One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: on the Politics of Sustainability in the U.S.

With the UN Conference on Sustainable Development occurring in 2012, this essay asks whether or not changes towards sustainability can be documented over the past twenty years and, if not, to ask why not, and what might be necessary to better ensure that movement towards sustainability characterizes the next twenty years.

Looking at the performance of the United States, it finds that measures of all major dimensions of sustainability-environment, social equity, and economic viability-reveal little progress towards sustainability. In trying to explain this lack of progress, our claim is that the “problem” of sustainability is not primarily technical or scientific, but rather it is political, and the real problem is that of power. In the US in recent years, anti-sustainability movements have captured national politics by removing sustainability from the national dialogue and from the agenda of public decision-making, and through the process of decentralization of decision-making to more local contexts where they may more easily control direct conflicts in decision.

Why are Americans sanguine about issues of sustainability? The essay examines three core beliefs that dominate American perceptions: (1) problems associated with lack of sustainability can and will be managed by simple economic growth, (2) whatever scarcities and problems we face down the road will be cured by advances in science and technology, and (3) fairness is more important than equality.

The concluding section calls for adoption of a “deep sustainability” paradigm versus the kind of “shallow sustainability” that characterizes the majority of policy and programs today labeled as sustainable. Borrowing the ecosophic concept of “deep ecology” from Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, the guiding principle of a deep sustainability is one of equality, equality first of all among environmental, economic, and social objectives, and then social equity within each of these dimensions. Sustainability cannot be achieved under systems that have as their basic assumption the roles of winners and losers, rich and poor, haves and have-nots. If Rio+20 offers only solutions within the existing powerful paradigm of market-driven solutions, then the “green economy” will mean more commodification of food and water, land and biodiversity. It will mean that we have fallen further behind in our quest for sustainability.