boost morale and strengthen relationships, as well as fending off the Grim Reaper. Simply being, rather than perpetually doing, also fosters
the creativity so often demanded by modern career-life. Minds need space to think. Hence the old Zen joke: 'Don't just do something. Sit there.'
But in this era of unheralded riches, we often feel convinced that we can't afford to spend valuable time balancing on one leg or sitting, eyes
shut, just existing. We gotta be out there, chasing.
Let's not pretend that the answers are all simple. We all like to think we are rational creatures, easily capable of balanced decisions. But human
actions tend to show the opposite. Studies of drivers in central London, for example, consistently find them complaining that they can't afford
the city's congestion charge. And they moan about the time they lose in traffic jams. They say they understand that they are polluting the air
and know they should be using less toxic transport. Then they declare that they intend to keep driving through central London for ever. This
doesn't even seem to be short-sighted selfinterest at work.
Likewise, we have great difficulty setting our levels of enoughness and keeping anywhere near them. Surveys perpetually find us lamenting that
we are overworked and lack free time. Other studies hear us complaining that our homes are full of clutter. Then we put even more hours in at
work to buy more stuff that we never seem to enjoy. Blame our ancient instincts for nagging us into believing that new possessions will boost
our chance of genetic immortality. Back in our neolithic villages, there were strong evolutionary reasons for this. But now our culture has
amplified that nagging into a continual harangue.
No one is immune: I'm writing much of this book at home on a flash, powerful laptop bought in a typical moment of weakness. It consumes so
much juice, emits so much heat and is such a gilt-edged invitation to thieves that the hefty great thing never leaves the house. I got suckered. I
have also written a big chunk of these chapters while on the move, using a cheap old battery-sipping lightweight that I bought second-hand
eight years ago. It does the job just as well.
Nevertheless, there are many enoughist strategies that we can all adopt to dodge and block much of the get-more, have-more, be-more
stimulation. First of all, we have to change how we respond to the barrage. I hope that this book will help to arm you for the task - by exposing
the many snares that our own Pleistocene-era minds unintentionally lay for us, and explaining how the modern world of consumption hijacks
our social brains so that we step right into these traps.
That might sound a little paranoid, but we
are girdled by multimillion-pound industries that use an ever-growing
array of overt and hidden persuaders to get us to want things, work for things and buy more of them.
We don't tend to complain, but if you were physically forced by powerful gangs to spend all your time
and energy in the pursuit of things you didn't need, didn't want and ultimately didn't enjoy, you'd feel
sorely misused.
Enoughism requires us to defuse the status obsession fostered by constant consumption. As a culture, we need to value different emblems of
cool - such as time, space and autonomy- rather than trinkets. There are promising signs, both negative and positive: on the negative side, the
world of more, more, more is getting uglier: rather than just 'you are what you eat', the fact that we can now satisfy all of our actual needs
means that 'we are what we want' and all that branding, bling and blubber is increasingly not pretty.
On the positive side, green is now considered hip (even if it often only involves having a recycling box, glutting on costly ethical goods or
spending thousands jetting off to ethical holidays). Moreover, practising enoughism offers plentiful opportunities for mischievous fun - just try
surrealist ways of cutting pointless options out of your life (chapter five), or even committing the ultimate twenty-first-century sin of switching
all your telecoms off for regular periods. Woo-hoo, can't catch me.
But declaring 'enough' also demands that you challenge your own internal propaganda. Yes, your brain feels
immortal; yes, it whispers that (in the poet Walt Whitman's words) you can contain multitudes; yes, your brain says that you can have it all and
do everything.
These egoistic inklings are all turned up loud and proud by consumer culture's
persistent promises of infinite self-realisation. But in fact no, your brain isn't immortal and you can't have it all. Those are
just convictions that your head evolved to persuade your body out of bed on damp mornings. We are human and limited, and we have to live
within our lives' realistic limits for them to be sustainable and satisfiable. We can hit personal bests in our time, but there will be many other
things that we won't ever see, be, own or do. Enoughism
requires us to accept that the carrot of infinite promise
will always dangle just beyond our noses. Embracing this fact is a path to contentment.
Reframing our own worldview to an ethic of the long term while combining
ecological and social values is a prerequisite to solving any environmental
problems.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p.17-18]//JH
In an ecological order, I will argue in the coming chapters, a society's material foundations are grounded in the biophysical; its daily practices
centered on self-directed, self-restraining work, not the purchasing of goods; and its language imbued with ecological content and long time
horizons. Overarching these elements is a norm against excess and an ethic for living within the society's means, biophysical and social. The
material side of this order I will call a "home economy," implying, among other things, that this is an economy grounded in place.
