Theorizing sustainability in a post-Concorde world

Technology in Society 39 (2014) 1e9

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Issues and opinions

Theorizing sustainability in a post-Concorde world Rasmus Karlsson* Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, 270 Imun-dong, Dongdaeumun-Gu, 130-791 Seoul, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 9 November 2013 Received in revised form 29 April 2014 Accepted 29 May 2014 Available online

Before its retirement, Concorde was a powerful symbol of technological optimism. As such, and much like the now dismantled US manned space programme, the spirit of Concorde stood in stark contrast to the prevailing pessimism about the human enterprise. Instead of an accelerating modernity and rapid space colonization (as commonly envisaged fifty years ago) we have witnessed a fading modernity with geriatric nuclear reactors, ageing infrastructure and paralyzing public austerity. Using the symbol of Concorde, this article challenges common presumptions about the relationship between modernity and longterm sustainability, arguing that the existing literature on sustainability has underestimated the risks of maintaining an ambivalent stance towards the modern project. More specifically, the article considers the risk that humanity will fall short of developing the technology necessary to break free of its planetary entrapment yet not be able to halt the rate of environmental destruction to a degree that would ensure survival here on Earth. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Future studies Political ecology Neoliberalism Technological innovation Social investments

1. Introduction In the not so distant past, the future was a place of dreams, a realm of unfinished aspirations, a space where we could put trust in our ability to improve present circumstances [61]. Closely tied to this view of the future was a belief in the rationalist-scientific enterprise of modernity, the belief that we, in the words of Francis Bacon, would learn about the causes of nature and through this knowledge gradually enlarge “the bounds of human empire” [5]:210). Looking at the world today, there is little doubt that we have expanded that empire far beyond the scope of any pre-modern imagination and that the rise in instrumental capacity has brought about unprecedented levels of affluence and abundance. Yet, as anthropogenic forces have become the dominating drivers of change at the planetary level [18], we have encountered also the other and darker side of modernity: ecological destruction, omnicidal weapons, and an irreversibility which seems to demand * Tel.: þ82 (0)10 25123700. E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2014.05.004 0160-791X/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

more in terms of responsibility than what we may be capable of as a species. Already from the beginning, the ideas of the Enlightenment were at risk of perversion. Methodological naturalism could easily turn into scientism, the belief in conditional progress could turn into teleology, and the primacy of critical reflection could turn into scepticism. Despite this, the thinkers of the Enlightenment believed in the faculties of the individual, the value of dissent, and the need for public debate [15]. Yet, given how disoriented humanity has become through its initial encounter with modernity, it is not surprising that many people have lost their hope in the promise of the Enlightenment. While it may be possible to point to certain formative events such as the Holocaust or the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, it seems more appropriate to talk about a gradual loss of determination, a thinning out rather than a sharp break, and a postmodern fragmentation of all certainties rather than a conclusive rejection of modernity as such. What is striking is that none of this has stopped the core processes of modernity from continuing unaltered, be it rationalization, urbanization or, most obviously, economic globalization.

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What has been lost is rather the belief that these processes form part of human progress, and that we can employ them in a conscious democratic manner to advance civilization. This article makes use of what used to be a particularly
rospatialepotent symbol of technological optimism, the Ae BAC “Concorde”, to illustrate this development. It is a symbol which, after the retirement of Concorde in 2003, took on a paradoxical layer of meaning as a harbinger of a slower and greying world. The retirement of a means of transportation which for decades had travelled at twice the speed of its conventional alternatives echoed a world in which geriatric nuclear reactors, ageing infrastructure, and worsening environmental problems have all become signs of a fading modernity. The aim of this article is to provide a new theoretical language for this process and to challenge existing presumptions about the relationship between modernity and long-term environmental sustainability. More specifically, the article aims to highlight the risks associated with maintaining an ambivalent stance towards the modern project, something which has not been sufficiently addressed by the existing literature on sustainability. 2. Concorde Following the Second World War, civilian aviation advanced into the jet age. When Charles “Chuck” Yeager officially broke the sound barrier in October 1947, many people thought that supersonic passenger transport (SST) would be the next natural step in aeroplane evolution. However, to actually construct an aircraft capable of flying at such speeds posed an immense technological challenge. In the decade that followed, a number of independent design proposals for SST were put forward, with the British thin-winged delta shaped “Type 223” being one of the frontrunners. Yet, recognizing that the underlying technology still required years of basic research and development, the British government was unwilling to provide further financial support unless the British manufacturer would find an international partner. Meanwhile in France, a French company had been working on a parallel SST design known as the Super-Caravelle which used a similar triangular wing platform. Recognizing the possible mutual benefits of cooperation, the two backing governments decided to negotiate an international treaty which mandated that British Aircraft Cooperation (BAC) and the
rospatiale would set up a conFrench state-owned Ae sortium to develop the aircraft under the name Concorde. Although it would take close to fifteen years for Concorde to enter scheduled service in 1976, its development was in many ways a scientific and technological triumph [48]. Working in tandem, the French and British engineers had to overcome a number of extreme challenges in terms of metallurgy, structural integrity, and the cooling of the heated airframe as it travelled at supersonic speeds [79]. Capable of sustained flight at twice the speed of sound and at altitudes high enough to make the curvature of the Earth visible to its passengers, Concorde dramatically compressed the time-space constitution of whatever routes it operated. Instead of eight hours for a subsonic flight, it took Concorde less than three and a half hours to

