ABSTRACT
Claims to sustainability are everywhere, from the sides of motorway juggernauts to the spin of a UK government arguing for airport expansion in London while notionally signed up to its carbon emissions targets. It is no longer completely out of court for thinkers and scholars concerned with environmental issues to argue that the 'sustainability' discourse and policy paradigm have failed, and that the people are moving into a new and much bleaker era. The sustainability aspiration has failed on its own terms, it hasn't enabled us to make even a plausible start on governing our natural resource usage by the appropriate criteria, and this is for reasons inherent in the aspiration itself. However, a researcher in environmental ethics and politics and also a sustainability activist, distinguishes between 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development'. The chapter offers reasons for viewing the process of value-transformation which disaster entail as genuinely tragic rather than in any sense compensatory.
