Introduction

Adam Smith (1776) promoted capitalism as a materially progressive force that, with ‘good governance’, was capable of extending ‘universal opulence . . . to the lowest ranks of the people’. Notably, his concerns about the moral foundations of accumulation, expressed in the quotation above, were not accompanied by reflection on its bio-physical foundations. However, some two centuries later, the ‘industry of mankind’ had pushed those very concerns into the centre of political debate.1 Between the end of the Second World War and the early 1970s, more of the world’s finite energy resources had been consumed than in the whole of previous human history (Connet 1994: 570). In the aftermath of the post-war boom, it seemed that demand for resource inputs by capitalist economies had already exceeded available sustainable resources, with first-world living standards only being temporarily maintained by living off ‘natural capital’ (Diesendorf 1997: 84). A growing realisation that the prevailing pattern of economic expansion and ‘progress’ was unsustainable served to challenge the legitimacy of how ‘the economy’ is organised and understood. Concern with bio-diversity loss and human survival in the context of demand for ongoing ‘development’ led the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987) to argue that there was no alternative but to manage the planet out of decline. The popularity of the ideas embodied in its report, Our Common Future, and the subsequent embrace of ‘sustainable development’ at the level of international environmental governance, suggest that ‘sustainability’ was indeed an idea whose time had come. Yet more than two decades later, and despite some positive achievements, global environmental degradation has accelerated (Kovel 2002: 4) and a new wave of environmental concern has emerged around the

specifics of climate change. The recent Stern Review (Stern 2006) was a timely aide memoire to the ongoing and unresolved question of ‘sustainability’, which requires efforts in both theory and practice in order to bring about the necessary social and economic transformations. The meaning of sustainability is not self-evident though, and it remains a contested concept. On the one hand, it has been taken up by corporate leaders and politicians to validate the green credentials of a growth agenda. Yet for others, the term embodies radical normative dimensions that point to the need for an equitable society served by an economy operating within ecological limits. However, as popularly understood, both perspectives – ‘economic’ and ‘ecological’ sustainability – imply an equilibrium discourse. Bringing about the necessary ‘harmony’ or ‘balance’ in the relationship between humans and their environment is, on the one hand, a function of the ‘right’ market price for neoliberals, while on the other hand, radical environmentalists seek the ‘right’ ethical values. It is the neo-liberal perspective, with its emphasis on technical economic criteria, which currently underpins the international consensus on ‘sustainable development’. As the centrepiece of environmental governance and policies for sustainability, it has furthered the opportunities for profit generation without achieving the promised environmental benefits. Unpacking that consensus and interrogating the concept of sustainability itself are necessary prerequisites for understanding the marginalisation of ethical concerns, as well as for building a sustainability framework that offers the environmental protection neo-liberalism has failed to secure.