fly between London and New York, making same-day returns across the Atlantic possible for the first time. In 1992, Concorde circumnavigated the world in both directions in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first journey, setting a new world record of 31 h, 27 min and 49 s. However, already the 1973 oil crisis had fundamentally changed the economics of supersonic transportation ([24]:504). Of the more than 100 orders from dozens of airlines, only 20 aircrafts were ever built and 14 delivered, making per unit costs staggering. Despite its engineering marvel, Concorde was in many ways a stepping stone to a future that never materialized and its development costs were never recovered. Nonetheless, around the time of the millennium, Concorde was finally profitable for British Airways and was expected to continue flying for several more decades. 3. The post-Concorde world The development of Concorde coincided with the space race, a time when it was considered common knowledge that humanity would soon move on to fill the solar system with life, that we were at the threshold of a grand new era of exploration, and that our future would be determined more by scientific curiosity than Malthusian arithmetic. In the environmental sociology literature, this expansionist worldview has traditionally been referred to as the Human Exceptionalism Paradigm [26]. Yet, by the time Concorde came into service, the Apollo Program had been terminated and manned space flights were again confined to low Earth orbit. Instead of bold space missions, the world was allocating ever more resources to the construction of nuclear warheads and the maddening logic of mutually assured destruction. To understand this shift in priorities, one has to understand the exhaustion of high-modernist narratives in general and how the world was overwhelmed by the negative environmental, social, and psychological consequences of its own development trajectory. Just as the economic stagnation of the 1970's came to undermine the post-war Keynesian consensus, the DDT scandal as documented by Rachel Carson [78] and the 1972 Limits to growth report [57] were both instrumental in breaking the rationalist-scientific hegemony. As the expansionist paradigm came to an end, it was replaced by notions of scarcity, insecurity, and risk [2]:1415; [9]. When Ronald Reagan in 1984 declared that it was “Morning again in America”, it was easy to interpret this rhetoric as a revival of the expansionist worldview. Yet, with its conservative realism and militarism, the politics of the Reagan years actually stood in sharp contrast to the Enlightenment's belief in universality, cosmopolitanism, and emancipation. Instead of seeing education as the driver of civilizational progress [51,65], the United States took the unfortunate lead in a politics of abandonment which came to value immediate private consumption over long-term social investment. Although it would take decades for the full effects to become apparent, in retrospect it is not difficult to see the growing discrepancy between increasing consumption rates and stagnating wages (paid through debt), the millions of people being employed in low-paying “service jobs” far below their real productivity potential

