Building bridges

I wilfully admit that most of my recent articles have been advocacy pieces in one way or another, all unified by a desire to “accelerate the transition to a future where all the world’s inhabitants can enjoy secure, free, prosperous, and fulfilling lives on an ecologically vibrant planet” (as the Breakthrough Institute so eloquently puts it in its vision statement). Important as this agenda clearly is, I have felt a growing need to offer a deeper and more reflective account of what my work means for green political theory. Published in Environmental Politics, with Jonathan Symons as lead author, our new article, “Green Political Theory in a Climate-Changed World: Between Innovation and Restraint” is an attempt to do just that and, as such, also an attempt to build bridges by eschewing some of our usual political activism.

Yet, reading the article again, I feel that it projects a tragic vision of the future with which I am not entirely comfortable. At the same time, there is no point in denying that the hour is late, that great values are being lost, and that the political impasse preventing effective action on climate change is likely to persist for many decades. One of our key conclusions is that debates over the desirability of economic growth or the role of breakthrough technologies in mitigation policy are unlikely ever to be resolved through rational analysis, as participants hold diametrically opposed “logics of practice” (or habitus). If that is indeed true, then much of what I have done over the last ten years – namely, trying to persuade environmentalists of the need for global welfare capitalism – may have been a lost cause (as some recent debates on Facebook indeed suggest).

A more optimistic interpretation, however, would be that people in the “middle” may still be influenced by good arguments and come to recognize more fully the severe social, economic, and political costs that any “descent” from modernity would impose. Whether that is sufficient to make them commit to an opposing “ascent” strategy – by which technological change, social investment, and political integration are allowed to set in motion virtuous circles of global peace and prosperity – remains more doubtful. So far, the evidence does not suggest that it is. Instead, political ambivalence, private hedonism, or even outright racism appear to be more plausible reactions.