ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the science of key environmental issues that are of concern to sustainable development, noting that critical thresholds or tipping points in the Earth System mean that science cannot predict consequences of policy robustly. However, it will suggest that in the terms of science itself and for the sake of policy-making, there are significant limitations of current science, in particular for understanding large, complex systems such as the Earth System. Thus, sustainable development can be said to be, in part, about the habits that produce our everyday actions and how these are connected to economic and political processes. The chapter explores whether there are ideas that indicate that humans will be able to predict and control the Earth System. It will conclude that currently dominant epistemological and ethical assumptions of policy may need to be re-examined, in a situation of unimagined tipping points and hundreds of years of inertia in the Earth System.