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(under more progressive forms of politics) and, which is the focus of this article, the failure to use public innovation to meet the ecological challenges of our time. Even if science has become ever more advanced and specialized in recent decades, it has lost the overarching sense of direction and social relevance that it had during the space race. In a time deprived of political imagination and public purpose, Concorde came in for its final landing in November 2003. A victim of the sharp fall in demand for air travel in the wake of the 9/11 events but also suffering from costly safety upgrades following the Paris crash in July 2000, Concorde had become an aircraft starkly at odds with its time. Instead of being a symbol of human ingenuity and the possibilities of the future, Concorde had been reduced to an environmental monstrosity and a toy for the superrich. The world that followed, and the one we live in, is the post-Concorde world. It is a world characterized more than anything by a deep-felt ambivalence towards the modern project and the remaining Enlightenment legacy. Investigating the roots of this ambivalence, the article will first consider the political ecological critique of modernity and then briefly the more recent neoliberal attack on the future as a domain of democratic choice. On this basis, it is argued that it is in fact the unintentional confluence of these two forces that has created the current dangerous state of political passivity. 3.1. The political ecological critique of modernity It is difficult not to feel a profound sense of loss when considering what humanity has done to the natural world. In our imagination, we may think of the pre-human Earth as a sacred garden, a place of serenity, and stability ([71]:11). Although geology may tell a rather different story, one of celestial catastrophes and abrupt climatic shifts, the human story cannot be anything but one of intrusion on a primordially existing ecological order. Already the earliest records of ecological anthropology tell us that human beings everywhere have overhunted wildlife, degraded the land, and practiced unsustainable forms of cultivation [49]:43e81). As the human population grew, the aggregate impacts of anthropogenic activities gradually became broader and deeper until the 19th century when these processes took on a planetary reach and accelerated humanity into its current development trajectory [72]. On a philosophical level, political ecologists see modernity as founded on an illusion of ontological stability which takes nature to be both linear and infinitely forgiving towards anthropogenic forcing [23]:30; [88]. In contrast to this benign image of nature, political ecologists seek to emphasize the complexity, interdependence, and nonlinearity which characterize many natural processes. In its most extreme house-of-cards interpretation, this would imply that any human interference would result in the downfall of the system as a whole. Fortunately, natural history is a good indication that this interpretation is incorrect since such extreme ecosystem vulnerability would have led to a collapse long before the present due to everything from volcano eruptions to asteroid impacts. But even if contemporary ecological perspectives tend to look

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upon ecosystems as less tightly connected than earlier models [83], there is little doubt that there are indeed limits to the total amount of anthropogenic pressure that the planetary biophysical systems can sustain without risking abrupt environmental change. However, acknowledging the reality of such ecological limits only goes part of the way in understanding political ecologism. Because as much as political ecology comes with a diagnosis of our current ecological predicament, it also comes with a very specific idea of how this predicament should be resolved. At its core lies a basic discomfort with the idea that emancipation from nature does in any way amount to civilizational progress. From this fundamental intuition follows the belief that humanity as a whole must change, that everyone, everywhere, must subject themselves to the planetary limits and learn to “live within our means” ([69]:2). In this sense, political ecologism is one of the greatest projects of epistemological homogenization ever suggested since both the transition and the preservation of any future “sustainable society” would require a kind of social agreement that seems very remote from present realities. Naturally, most political ecologists would shy away from authoritarian allegations, defending themselves by saying that they do not dictate the iron hard laws of nature and that, whatever suffering humanity must go through, it would only be a necessary consequence of its past wrongdoings. Though political ecologists may differ substantially about how much sustainability actually would require in terms of material sacrifice, there are a number of common axioms, the first being that it would be physically impossible for the rest of the world to attain a living standard comparable to the global North [6]:4; [38], the second that technology can never free humanity of its planetary limits [41], and third and finally, that the envisaged reduction would in fact be a liberation from a “malign public life” ([43]:171) and the distorted values that most people currently hold [42]. If emancipation from nature is the cardinal sin according to political ecologism, dismantling global capitalism is seen as a necessary first step towards ecological salvation. In the spectre of global capitalism, political ecologists see not only the dislocation of communal bonds and the ruining of “authentic place” [17] but the ultimate driver of environmental destruction. Much like some socialists who hold capitalism responsible for all forms of human exploitation, political ecologists generally believe that global capitalism has created a “metabolic rift” of estrangement between human beings and nature which is the original cause of the modern ecological trauma [27,28]. When Thomas Princen writes that “[i]f there were a single philosophical position in environmental thought, adhered by all who are concerned about environmental destruction, it is that at the root of that destruction is human's separation from nature” ([69]:82), it is not difficult to understand why global capitalism, with its dispersion of causes and effects, has become the main villain of political ecologism [20]. It is worth noting that practically nowhere in this literature is there any discussion about the possible ecological benefits that could be derived from separating humanity more fully from nature [50], a theme which will be addressed at length later in this article.