The first
step in constructing a home economy in an ecological order is to see the disorder in the current order
(part I). The second step is to erect scaffolding for the home economy organizing principles that are
inherently ecological, sensitive to excess, and structured for restraint; practices that connect
ecological and social values; and an ethic of the long term where thrift and prudence are paramount
(part II). The third step is to acquire tools to work from that scaffolding. It is to frame problems, the requisite first step
toward solving problems. Positive sacrifice, the opportunities of limits, and well-being through work
are key concepts. Well-chosen metaphors and a pluralism of worldviews lead to levers for hopeful
change. All of this is straightforward in many ways, yet difficult nonetheless. The difficulty, I must stress, lies not in the complexity of the
task, the vastness of the problems, or the uncertainty and risks of attempted solutions. Rather, the difficulty lies in the way
problems have been framed in the old normal, in the worldviews that have, for a century or more,
been fabulously successful. Successful, that is, in extracting and manufacturing and expanding. Successful in finding frontiers, in
displacing full costs in time and place. Successful in producing and consuming goods, where goods are good and more goods are presumed
better, all as if there are no serious bads. Successful in conflating those goods with the good life. A
new success for a new normal
is now in order. For this, new framing is needed, one that leads to a worldview that fits this world, the
world inherently constrained by limits of all sorts, from the biophysical to the psychological.
Constructing this world view is the strategic imperative that matches the biophysical and social
imperatives. It isn't easy, but as I hope the coming chapters will show, it is really quite straightforward. Finally, in the coming chapters the
reader will not acquire a recipe or a formula, and certainly no list of "easy things you can do to save the planet." Rather, if this book succeeds,
the reader will come away with a positive, realistic, grounded sense of the possible. That sense, and these concepts and tools, can be
from the individual to the collective, from doing good work to running a
business, from organizing a neighborhood to leading a movement, from lobbying to lawmaking. These
concepts and tools are designed for imagining, and then enacting, an ecological order. They are
designed to make normal an ethic of living well by living well within our means.
applied in the full range of citizen action,
The ever-increasing consumption of our economy is destroying the earth’s
ecosystems – the alternative is the only way to shift away from this exploitation
and pursue a new path of ecological sustainability.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p. 29-33]//JH
It is so easy to follow the same path, anticipating the next rise, seeking that elusive peak, listening to
familiar voices. The tried and true path becomes a false path, though, when higher is not better, when
the peak is a mirage, and when the voices mislead. It's the Economy, the One and Only Economy The
only way we are going to get innovations ... in energy-saving appliances, lights and building materials and in non-COz-emitting
power plants and fuels ... is by mobilizing free-market capitalism. The only thing as powerful as Mother
Nature is Father Greed .... The only way to stimulate the scale of sustained investment in research and development of non-C02
emitting power ... is if the developed countries, who can afford to do so, force their people to pay the full climate, economic and geopolitical
costs of using gasoline and dirty coal. ... The only way to stimulate more nuclear power innovation . . . would be federal loan guarantees that
Americans [must] understand that
green is not about cutting back. It's about creating a new cornucopia of abundance for the next
generation by inventing a whole new industry.' -Thomas L. Friedman, columnist Defenders of the familiar; builders who
stack yet more cards on top, ignoring their origins; boosters who see great promise ahead in high-tech
innovation and freewheeling markets, discounting who wins and who loses: these are people who do
not like to talk about a different path. For them, there is really only one path, or a string of paths, all in a line, all straight and
would lower the cost of capital for anyone willing to build a new nuclear power plant ....
narrow, all beautifully engineered and perfectly managed, and all endlessly climbing. Maybe the metaphor of a multilane freeway is more apt:
ever farther, ever faster, ever freer. But, we
doubters must ask, farther in which direction? More production,
more consumption, more material choice? And why is faster presumed better or necessary? Might a
faster, endlessly consuming life not be a better life? And free of what? Of responsibility to others and to future generations who wish to live
well on this planet? On this path, we are clearly making progress, but where are we going? As long as the proponents of infinite growth on a
finite planet keep the conversation on their terms, within their vision of endless abundance for all for all time, it continues-until the path drops
off a cliff or erodes to a muddy impassable gully. And 1 am convinced that on this path greenhouse gas loading continues, dispersion of
persistent toxic substances continues, and freshwater drawdown continues, not to mention job loss, family stress, and community decline. So
how do the defenders of the status quo keep everyone moving in lockstep up that single path? 1 see two major strands of that "one and only
