Our politics is intimately linked to the environmental conditions - and crises - of our time. The challenges of sustainability and the discovery of ecological limits to growth are transforming how we understand the core concepts at the heart of political theory.
In this essential new textbook, leading political theorist Steve Vanderheiden examines how the concept of sustainability challenges - and is challenged - by eight key social and political ideas, ranging from freedom and equality to democracy and sovereignty. He shows that environmental change will disrupt some of our most cherished ideals, requiring new indicators of progress, new forms of community, and new conceptions of agency and responsibility. He draws on canonical texts, contemporary approaches to environmental political theory, and vivid examples to illustrate how changes in our conceptualization of our social aspirations can inhibit or enable a transition to a just and sustainable society.
Vanderheiden masterfully balances crystal clear explanation of the essentials with cutting-edge analysis to produce a book that will be core reading for students of environmental and green political theory everywhere.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction and ApproachIdeas and environmental politics
Sustainability as emergent and disruptive ideal
Sustainability as transformational ideal
Notes
2 Environmental Change and the Sustainability Imperative
Ecological limits and sustainability imperatives
Ecological limits: origins and possible responses
Ecological limits and their discontents
International responses to ecological limits
Ecological limits and US politics
Business as usual
The eco-fortress
The just transition
Notes
3 Freedom
Concepts and conceptions
Freedom as culprit in commons tragedies
Hardin on the tragedy of the commons
Freedom and incentive structures
Neoliberal freedom and scarcity
Classic liberalism and neoliberal freedom
Locke’s property theory and provisos
Nozick’s entitlement theory and the proviso
Prometheanism and the proviso
Neoliberal freedom and externalities
Individuality, consumerism, and sovereignty
Consumerism, consumption, and freedom
Neoliberal freedom and harm
Conclusions: sustainability and the ideal of freedom
Notes
4 Democracy
Democracy and the environment
Democracy as incompatible with sustainability?
Environment and democracy
Reconciling democracy and sustainability
Two kinds of democratic legitimacy
Democracy and doughnuts
Rights as democratic constraints on democracy
Alternatives to democracy
Technocracy as alternative to democracy
Technocracy as compatible with democracy
Reconciling technocracy with democracy
Eco-authoritarianism as alternative to democracy
Technocracy as antidote to democracy’s failings
Reforming environmental democracy
Greening democracy
Democracy and global governance
Conclusions: environmental change and the democratic ideal
Notes
5 Progress
Conceptions of progress within a contested social compass
Progress in Western political thought
Ancient and medieval conceptions of progress
Growth-as-progress in early liberalism
Scarcity and modern conceptions of progress
Growth as core state imperative
Progress reoriented
Challenging the growth imperative
Wilderness, ecology, and the land ethic
Toxic chemicals and the war on nature
Rethinking links between growth and progress
Toward a post-growth conception of progress
The HDI as progress index
Sustainable development goals
Green growth vs. post-growth conceptions
Conclusions: redefining progress to account for ecological limits
Notes
6 Equality
Equality as ideal
Factual and moral equality
Equality between species
Human exceptionalism
Rights and equality
Environmental rights
Equality as equivalence: the issue of carbon offsets
Carbon equivalence
Offsets and equity in international carbon trading
Equality and sufficiency: competing standards
Alternatives to equality
Sufficiency and sufficientarianism
Inequality and the environment
Conclusions: environmental imperatives and the equality ideal
Notes
7 Agency and Responsibility
Key concepts in agency and responsibility
Agents and agency
Moral and legal standing
Ethical individualism and the environment
Challenges to ethical individualism
Collectivities, value and moral standing
Individualism, collective responsibility and climate change
Climate change, agency, and responsibility
Threshold effects, harm and responsibility
Fragmented agency and responsibility
Uncertainty and responsibility
Agents and levels of analysis: who should act?
Non-state agents and responsibility for climate change
Individual agents and remedies
Holding persons responsible for climate change
Transparency and responsibility-taking
Collective responsibility
Conclusions: agency and responsibility and the environmental crisis
Notes
8 Community
The ancient ideal of community
Community in modern political thought
On anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism and the environmental crisis
From biotic to planetary community
Human exceptionalism
Cultivating planetary community
National identity and environmental protection
Nations and peoples as allies of environmental protection
Nationality, territory, and environment
Cosmopolitanism and the global community
Ethical obligations and distant strangers
Theorizing cosmopolitan and planetary membership
Environmental citizenship and its associated virtues
Global community and common heritage
Conclusions: environment and the community ideal
Notes
9 Sovereignty
Sovereignty as principle and in practice
Elements of sovereignty
Sovereignty as foe? The debate over the Convention on Biological Diversity
Strong sovereignty and isolationist anti-environmentalism
Assessing Senate GOP sovereignty claims
Dogmatic versus pragmatic sovereignty
Trump and the sovereignty principle
The Trump Doctrine
Sovereignty and sustainability
Greening sovereignty
Progressive sovereignty
Humanitarian intervention and the evolution of sovereignty
Sovereignty and sustainability
Reconstructing sovereignty
Conclusions: sovereignty and the ecological crisis
Notes
10 Justice
Rawlsian distributive justice
Other conceptions of justice
Environmental justice as social movement objective
Two environmental justice campaigns
Environmental justice movements, discourses, applications
Environment and intergenerational justice
Challenges for intergenerational justice: identity and uncertainty
Challenges for intergenerational justice: currency
Natural resources and the scope and currency of distributive justice
Combining scope and currency in resource access
On natural resource and climate justice
Mitigation and burden-sharing equity
Adaptation and equity in remedies
Conclusions: environment and the justice ideal
Notes
11 Conclusions: The Just and Sustainable Society
Notes
Index