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For political ecologists, global environmental change has come to define the end of modernity in ecological terms. Certain in their belief that “ecological losses cannot be undone through the basic tenets of modernity” ([36]:245) as in the continuation of the rationalist-scientific enterprise, political ecologists seek to halt, and ultimately reverse, the structural processes of modernity. Running directly counter to prevailing socio-economic dynamics, it is not surprising that this effort has met with limited success. But by constantly emphasizing the ecological destructive tendencies of modernity while ignoring its long-term potential, political ecologists have been surprisingly successful in eroding our confidence in that science and technology can be used, in a conscious and radical manner, to ultimately overcome these destructive tendencies. By doubting our ability to consciously govern the future, political ecologists have drained the modern project of its utopian energies, effectively creating a passivity towards the future by which short-sighted market imperatives, rather than transparent democratic decisions and long-term public investments, become the determining factors. Instead of shiny fusion reactors and space travel, we are beginning to realize that the future may well be one of oil sands, offshore drilling, and increasingly destructive resource wars. Ironically, it may thus be that it is these feelings of passivity and doubt that ultimately will help create the very future that political ecologists fear. While few would dispute the more general claim that there has been a loss of confidence in our ability to democratically decide the long-term future ([75]; p. 6; [82]; p. 1), it would certainly be incorrect to attribute all of this loss to a relative small number of political ecologists, working on the margins of social discourse. But in their role as “truth tellers”, political ecologists have been able to tap into more general sentiments of estrangement that modernity has created. Capitalizing on the ontological insecurity arising from the acceleration of change in contemporary society, political ecologists have been able to project an alternative world of permanence and belonging. While such a world would also mean a foregoing of the existential freedom and mobility that modernity has given rise to [33], it is important to remember that for most people this is not about articulating a coherent social philosophy but about giving voice to a feeling of psychological bewilderment. In a similar fashion, while most people would, on reflection, acknowledge that humanity's lot has vastly improved over the last two hundred years, there are also legitimate concerns about the growth of conspicuous consumption, the emptiness of materialism, and the deep inequalities that persist, in particular at the global level. By articulating such concerns, political ecologists speak where others remain silent, an act which in itself has generated sufficient epistemic noise and doubt, not to reverse modernity, but to put sand in its machinery. 3.2. Neoliberalism and public austerity Meanwhile, economic globalization has continued unchecked, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty (most notably in China) but also fuelling resentment as labour markets have become ever more stratified. Instead of

seeing the possibilities in new global forms of welfare capitalism, the Left has found itself helplessly watching as an ever tighter straitjacket has been sewn around its political ambitions. For the Right, the same straitjacket has been viewed as a “golden straitjacket” ([31]:104) thought to ensure prudent macroeconomic policies, monetary stability, and protect against economic interventionism. Although recent events may have shattered some of those beliefs, these “ideas still walk among us” [70] to a surprisingly high degree, largely because the Left has been unable to formulate a coherent ideological alternative. Arguably, the most important legacy of the last decades of neoliberalism has been its attack on the idea of a selfdirecting democratic future. Neoliberals have been particularly opposed to the idea that society should make “grand” choices or pursue different “utopian” visions of the future. Instead, neoliberals believe that the state should at a maximum provide the “framework for utopia” [64] within which individuals can then pursue their own conceptions of the good. In relation to modernity, neoliberals have sought to convey the impression that all its grand tasks have either been completed or proven impossible; that redistribution has been attempted but failed since the poor are not poor because of structural reasons but because of lacking individual ambition, and that the road to the future goes through privatization and away from the public as an acting political subject. Contrary to the historic evidence of how public scientific research has driven long run growth in modern capitalism [55], neoliberals have argued that most public investments are “inherently wasteful” ([12]:153) and have forcefully hammered home the message that financial markets alone are able to make wise allocation choices and that markets can accurately reflect all relevant sources of social risk. Again, it is easy to think that these beliefs should have been thoroughly falsified by the recent financial meltdown which, if anything, has proven that markets are particularly bad at correctly estimating systemic risks. Yet, even in these extreme times, the Left has shown a remarkable lack of political imagination and remained trapped in nostalgic dreams of its own past glories. Unable to invigorate the utopian energies of modernity yet equally unwilling to commit to their reversal, contemporary society finds itself in a state of debilitating disorientation [44]. In the West, in particularly in the United States and Great Britain, rifts in the fabric of modernity are beginning to show. Bridges in perpetual disrepair, decrepit concrete motorway interchanges, and chronically delayed trains are all products of a politics of decline. While some of these effects may be caused simply by an early entry into industrialism, they also reflect a deeper political paralysis, one that has been made worse by ever harsher demands for public austerity. Despite record levels of private wealth, we increasingly find that we can no longer afford to invest in the future. While the reactionary worldview has found itself in ascendance, the Left, tied down by postmodern quibbles, has become fundamentally uncertain about what purposes its politics should serve. In the imagery of this article, we can now more clearly see what forces that are defining the post-Concorde world.