path," each with a powerful set of traffic control measures. No doubt readers will come up with more, but these two-"the economy" and "the
only way"-should get us started, that is, started seeing clearly the direction of the current path. And they
should get us started
finding new paths: paths that rise and fall, meander, take the occasional detour and dead end, yet
depend not on endless commercial growth but on working together for the good life and working
together to sustain the resource base the good life depends on. This alternate path, off the ridge and
along a contour with dips and rises, is one that everyone, rich and poor, powerful and weak, can
chart. It does not require experts and esoteric knowledge and huge piles of money. It does not require
that we further unleash greed, force people to behave properly, or subsidize an energy source that
has permanent, unwanted, and unmanageable waste. It is a path that includes growth (the rises), but growth for high
purpose-for example, alleviating poverty. It includes downshifting, lowering consumption (the dips and falls) for those who
are materially bloated. It includes self-directed exploration and experimentation (the meanders and detours and dead ends) to find one's own
place-whether in the valley, on the hillside, or along the stream. The two strands that compel endless climbing are so well trodden in our
current political economy (I use this term to denote the entire institutional and cultural environment in which markets operate) that they seem
normal, the way it has always been, the way it will always be. Such seeming normalcy comes about in part because the traffic control measures
are mostly hidden-yet hidden, 1 hope to show, in plain sight. My aim is to turn on the search lamps and cast a bright light on these measures,
exposing them for what they are: false paths and false signs to the good life, to security, to democracy, to environmental protection and
ecological sustainability. So the first strand, in this chapter, takes us right into the heart of the beast-"The Economy." The second, chapter 4,
takes us into the murky water of beliefs and values and behavior change. Succeeding chapters lead us off the precipice and out of the swamp
onto terra firma, from which, with ecological
principles and positive sacrifice and determined work, we can
build new foundations, solid ones, grounded in place for the "Home Economy," the economy of an
ecological order. Keep On Consuming! I know we're consuming too much. We've got to cut back. But if we do, it'll
hurt the economy. So how do we consume less without hurting the economy? It is true that consumption drives the
current economy. Some 70 percent of this economy, economists say, is consumption. Take that away, and the economy we have
collapses. What's more, because an economy must grow, say economists, policy makers, businesspeople, labor leaders, educators, and nearly
everyone else in a leadership position in an advanced industrial society, consumption too must grow. So, yes, any
change in the
accustomed patterns of consumption will result in serious dislocations. This is real and worrisome. But notice a
couple of things. One, this position presumes that nothing we are doing now might hurt the economy. And two, the question-how do we
consume less without hurting the economy?-presumes that the economy itself is doing just fine, that when there are problems, such as a
recession, what's needed is a bit of stimulus here, some productivity gains there, and it'll keep on doing what it is so good at doing-growing,
providing jobs, generating a return on investments. Here
is the paradox: the economy depends on increasing
consumption, but ever-increasing consumption strains ecosystems, both resources (soil and water, for
instance) and waste sinks (the oceans and atmosphere). Before tackling this paradox head-on, let's
turn the above question of consuming less on its head. A system that grows endlessly crashes. Think of
cancer cells, debt-ridden mortgages, fisheries. It defies logic, not to mention a few well-known laws of physics (like thermodynam- ics), to
presume that with continuing growth in consumption hat is, continuing growth in the total throughput of material and energy through our
economy-the current economy will not crash. So this is the first point: unendingly
increasing consumption cannot continue
on a finite planet with finite ecosystem capacity, with a fixed amount of water, with slowly
regenerating soil, and so forth. No one has proven otherwise. In fact, when the question is turned upside down-from less
consumption hurting the economy to more consumption hurting ecosystems and the economy-the burden of proof shifts. Now defenders of
endless growth must somehow show that endless material growth is possible, that certain laws of physics can be disregarded. How do they do
that? Faith. Their faith is just that-faith. Based on little more than extrapolations from the past-historically speaking, a very recent past, just a
hundred years or so, a past with abundant, cheap, and readily controlled fossil fuels, especially oil. Or it is based on a belief that the economy
will "dematerialize," which is just a fancy way of saying that GDP will continue to increase, along with jobs and income and spending, but we
will not use more resources. It's a wonderful idea. And it's a wonder it hasn't happened. Maybe someday ... when the prices are right ... and
when new technologies come along to make it all so easy. Meanwhile, back in the real world, back where clean water and fertile soil and a
stable climate can no longer be assumed, throughput increases-hugely, beyond anything remotely sustainable.
