The devil is in the details

Today, I was again reminded of why I mostly teach public administration and other things that I am not so emotionally invested in. Still, despite me going off on a rant or two, I think our panel on theorizing human/nature relations went really well with a lot of food for future thought.

Afterwards, I walked to a nearby café together with the discussant Andy Scerri and a friend from Bristol who had been in the audience. It is funny how unaccustomed I am to people actually agreeing with me (normally, that only happens once a year at the Breakthrough Dialogue). Anyhow, what I think sets green political theory apart from most other fields of study is its peculiar mix of intellectual history and hard science about the physical world. One minute you are taking about Machiavelli and the other about how much sand you need to make concrete or natural carbon sequestration rates. As often in these kinds of discussions, the devil is in the details, and it becomes clear to me how much that ultimately comes down to things that are either unknowable (like the future evolution of science) or very hard to estimate (like the minimum EROI needed to power a cosmopolitan society).