Читать книгу Environmental Political Theory - Steve Vanderheiden - Страница 13

“In the beginning all the world was America,” John Locke wrote in his seminal 1689 Second Treatise of Government. Locke, who owned thousands of acres of undeveloped land in the Carolinas through his patronage with the first Earl of Shaftesbury, developed perhaps the most influential modern political text with this image of an abundant and largely uninhabited continent in mind. Nature was, for Locke, inert matter or raw materials awaiting human exploitation and transformation. Unless and until humans appropriate land as private property by fencing it off from the commons and laboring upon it – perhaps the quintessential expression of human nature in Lockean liberalism – nature is devoid of value and humans are without purpose or direction. Upon the foundation of this theory of nature, Locke’s canonical text constructs much of the edifice of Western liberalism, profoundly influencing the design and self-image of liberal democracies in Europe, North America, and beyond.

As will be explored further in our examination of Lockean ideals of freedom, equality, and progress, many of our received ideas about politics originated in a text that denied the relevance to politics or society of ecological scarcity, and which consequently viewed nature and its life-support systems as of little value to humans. A key premise for Locke – and, by extension, for many other seminal texts in Western political thought, and consequently in the political cultures of Western liberal democracies – held that finite natural resources were in fact perfectly abundant and so could not be depleted by human activities. Humans as a result need not care for them or design institutions to protect them. Such a premise might have seemed plausible to many at the time insofar as relocation to European colonies like those in America was a feasible option, as much of the English land that Locke describes in his treatise had already been privately appropriated by then, and only colonization of the New World would dispel this fiction of cornucopian abundance on both sides of the Atlantic. It can no longer be seen as plausible.

Indeed, ecological scarcity is the sort of idea that is disruptive of established views about the relationships between humans and their territorial environments, as well as their relationships with each other, and is transformational of their ideas in requiring existing social and political concepts and ideals to accommodate the facts of ecological limits. As historical ideas such as popular sovereignty, the nation-state, and colonial oppression had disruptive and transformational impacts on law, politics, and society, sustainability imperatives have challenged and will continue to challenge our social and political institutions and the ideas and ideals in which they are embedded. They disrupt previously settled conflicts, challenge worldviews that cannot account for their rise or force, and demand to be accommodated within the penumbra of existing social ideals and organizing principles. To the extent that existing ideas, ideals, and institutions cannot do so, the new ideas require the old ones to be transformed, often against the resistance of those invested in the older ideological order.

Popular sovereignty, for example, claimed that state power derives from the consent of the governed, challenging the patriarchal authority of kings who had previously been regarded as ruling by divine right, in hereditary succession. Once the idea gained traction, older accounts of political authority could not accommodate its demand for popular consent, which required attention to the many, and ultimately to their participation. Associated ideas and institutions had to adapt or be displaced. Some, like the British monarchy, adapted to its challenge and managed to persist, albeit through significant transformation. Others, like the monarchy in France, could not adapt and ended. The idea of the nation-state forged new identities, redrew old borders, and required entirely new sets of institutions. With the idea of colonial oppression, institutions and practices organized around the “white man’s burden” view of benign imperialism were challenged (a challenge that is still resisted), ushering in a period of decolonization and shifting the patterns and practices of economic globalization.

Ecological scarcity has, over the past half-century, begun to exhibit this disruptive and transformational potential. As we shall explore further, many of our norms, ideals, and institutions depend upon maintaining the conditions of merely moderate scarcity in which they were established (indeed, this condition is among what David Hume called the “circumstances of justice” that allow for relationships of justice to order politics and society). Conflict would not arise without some scarcity, obviating the need for governments to resolve such conflicts and otherwise allocate social resources, but many of the norms, ideals, and institutions that have developed over time to more peacefully and fairly resolve conflicts and allocate resources (including those ideals to be examined in later chapters of this book) come under strain and may collapse with intensifying scarcity. As episodes of more severe scarcity of food, water, or other critical goods around the world have demonstrated, characteristics of a well-ordered society – such as freedom of movement, due process, democratic governance, and the rule of law – can erode and disappear under such conditions.

We must, of course, be attentive to maintaining those necessary conditions of merely moderate scarcity for manifold reasons, among which is the ongoing viability of our most cherished and considered ideals. To the extent that our existing ideals fail to accommodate sustainability imperatives (or, worse, actively contribute toward exacerbating scarcity), they may contribute to their own erosion and eventual irrelevance. Insofar as a society’s ideal of freedom is construed as allowing for unlimited exploitation of finite resources or the prerogative to undermine the planet’s life-support systems, for example, the idea of ecological limits requires that the ideal either evolve to accommodate the facts of scarcity or risk undermining the material conditions of its continued possibility. Likewise with its prevailing view of the democratic ideal: if it (as some critics allege) cannot accommodate sustainability imperatives or allow for their successful pursuit, then democratic governments and societies will be guided by an ideal that risks contributing to its own undoing.

The overarching thesis of this book holds that the eight social and political ideals to be examined in this book now exist in some tension with the idea of ecological limits and its associated sustainability imperatives, but that it is at least conceptually possible for each of these ideals to accommodate that idea and those imperatives. Put another way, the environmental crisis is, among other things, a crisis of ideas and ideals, and the challenge of sustainable transition includes the sustainable transformation of those ideals. In this time of increasing scarcity of ecological goods and services, a window of opportunity for transformed conceptions of freedom, equality, democracy, and sovereignty remains open, but at some point it will close. Whether we, as members of societies whose attitudes and institutions are founded upon or informed by ideals that cannot accommodate to ecological scarcity, will recognize this in time remains to be seen. With recognition should come a sense of urgency, along with the opening-up of previously settled convictions and conventions that accompanies the disruptive force of an idea such as ecological limits.

Some of this disruption is already evident, with the urgency implied in the contemporary discourse of a climate “crisis” or “emergency” observed above. But many have not yet noticed it, and the entrenched resistance to its disruptive force must not be underestimated. Nor must we assume that successful disruption necessarily leads to successful transformation; ideals such as freedom or democracy could well be abandoned if viewed as incompatible with sustainability imperatives, or they could be replaced with different but equally dysfunctional alternative conceptions. Transformation of these ideals, if it occurs, may need to happen within the next generation, so many alive now may be witnesses to either the successful sustainable transition of our social and political ideals (and with this, of our societies and politics) or the impacts of a failed transition. They may, in those ways that we either reinforce or challenge prevailing ideals in our everyday lives or through concerted political efforts – and with or without realizing that they are doing so – become participants in this process. Developing an appreciation for this fact among students of environmental political theory is therefore among the primary objectives of this text.