We advocate the reframing of ecological problems in order to build a new
economy of self-production – the current consumerist economy is unsustainable
and justifies endless environmental exploitation.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p. 98-102]//JH
Assume the consumer economy has had its run, that it is deeply implicated in humanity's (primarily the North's) excess throughput of material
and energy, abundantly documented in one report after another. Assume that the
mindset of "the consumer" is
fundamentally demeaning, that the construction of the "sovereign consumer" is an all too convenient
excuse for powerful actors to evade their societal and environmental responsibilities (chapter 3). With just
these two assumptions, it is clearly time for a change, time to shift to a home economy. A useful starting
point would be a consumer economy's apparent polar opposite, a "producer economy." To begin to
imagine a "producer economy," try this thought experiment, an exercise in turning the tables (or maybe
in turning the tide from endless flow to ebb and flow).4 A consumer economy, we have seen, is inherently a mining economy-it's all
about using and using up. Everyone is, first and foremost, a consumer. Consumers decide what gets produced,
used, and thrown away. Consumption drives the economy. To reverse things, everyone is a producer in a producer
economy, in the sense of making, creating, and caring for. One does not "sell one's labor"; one selfproduces. Self production means that each individual or self-organized group or self-governed
community would decide what is produced. Like producers everywhere, human and nonhuman, they
would produce useful things and they would produce waste. Further- more, these very producers would decide what is
waste and how they, not others, will live with it. A fanciful idea? Perhaps. But consider that it was little more than a century ago in the United
States that much of the economy was so organized, led by artisans, skilled craftspeople, small shop owners, independent yeoman farmers and
tinkers, inventors of the very technologies that spurred industrialization. To be sure, businesspeople were committed to making products,
selling them, and earning a profit. But they were equally committed to the notion that political independence was inextricably intertwined with
economic independence and the integrity of one's immediate community. Democracy depended on a populace that could produce for itself,
not just at the national level but at the level of the individual, the household, and the immediate community. "Freedom could not flourish in a
nation of hirelings," wrote historian and social critic Christopher Lasch.5 Nor, one might add from a more recent vantage point, could a rich,
democratic type of freedom flourish in a nation of consumers. Back then, small proprietors in the United States, as well as in England and
France, resisted the label "working class," seeing themselves instead as producers, people who identified their enemy not as employers (they
were self-employed, after all) but as parasitic bankers, speculators, monopolists, and middlemen (chapter 9). Still fanciful? Now try this thought
experiment. Imagine that a century or so ago, at a time of extensive self-production, someone came along and proposed a consumer economy.
Only rather than selling the idea as the way to feed one's family or get rich or be modern (the most persuasive selling point of all), the booster
sold it for what it would actually become-a means of alienating work and enriching owners, of pursuing fleeting pleasures with objects soon to
become obsolete, of breaking up the family and community, of becoming dependent on mobile capital, of accumulating debt (for self and
nation), of mining resources, even the renewable ones, and filling waste sinks, even the regenerative ones. (Admittedly, this would be an odd
sort of booster as, by definition, boosters highlight the positive and shade the negative. But this is a thought experiment!) Would this society go
for it? Would it leave its rewarding, productive path for a consuming path? Hard to imagine. Instead, self-producers would take advantage of
technological advances whenever they advanced self-production, but not when they replaced self-production with wage work and shopping,
with being a "consumer"-a strange beast if there ever was one. Whether a producer economy could have happened or, back then, should have
happened is beside the point. Now
a consumer economy reigns supreme, and it does not work-not for the socalled consumer, not for workers, not for citizens, and not for the planet. It is self-destructive. A
producer economy, by contrast, could be self-productive. Its measure would be not the output of
consumables (so-called goods even when they include oil spill cleanups and hospital visits) but its near opposite-the extent
to which consumables are unnecessary. Just as insulation in attics makes a power plant outside town unnecessary,
selfproducing makes much consuming unnecessary. To illustrate, imagine a neighborhood with carpenters, plumbers,
landscapers, doctors, and fruit and vegetable growers. With a bit of organization, they could provision themselves with much of their basic
needs. In so doing, their overall consumption, their draw on natural resources, and their disposing of wastes would be far lower than when such
services are distanced (their production and end use separated by geography or middlemen or cultural divides or power differences) and
contracted out.6 In fact, a neighbor of mine has done just this. He and some friends created a "time bank." Members request services and offer
their own. Each hour of service rendered is credited at the bank and can be drawn on for services needed. No money exchanged (beyond
necessary purchases), and very little transport-it's all in the neighborhood. As the time bank suggests,
a producer economy is
inherently democratic and egalitarian. It minimizes money exchange and maximizes interpersonal
exchange. A core organizing principle is self-ownership and community ownership. That is, patterns of
ownership tend to match patterns of production. The local potter has her own wheel, the potters' guild collectively owns the kiln, and the city
operates a public arts and crafts market. In addition to being democratic, a producer economy is more likely to achieve what market
enthusiasts claim: namely, high levels of satisfaction. But that satisfaction would come from good work, not good shopping. Think about the
work of all those associated with the elm tree in chapter 6. And, as we will see in chapter 9, consider the fact that there is a wealth of literature,
from the social scientific to the literary, that supports the notion that meaning and hope come from engagement, productive engagement, not
from buying, not from taking orders and seeking convenience, comfort, and entertainment. A
producer economy is a working
economy. Its goal is good work, not output, not GDP, and certainly not a GDP that must increase every
year, forever, by mining everything from oil and soil to families and communities. A producer
economy makes little sense when the purpose is rapid frontier exploitation and when mining is
unproblematic. But it makes great sense when the purpose is to maintain fundamental life-support
systems, when preparation and prevention and precaution are the bywords, when, in short, prudence
and thrift are highly valued. This would be the case when a society's risks proliferate beyond control,
when cheap fossil fuels no longer propel a global whirlwind of commercialization, when the only thing
holding up the financial system is "confidence": in short, when the economy is a house of cards, not a
home economy.