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4. Towards a general theory of long-term sustainability If it is correct to say that the post-Concorde world is characterized by a deep-felt ambivalence towards modernity, then it becomes important to spell out the implications of this ambivalence in terms of our prospects for environmental sustainability. While political ecologists think that these prospects depend exclusively on our ability to slow down or reverse modernity through processes of degrowth and intentional localization [30], there are good reasons to think that an acceleration of modernity may in fact stand a better political chance of succeeding in securing long-term sustainability [46]. Instead of confining humanity to Earth, such a path to sustainability would focus on developing the kind of advanced technologies required for humanity to break free of its “planetary entrapment” and transition to a post-scarcity space-faring civilization. Beyond contrasting these two ideal paths to sustainability, this article aims to highlight something that has been almost completely absent from the literature on sustainability, namely the risk of “falling in between” as in not accelerating modernity enough to achieve sustainability through advanced technologies yet not slow modernity down enough to ensure sustainability through reduced metabolism. The following model seeks to capture this risk in relation to the two ideal-typical paths to sustainability (Fig. 1): While political ecologists recognize only one path to long-term sustainability (B), the hypothetical possibility of an alternative accelerating technological path (A) puts our predicament in a somewhat different theoretical light. As we move from left to right in the model above, the triangular shaped cone of “unsustainability” grows proportionally to our confrontation with the planetary boundaries of the human enterprise [72]. While the exact shape and extension of the cone remains an empirical rather than theoretical question, the underlying and rather

A

Modernity

On one hand, we have the political ecological critique of modernity which has revealed the terrible ecological price that human development has exerted yet obscured its emancipatory hopes and long-term potential. On the other hand, as the neoliberal rhetoric about the inherent wastefulness of public investments has taken hold, we find the very idea of the future as a site of democratic choice to be under attack by far more powerful forces. Taken together, these otherwise unrelated ideological currents have to a large extent succeeded in destabilizing the modern project and replacing it with a sense of resignation and pessimism about the future. Although we remain haunted by fears of far-future catastrophes (it is for instance commonly acknowledged that the most devastating effects of climate change will not be felt until the end of this century), such long time horizons are not at all employed when discussing what possibilities humanity may have as we are emerging as a planetary civilization. This mismatch between problems and solutions reflects a profound uncertainty about the desired direction of change, an uncertainty which, this article suggests, may in fact be our most serious cause for concern.

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UNSUSTAINABILITY

B Time Fig. 1. Two ideal-typical paths to sustainability.

uncontroversial idea is that there simply are some aggregate limits to the regenerative and absorptive capacity of the biosphere [7]. If we were to transgress these limits and enter into an acute state of unsustainability, we can expect non-linear, abrupt, and potentially catastrophic environmental change. Since many biophysical systems, most notably the carbon cycle, are severely lagged and cumulative in nature with slow neutralization and sequestration rates (for instance is the mean lifetime of anthropogenic carbon emissions in the atmosphere several thousands of years), it may hypothetically be that humanity has already passed irreversible tipping points in its relation to the natural world [4,60]. However, for the purpose of this article and for politics more generally, it makes sense to stipulate that there is still some kind of remaining window of civilizational opportunity. Yet, the size of that window remains extremely difficult to quantify since it depends on many variables that may be known, if ever, only in retrospect. In particular, since future scientific knowledge per definition is unknowable in advance, there are strong epistemological limits to our ability to accurately predict the potential of technological evolution [47,68]. This does not mean that everything is technologically possible but it should sound a word of caution to those who think that we can predict the end of science [39]. With this in mind, we can now turn to a more detailed discussion of the different paths to longterm sustainability indicated in the model above.

