ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how the common topics of quantity and quality helped establish sustainable development as a globally shared value. It considers how the notions of sustainability and sustainable development have been, are, and might best be employed for the invention of environmental arguments. The chapter argues that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's discussion of loci and confused notions accounts for the perplexities of these notions' multiple meanings and offers guidance for using them productively in environmental debate. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's discussion of topics, which provides the framework for analysis of sustainable development, both builds on and transforms classical understandings of loci by situating them within a different system of argumentation. In a study of "sustainability's" historical usage, Kidd tracks the concept back to the late-twentieth-century environmental movement, identifying six intellectual roots that have contributed to its meaning. In the case of sustainable development, environmentalist discourse was grafted onto development, a notion rooted in economics.