Now is the time to reverse trends of ecological exploitation and live within
constraints – constructing a new worldview of sustainability is necessary to
preserve our environment.
Princen 10—Thomas Princen School of Natural Resources and Environment @ Michigan [Treading
Softly p. 172-176]//JH
No One Right View "The environment" has never been just another issue area represented by another interest group. "The
environment" is the very material substrate on which all else rests, on which all human constructions
are built. It is the grand biophysical system that contains and supports and sets limits on lesser
subsystems (e.g., the economy). It is that thin skin of life that constantly grows and decays, constantly
adapts to the interactions of organisms and their nonliving world. It is, on this spaceship called Planet
Earth, the life-support system we all depend on. It is at once resilient and fragile. To shore up this base, to
keep human activity within bounds, to adapt fast enough but not too fast, to maintain the life-support apparatus, no single view of the
environment can be "the right view," the one and only way, the received wisdom that all others must bow to, the enlightenment that all others
must acquire, the religion to which all must convert. With current knowledge of the current state of flux (political, economic, cultura!), no one
can say a priori what that new set of worldviews, the "sustainability" worldviews, would be. Rather, all we can do, all
people have ever
done when confronted with crisis and the need for fundamental change, is move in a new direction,
chart a new course, clear a new path, and do so by drawing on what we already have, what we
already know, including the perceptions, beliefs and values-that is, the worldviews-we already have.
Yes, new ones are likely to emerge, but we're not there yet. So existing world views must illuminate the new path at
the same time the very character of the problem-the need to reverse the trends in environmental
degradation and live within immutable ecological, social, and cognitive constraints-points the way. To
establish that path is to plot coordinates given not by the stars, not by machines that spin
continuously and can always be repaired, not by laboratories that can confidently seal off a messy
outer world, and certainly not by a vision of endless growth, benign metastasizing of one species'
metabolism inside that larger body called the biosphere. Rather, it is to take its coordinates from
those processes that define the very issue at hand-namely, thermodynamics, solar flux, nutrient
cycling, ecosystem functioning, evolutionary adaptation, reproduction, collective action, cognition-all
in the human context of practice, of good work, of restraint. It is a difficult course, a path full of unknowns, but in some
sense a rather simple one, too: humans are the quintessential adaptive creature. We have adapted to constraints and
dramatic change before, some physical, some social, but each novel in its time. There is every reason to believe that
we can do it again. Yes, global ecological constraint is novel, but living on one plot of land, drawing
from one limited-flow river, harvesting from one forest and one fishery has been done before,
repeatedly, all over the world, across cultures and across time. And, arguably, a whole lot of it has been done over
very long periods of time in other words, sustainably. How humans have done this before depended greatly on how they perceived our
environment (Is it "out there" or "in here"? Are humans a part of the environment or apart from it?), how they believed it works (Are the
natural resources potentially renewing? Can other users be excluded?), and how they valued it (Is it for immediate monetary gain or for
longterm sustenance?). In short, whether we mine or sustain depends in large part on our view of the environment. To presume otherwise, to
presume that there is a correct view of the environment, is to presume that some people have that view and all others do not and thus that the
charge of the knowing is to enlighten the unknowing, to convert them by education or fear or bribe ("incentive"). The approach taken here is
far less proselytizing, far less arrogant and presumptuous. It assumes that the raw materials the perceptions, beliefs, and values-already exist,
that they can be found in some of the unlikeliest places (e.g., finance), that a good many people already have the requisite perceptions, beliefs,
and values, even if they do not fit the nature-loving, ecocentric, postmodern profile. Think of the trekkers in chapter 2, exploring and listening,
or the good work of other characters in previous chapters. In fact, if these four worldviews are close to being comprehensive-that is, if together
they encompass a large proportion of a contemporary industrialized society they constitute prima facie evidence for the claim that the raw
materials for an ecological order already exist; little has to be created de novo, few people have to be converted, little by way of rewards and
punishments must be concocted. And maybe most important of all, the
adaptive approach taken here assumes that the
requisite change, the willingness to sustainabilize, is most likely to succeed not when people are
preached to, made fearful, bribed, and coerced, but when they themselves can experiment, create,
and solve their own immediate problems. It is most likely when people can connect their local
problem solving to the larger global problem solving. What's more, this approach is inherently democratic;
it requires widespread networks of participation and meaningful decision making; it eschews elite,
top-down, command-and control, incentive-driven approaches. It demands that leaders not command
but support. The "adaptive person" approach deriving from multiple worldviews is not just respectful of different views, not just more
participatory and democratic; it also conforms with what we know about human behavior, individual and collective, that makes for healthy
individuals and communities. That is, humans are at their best when 1. they are faced with a genuine challenge; 2. they are creative and
productive; 3. they find meaning in their own problem solving and in acts larger than themselves; 4. they help themselves and help others; 5.
