"Sustainable Societies: Introduction"

Excerpt from Andrew Dobson, "Green Political Thought"
(Routledge, 2000) pp. 16-18

"The centrality of the limits to growth thesis and the conclusions drawn from it lead political ecologists to suggest that radical changes in our social habits and practices are required. The kind of society that would incorporate these changes is often referred to by greens as the 'sustainable society, and the fact that we are able to identify aspects of a green society distinguishable from the preferred pictures of other ideologies is one of the reasons why ecologism can be seen as a political ideology in its own right.

...one or two points about it should be borne in mind from the outset. Political ecologists will stress two points with regard to the sustainable society: one, that consumption of material goods by individuals in 'advanced industrial countries' should be reduced; and two (linked to the first), that human needs are not best satisfied by continual economic growth as we understand it today. Jonathon Porritt writes:

"If you want one simple contrast between green and conventional politics,
it is our belief thai quantitative demand must he reduced, not expanded".


Greens argue that if there are limits to growth then there are limits to consumption as well. The green movement is therefore faced with the difficulty of simultaneously calling into question a major aspiration of most people - maximizing consumption of material objects - and making its position attractive.

There are two aspects to its strategy. On the one hand it argues that continued consumption at increasing levels is impossible because of the finite productive limits imposed by the Earth. So it is argued that our aspiration to consume will be curtailed whether we like it or not: "In common parlance that's known as having your cake and eating it, and it can't be done," announces Porritt. It is very important to see that greens argue that recycling or the use of renewable energy sources will not, alone, solve the problems posed by a finite Earth - we shall still not be able to produce or consume at an ever-increasing rate. Such techniques might be a part of the strategy for a sustainable society, but they do not materially affect the absolute limits to production and consumption in a finite system:

"The fiction of combining present levels of consumption with 'limitless recycling'
is more characteristic of the technocratic vision than of an ecological one.
Recycling itself uses resources, expands energy, creates thermal pollution;
on the bottom line, it's just an industrial activity like all the others.
Recycling is both useful and necessary - but it is an illusion to imagine
that it provides any basic answers". - Porritt


This observation is the analogue of the distinction made earlier between environmentalism and ecologism. To paraphrase Porritt, the recycling of waste is an essential part of being green but it is not the same thing as being radically green. Being radically green involves subscribing to different sets of values. As indicated by Porritt above, greens are generally suspicious of purely technological solutions to environmental problems - the 'technological fix' - and the relatively cautious endorsement of recycling is just one instance of this. As long ago as the highly influential The Limits to Growth thesis, it was suggested that 'We cannot expect technological solutions alone to get us our of this vicious circle' (Meadows et al.) and this has since become a central dogma of Green politics.

The second strategy employed by green ideologues to make palatable their recommendation for reduced consumption is to argue for the benefits of a less materialistic society. In the first place, they make an (unoriginal) distinction between needs and wants, suggesting that many of the items we consume and that we consider to be needs are in fact wants that have been 'converted' into needs at the behest of powerful I persuasive forces. In this sense they will suggest that little would be lost by possessing fewer objects. The distinction between needs and wants is highly controversial...

Second, some deep-greens argue that the sustainable society that would replace the present consumer society would provide for wider and more profound forms of fulfillment than that provided by the consumption of material objects. This can profitably be seen as part of the green contention that the sustainable society would be a spiritually fulfilling place in which to live. Indeed, aspects of the radical green program can hardly he understood without reference to the spiritual dimension on which (and in which) it likes to dwell. Greens invest the natural world with spiritual content and are ambivalent about what they see as mechanistic science's robbery of such content. They demand reverence for the Earth and a rediscovery of our links with it: "It seem to me so obvious that without some huge groundswell of spiritual concern the transition to a more sustainable way of life remains utterly improbable" (Porritt). In this way the advertisement for frugal living and the exhortation to connect with the Earth combine to produce the spiritual asceticism that is a part of political ecology.

A controversial theme in green politics which is associated with the issue of reducing consumption is that of the need to bring down population levels. As Fritjof Capra explains:

"To slow down the rapid depletion of our natural resources,
we need not only to abandon the idea of continuing economic growth,
but to control the worldwide increase in population".


Despite heavy criticism, particularly from the left - Mike Simons has described Paul Ehrlich's proposals as an invitation to genocide' - greens have stuck to their belief that long-term global sustainability will involve reductions in population, principally on the grounds that fewer people will consume fewer objects:

"the only long-term way to reduce consumption is to stabilize
and then reduce the number of consumers. The best resources policies
are doomed to failure if not linked to population policy" - Irvine and Ponton.