As you say, sustainability has increasingly become a hostage to the fortunes of globalizing capitalism and, most importantly, the axiomatic assumption that development is based on growth; poor old sustainability increasingly gets used as a means of squaring the circle, i.e. since we must assume that growth is both inevitable and beneficial and yet brings with its' own set of problems (pollution, waste etc.) we must have growth but in order to alleviate these problems we're going to find slightly different ways of doing it that we'll call sustainable - post hoc rationalizing at its worst. Sustainability therefore increasingly gets used as a bastardised term to sanitize growth so that we can avoid thinking about what growth, why growth, growth for whom. The most odious example to my way of thinking is the creation of carbon bonds by Goldman Sachs to create a 'sustainable' market to control carbon emissions. Just the worst kind of creative accountancy fraud and the most egregious abuse of the concept of sustainability, all wrapped up into one stinking package of excrement.
Dr Jon Cloke
Lecturer/Research Associate
Geography Department
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU
Office: 01509 228193
Mob: 07984 813681
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From: Nicholas James [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 19 September 2011 06:37
To: Jonathan Cloke; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: New proposals for school geography
Broadly speaking 'sustainable development' (in its radical endeavour - to address inequality/poverty) became torn apart, diluted and re-interpreted during the rise of neoliberalism during the 1980s. That is, when the Brundtland Commission published Our Common Future.
Even the latest Dictionary of Human Geography (5th Ed) there are two very different entries for 'sustainable development' and 'sustainability', both of which remain critical and nevertheless reflecting the inconclusive nature of both terms.
However, there is a call for re-radicalising the wider and deeper ideas initially drawn-up during the 1980s. This was when global society started to come to terms with the idea of several very serious international environmental problems.
Nick
See, e.g.
P. Sarre (2009) Governing the international economy: growth, inequality and environment. pp 363-402 in W.Brown, C.Aradau and J.Budds (eds) Earth in crisis: environmental issues and responses. The Open University, Milton Keynes
"Both changes in housing finance and the changing context for national and international environmental politics owed a great deal to the major reorganisation of international finance over the last thirty years, so my most recent interest has been trying to understand how the new system has come about, how it works and what its consequences have been. This led me to be very critical of the system, something that proved easy to talk about at conferences (including a paper called 'Neoliberalism, an experiment that failed' at the April 2008 AAAG), but harder to get published, though I have succeeded with Geography Compass. The change in what can be said since the 'credit crunch' has been truly revelatory, but the $64 trillion question is how the system will be reconstructed over the coming months and years."
-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Cloke <[log in to unmask]>
To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:18
Subject: Re: New proposals for school geography
"There isn't one mention of the sustainability in the whole document. Should we turn off the TV, disconnect from the web and disengage from global issues entirely?"
Interesting how sustainability gets used and abused, particularly by the Condemolition Derby. See yon Simon Jenkins, re the UK government's new brightest bestest plan, the removal of virtually all planning legislation regarding the rural:
“The word sustainable should never appear in an act of parliament. It is a weasel word, an adjective not qualifying a noun but lightly dusting it with vague political approval. Sustainability is the sort of Blairism that gave us downsizing for sacking and humanitarian intervention for war. The only sustainable meadow is a meadow. Sustainable development is a contradiction in terms. It means development.” (Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, Thursday 28 July 2011).
An interesting apercu...
Dr Jon Cloke
Lecturer/Research Associate
Geography Department
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU
Office: 01509 228193
Mob: 07984 813681
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