they self-organize and self-govern; 6. they feel they are getting a fair shot at the benefits of their work. We are the quintessential adaptive
creature, and adaptive in two senses. One is primarily physical, involving features such as our brain and eyes, our upright gait, our ability to
speak. We all have these features, and they pass from generation to generation. The other is the capacity to adapt to new and changing
environments during one's lifetime. Our brain is not just an adaptation acquired during the hunter-gatherer stage to function in that ancestral
environment. It is also an adapting organ, one that constantly adjusts to its environment-the body, immediate others, and the larger world,
biophysical and social. The mind is both adapted and adapting.6So the capacity to construct a worldview is an adaptation that probably goes
back to the Pleistocene, those 2 million years that largely shaped us into the organism we are today. But a given world view for a given
individual is the product of an adapting mind: a mind that from birth is constantly building its neural pathways to cope with its environment; an
environment that, from the individual's perspective, is constantly changing, even in a stable society. That adapting mind is looking for ways of
perceiving, of understanding, of separating the important from the less important. In short, it is constantly constructing a worldview, and doing
so to meet its needs, to acquire resources, to protect itself, to reproduce, to associate with others, to feel competent and useful, to do good
work, to have meaning. In sum, world views are adaptations-adaptive and adapting. They enable us to be a special kind of
creature. In a sense, we like adapting (assuming the uncertainties and risks are not overwhelming); it is what we do. We can hardly help but be
creative, help ourselves and help others, and assemble teams, all to tackle problems and solve them. So now, in the twenty-first century, "the
world" is changing: a predictable climate is becoming erratic; the cornucopia of goods can no longer
be presumed "good," not for everyone, not for the long term; economies dependent on cheap fuels,
cheap labor, and clever cost displacement must rebuild fundamentally; the politics of exploitation and
domination and dumping necessarily must give way to one of self-determination, risk minimization,
and prudence. Now is the time to embrace adaptation, not ever more technological fixes and political
gimmicks, let alone more production and consumption, however green. Now is the time for
adaptation to a worldview consonant with the world that we have created and that creates us, a
world at once threatening and full of new opportunities and new challenges, precisely what can bring
out the best in humans.
Aff Answers
Pragmatism
Criticism and focus on individual agency alone can’t solve – engaging with
governmental and market based producers and with individual citizen
consumers is the only way to create capacity for change.
Lucie Middlemiss Sustainability Research Inst. School of Earth & Environment @ University of Leeds
’10 [“Reframing Individual Responsibility for Sustainable Consumption: Lessons from Environmental
Justice and Ecological Citizenship” Environmental Values 19 p. 152-154]//JH
3.1. Sustainable consumption In the field of sustainable consumption, writers take a range of perspectives on individual responsibility which
hinge on different conceptions of the roles of agency and structure. Seyfang and Paavola categorise research on sustainable consumption into
three areas: two (‘cognitive’ and ‘social-marketing’) focus on a strategy of providing information to change individual practice (agencyoriented), while a third (‘systems of provision’) appreciates the possibility of lock-in for individuals who may not have the ability to act within
agency-oriented
perspectives are traditionally taken in economics and social psychology, where sustainable
consumption is explained theoretically in terms of the thoughts and actions of the individual, and
structure-oriented perspectives in sociology, where more importance is placed on social determinants
of practice (Spaargaren, 2000). These underlying perspectives also have an impact on policy on sustainable
consumption. The terms ‘individualist’ and ‘situated’ will be used in the rest of this article to distinguish these two perspectives on
the structures they inhabit (Seyfang and Paavola, 2008). Spaargaren makes a similar distinction, noting that
sustainable consumption.
The individualist perspective on sustainable consumption research and policy tends to focus on ‘the
consumer as the principal lever of change’ (Sanne, 2002). Both Seyfang and Hobson note a tendency in mainstream UK policy
to paint the individual as the agent of change in sustainable consumption (Seyfang, 2004; Hobson, 2006). In a detailed critique of this position,
Maniates sees such ‘individualisation’ as part of a political movement in the 1980s to downsize government and shift the locus of responsibility
such a strategy frames individual laziness and
ignorance as the cause of environmental problems and marginalises more substantive solutions. Hobson
to the individual consumer (Maniates, 2002). Maniates believes that
cites the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR, 1998) in the UK to similar effect:
Ultimately the burden on the UK’s environment is attributable to the choices and the actions of the consumers. To a great extent producers
are, quite naturally, responding to meet the preferences of the consumers. (DETR cited in Hobson, 2006: 285)
As Hobson explains, DETR clearly
attributes responsibility for environmental problems to the individual
(consumer) here, and detracts blame from the producer. Witness the use of language: the ‘burden’ on the environment is
due to failures by the consumer and the logical producer responds ‘quite naturally’ to their preferences. The implication is that the
producer is fulfilling their responsibility (in following preferences) while the consumer fails in theirs (in taking the
wrong choices). Such individualisation by government and other stakeholders may have influenced the
respondents in my empirical work to attribute responsibility to themselves.
