Consilience » Blog Archive » Sustainability Creates New Conflicts

Sustainability Creates New Conflicts

By Jonathan Pfeiffer (UCSB graduate student in Global and International Studies)

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the rise of human rights in the European imagination. By any account, human rights were a good idea. But as anyone who was around to witness the French Revolution would be able to attest, actually implementing human rights is a messy and potentially bloody process. Today, the idea of human rights has become mundane, but their implementation is no easier.

As the idea of sustainable development becomes increasingly ordinary, the question of what specific actions ought to be taken becomes more pressing. What are the appropriate policies and habits for a bright green future? Fighting and winning media and intellectual contests is one thing; developing a set of strong plans for actual progress is another.

Today’s progressives face different issues from those confronted by their counterparts in 1789. But one key certainty remains: All social struggles, no matter how worthwhile, unite diverse groups of people with competing aspirations. The line between right and wrong can become harder and harder to define. Even people with the most high-minded intentions can have sharply different goals. The philosophers of the French Enlightenment did not sweep the world in a single, unified stroke. Why do today’s champions of sustainability often expect something altogether different from their hoped-for revolution?

The climate policy arena happens to be the place where disunity is most obvious at the moment. As Andrew Revkin noted earlier this year in The New York Times, a debate has recently erupted over the question of whether or not our technologies are advanced enough to start cutting carbon emissions now. Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs believes that putting a tax on carbon will cause economic stress around the world in the absence of radically cutting-edge low-carbon technologies. Joseph Romm, a former technology development chief at the U.S. Department of Energy, believes today’s tools are good enough to get started right away. He accuses Sachs of vastly overestimating the power of technical breakthroughs.

Their debate, though it appears to be purely technical, is driven by profoundly political considerations. There is much more at stake than the question of which assortment of machines and gadgets can restrain carbon emissions. Their disagreement is a skirmish in a larger clash between competing visions for the future of a biosphere that is ever more anthropogenically controlled. Sachs and Romm are not fighting over natural resources, but they are competing for intellectual space at a crucial moment in the history of human confrontations with technology.

Other political conflicts could have more horrifying consequences. The futurist Jamais Cascio explained, in a Foreign Policy essay earlier this year (and in a subsequent interview), how climatology and climate policy could lead to the use of the planet itself as a weapon. Along with the need to control the climate may come the possibility of using the climate system itself as an instrument to advance strategic interests of states. Cascio envisions a government initiating a geoengineering project whose outcome could conveniently happen to harm the people of a foe nation.

We are now experiencing a time when a lot of people — scientists, policymakers, designers, democratic citizens — will increasingly weigh in on the future of human society and terrestrial life. It will seem like everyone has an opinion on the role of this or that technology in green development and security. It is crucial to understand that not all people who believe they support sustainable development will always, if ever, have the same outcomes in mind. And if nations are capable of believing that deities are on their side, then they are certainly capable of believing that they are on the correct side of sustainable development.

In a certain sense, none of this is new. The risks and surprises of trying to reconcile competing ambitions and expectations are precisely synonymous with what we call politics. Regardless of whether we read about it in political history, in the news, or in policy reports, we are continuing to witness diverse people attempting to share natural, social, economic, and cultural resources on a single planet. Figuring out how to direct those resources toward a dizzying variety of human demands is a persistent and urgent challenge. Expecting everyone to adopt an identical attitude toward sustainable development is not the answer.

Let us demand a revolution. Even better, let us demand a multiplicity of revolutions to respond to a multiplicity of needs.

Filed in Editorial Column, Photo Essays

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Sustainability Creates New Conflicts”

Multivoiced » Blog Archive » My first sustainability op-ed Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
[...] new friends over at Columbia have just published my op-ed on sustainable development for Consilience. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the rise [...]
For body and planet Says:
October 20th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
[...] further. This entry was written by Jonathan Pfeiffer, posted on 12 July 02008 at 19:03 -0600, filed under [...]

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Sustainability Creates New Conflicts

2 Responses to “Sustainability Creates New Conflicts”

Leave a Reply

Features Column

News

Issue One

Viagra Suppliers In The Uk

generic viagra levitra and cialis pills!

snorting viagra health

Viagra Gel

Side Effects From Viagra

viagra anxiety

Viagra Delayed Reaction

Viagra Perscription Online

cheap gerneric viagra,

cheap gerneric viagra,

snorting viagra health