ABSTRACT
Eco-politics in advanced liberal consumer democracies is in a most perplexing state. On the one hand, the seriousness of the sustainability crisis (social, economic, ecological) and the urgency of truly transformative action are virtually uncontested. Talk about sustainability is ubiquitous, and there is commitment not only to protecting the biophysical environment but also to the goals of social justice, inclusion, empowerment, diversity and so on. On the other hand, the structural transformation of the capitalist growth economy and the consumer culture which the more radical currents of environmentalism, in particular, have always demanded, and which many climate scientists now regard as indispensable if large-scale catastrophe and social collapse are to be averted, is nowhere in sight. Instead, critical intellectuals are lamenting the post-democratic and post-political condition of eco-politics, in which governing bodies and even transnational corporations have ‘taken over our language’ and thereby destroyed ‘our capacity to say what we want, to know what we want … even [to] dream’ any alternative to the socio-economic order that prevails (Dean 2009, 10).