An emphasis on individual responsibility is not inevitable, and exploring both the limits of individual
responsibilities, and the interactions between individual and societal responsibilities, can offer useful
insights. The literature on sustainable consumption that takes structural influences on individuals into
consideration is helpful here, and is beginning to include contributions from several disciplines , although
sociology has the most extensive analysis of the role of structure (see for instance Burgess et al., 2003; Spaargaren, 2003; Southerton et al.,
2004).
Authors stress the importance of social context in giving meaning to sustainable consumption
lifestyles, and in allowing genuine choice for individuals who want to live more sustainably (Burgess et al.,
2003; Spaargaren, 2003). In theoretical work in this area Spaargaren applies practice theory to sustainable
consumption, positing a cyclical relationship between individual agency and the structures of society.
Spaargaren analyses acts of consumption in particular ‘domains’ of social life in terms of:
the deliberate achievements of knowledgeable and capable agents who make use of the possibilities offered to them in the context of specific
systems of provision (2003: 688, emphasis in original)
In other words individuals
act because they are capable of acting, because they know how to act and
because they are taking an opportunity to act that is offered to them by their context. The recognition
of the importance of structure in forming sustainable practices suggests a different approach to
responsibility in sustainable consumption. If empowering structures are not available, perhaps the
responsibility of the individual is diminished in comparison to the responsibilities of structural agents.
Spaargaren and Martens use the concept of capacity to characterise the structures that influence agency.
Capacities for change can so far be said to result from the concerted actions of (governmental and
market-based) providers and innovative groups of citizen-consumers. (2005: 230–31)
Such an understanding of capacity could also be extended to suggest that individuals can take more responsibility in contexts in which provision
is made for environmentally conscious living. I would argue, indeed, that from a situated sustainable consumption perspective the responsibility
of the individual depends on the capacity of that individual, afforded by a specific context, to take on sustainable practices.
Perm
Engaging with the state is net beneficial – criticism alone can’t solve, working to
change current structures from within is the only effective way of creating real
change.
Robyn Eckersley Politcs @ Melbourne ‘4 [The Green State p. 89-93]//JH
Green poststructuralists have likewise sought to deconstruct the disciplinary effects of biopower and green governmentality, while green critics
of technocracy have lamented the cult of the expert the so-called the scientization of politics, and the concomitant disenfranchisement of the
lay public and vernacular knowledge in affairs of state administration." The bureaucratic rationality of the administrative state is inn as too
rigid, hierarchical, and limited to deal with the variability, nonreducability, and complexity of ecological problems." Bureaucratic rationality
responds to complex problems by breaking them down, compartmentalizing them, and assigning them to different agencies that respond to a
hierarchical chain of command. This often leads to the routine displacement of prob- lems acn bureaucratic system boundaries,' Once we add
to these developments the more recent revolution in public sector management, we have good reasons to concur with Paul Hint that the
traditional liberal architecture has increasingly "become a gross misdescription of the structure of modern societies?" The tenuous link
between popular political participation and control and technocratic state administration has also been a major theme in the work of Ulrich
Beck. Indeed, Beck (like Martin Janickel argues that politicians and state functionaries act in ways that seek to mask problems rather than solve
them. Ecological problems pens because they are generated by the same economic, scientific, and political institutions that are called upon to
solve them. While the state cannot but acknowl- edge the ecological crisis, it nonetheless continues to function as qir were not present by
denying, downplaying, and naturalizing ecological prob- lems and declining to connect such problems with the basic structure and dynanücs of
rccmomic and bureaucratic rationality. According to Beck, this organized irresponsibility can sometimes take on a Kafkaesque form. The state
seeks to manufacture security by providing social insurance systems-health services, unemployment benefits, pensions, and workers
compensation-but it can provide no protection against major hazards that can pierce the thin veneer of normality and expose the inadequacies
of the welfare stare As Beck puts it 'What good is a legal system which prosecutes technically manageable small risks, but legalises large scak
hazards on the strength of its authority, foisting them on everyone, including even those multitudes who still resist them?' It might be tempting
to conclude from this general critique that states are part of the problem rather than the solution to ecological degradation. With its roots in
the peace and antinuclear movements, the green movement has long been critical of the coercive modality of state power-including the statemilitary-industrial complex-and might therefore be understandably skeptical toward the very possibility of reforming or transforming states
into mare democratic and ecologically responsive structures of government The notion that the state might come to represent an ecological
savior and trustee appears both fanciful and dangerous rather than empowering. Yet such an
anti-statist posture cannot
withstand critical scrutiny from a critical ecological perspective. The problem seems to be that while
states have been associated with violence, insecurity, bureaucratic domination, injustice, and
ecological degradation, there is no reason to assume that any alternatives we might imagine or
develop will necessarily be free of, or less burdened by, such problems. As Medley Bull warns, violence,
insecurity, injustice, and ecological degradation pre-date the state system, and we cannot rule out the
possibility that they are likely to survive the demise of the state system, regardless of what new
political structures may arise." Now it could be plausibly argued that these problems might be Lessened under a
more democratic and possibly decentralized global political architecture (as hioregionalists and other green
decentralists have argued). However, there is no basis upon which to assume that they will be lessened any more than under a more deeply
democratized state system. Given
the seriousness and urgency of many ecological problems (e.g., global warming),
building on the state governance structures that already exist seems to be a more fruitful path to rake
than any attempt to move beyond or around states in the quest for environmental sustainability.2t'
Moreover, as a matter of principle, it can be argued that environmental benefits are public goods that ought best be
managed by democratically organized public power, and not by private power." Such an approach is
consistent with critical theory's concern to work creatively with current historical practices and
associated understandings rather than fashion utopias that have no purchase on such practices and
understandings. In short, there is more mileage to be gained by enlisting and creatively developing the
existing norms,, rules, and practices of state governance in ways that make start power more
democratically and ecologically accountable than designing a new architecture of global governance
de novo (a daunting and despairing proposition). Skeptics should take heart from the fact that the organized
coercive power of democratic states is not a totally untamed power, insofar as such power must be
exercised according to the rule of law and principles of democratic oversight. This is not to deny that state
power can sometimes he seriously abused (e.g., by the police or national intelligence agencies). Rather, it is merely to argue that such powers
are not un- limited and beyond democratic control and redress. The
focus of criti- cal ecological attention should therefore
be on how effective this control and redress has been, and how it might be strengthened.
The same
argument may be extended to the bureaucratic arm of the state. In liberal democratic stares, with the gradual enlargement, spe- cialization,
and depersonalization of state administrative power have also come legal norms and procedures that limit such power according to the
principle of democratic accountability. As (,ianfranco Poggi has observed,
at the same time as the political power of the
state has become more extensive in terms of its subject matter and reach, so too have claims for
public participation in the exercise of this power widened? This is also to acknowledge the considerable scope for
further, more deep-seated democratic oversight. Indeed, it is possible to point to a raft of new ecological discursive designs that have already
emerged as partial antidotes to the technocratic dimensions of the administrative state, such as community right-to-know legislation,
CornmtlnLtV environmental monitoring and reporting, third-party litigation rights, environmental and technology impact assessment, statutory
policy advisory committees, citizens' juries, consensus conference.,-, and public environmental inquiries. Each of these initiatives
may be
understood as attempts to con- front both public and private power with its consequences, to widen
the range of voices and perspectives in stare administration, to expose or prevent problem
displacement, and/or to ensure that the sites economic, social, and political power that create and/or
are responsible for ecological risks are made answerable to all those who may suffer the
consequences This is precisely where an ongoing green critical locus on the state can remain
productive.
Integration of different theories about causes and consequences of
environmental behavior is the only way to effectively solve – criticism alone
can’t solve anything.
Simone Pulver Envt’l Studies @ UCSB ‘7 [“Making Sense of Corporate Environmentalism” Organization
& Environment 20 p. 45-46]//JH
Although the focus of this analysis is on explaining firm-level variation in environmental behavior, it also makes a contribution to system-level
debates over the economy-environment interface. I present this analysis as a contribution to the debate in environmental sociology between
the treadmill of production and ecological modernization perspectives over the possibility of greening capitalism (Foster & York, 2004; Mol &
neither
the treadmill of production nor ecological modernization seeks to explain variation in firm
environmental behavior. Yet I contend that the understanding of variation and its consequences is a
necessary and fundamental step toward the eventual understanding of the broader system
tendencies predicted by both theories.
Buttel, 2002; Mol & Spaargaren, 2000; Schnaiberg, Pellow, & Weinberg, 2002; York, Rosa, & Dietz, 2003). As system-level theories,
I call my approach to analyzing the causes and consequences of variation in firm environmental behavior an environmental contestation
An environmental contestation
approach emphasizes the importance of shared understandings of profitable corporate action in the
face of an environmental challenge to both shaping firm environmental strategy and to the
consequences of battles between firms over divergent environmental approaches. An environmental
contestation approach also aims to integrate theories about the causes and consequences of variation
in firm environmental behavior, which are generally considered independently, and to explore the
connections between firm, field, and system-level dynamics.
approach to highlight the contested dynamics of the economy-environment interface.