4.1. The acceleration path (A) If the fundamental intuition of political ecologism is that humanity has become too separated from nature, the opposite intuition behind this path is that we are not separated enough. As we have interacted in countless ways with the biosphere we have unremittingly destroyed natural habitats and contributed to land degradation, desertification, and deforestation. Millennia of ecological history stand witness to the ecocidal violence wrought about by humans. There is no harmony in our relation to nature and there has never been one. If that is true, then what follows

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is that in order to protect nature we must leave it. In this view, it is a form of cognitive hubris to believe that we can learn the inner workings of complex, non-linear ecological systems and exert just the right amount of anthropogenic pressure for sustainability. Instead, the acceleration path is based on the premise that we should seek to urgently decouple ourselves from the natural world and promote ecological restoration to make amends for what we have done. It is crucial to recognize that this is not about devaluating the aesthetic qualities of nature or suggesting an end to recreational hikes or small-scale family farms. Yet, it would mean an end to death-intensive factory farms, industrial agriculture, and strip mining. In short, it would be about ending our metabolic presence in nature. To erase our ecological footprint in such a manner would require nothing less than a technological revolution, a deep change in the material configuration of human civilization, and an intellectual radicalization of the Enlightenment legacy. At its core, any attempt to accelerate modernity to a sufficient degree would depend on our ability to align the existing processes of globalization into a progressive planetary project. Only if we are able to reconceptualise how we see people in other countries, from competitors to creators of common prosperity, can we hope to reap the full potential of increasing functional differentiation and specialization [1]. This however will only be possible to the extent that the short-term negative distributional impacts of structural change are matched by social investments [67]. Yet, beyond simply keeping the global economic expanding, far more radical social investments will probably be needed to make possible breakthrough innovation at the scale required for achieving long-term sustainability. Instead of seeing further economic growth as an obstacle for sustainability, such a path would recognize that the existence of a robust trade system is crucial to lessen the impact of resource scarcities ([21]:470) and that economic expansion in itself is indispensable not only to avoid costly and distracting distributional conflicts [32] but also to make investments in breakthrough technologies financially possible. Rather than trying to reverse the momentum of the structural processes of modernity, the idea would be to accelerate these processes in order to raise overall productivity and free up the necessary labour and capital to make radical investments in breakthrough technologies. In practical terms, all this may seem very remote from present day realities. However, it is probably far less radical than the original Enlightenment programme must have seemed to its critics during the making of modernity [56]. And unlike the thinkers of the Enlightenment, we do have a historic precedent; we know that mass democracy, universal education, and gender equality are all possible, although difficult, achievements. Yet, exclusively dependent on ourselves with no external source of normativity, it is not surprising that we have shrugged our responsibility for the future and come to doubt our abilities. If we were to fully recognize history as “man's own creation” ([53]:263), then we would also become existentially responsible for its future course. Given the irreversibility of modernity as a planetary-wide process, this may indeed call for greater

measures of responsibility than what we may be capable of as a species. While recycling and production using nanotechnology [22,25], artificial meat [19], and new energy technologies such as Generation IV nuclear reactors [14] may bring temporary relief to the aggregate levels of anthropogenic forcing, the only way that humanity could in a lasting manner decouple itself from nature would be through space industrialization. In a post-Concorde world, the idea of colonizing space may at best provoke an ironic smile and at worst accusations of irrationality [87]. It is an interesting reaction given that the prospects of space colonization are as bright (and some would say much brighter thanks to the electronic revolution) as they were in the 1950's when it was considered strange to not believe in a future of human spaceflight. Such discursive shifts are interesting since they say something about the historic specificity of many of our beliefs. Fortunately, there is today a burgeoning literature which spells out the connection between long-term sustainability and space colonization [54,74,76,77]. Beyond the basic protection against human annihilation which space alone can offer, the main advantage of space colonization would be practically unlimited access to resource and sinks but also access to a controlled environment in which humanity no longer risks tampering with sensitive ecological systems that are beyond our cognitive limits.

4.2. The deceleration path (B) If that describes a maximum interpretation of what an accelerating path to sustainability would mean, something has to be said also about the opposite strategy, although its basic characteristics are well covered in the literature [59,62,81]. Some main themes have also already been discussed in the section above on the political ecological critique of modernity. Yet, if we are to understand the fundamentally different outlook that informs this path towards sustainability, it is necessary to examine in turn (1) the ethico-political dimension of these questions, (2) the limits of ecological modernization, and (3) the role that consumption plays in driving ecological destruction. To many political ecologists, modernity is a transgression and violation of our rightful place in the universe. This is a point which cannot be overstated. Thus, many political ecologists would insist that even if space colonization and the like would be theoretically possible, humanity would have learnt nothing. In this reading, the question of sustainability is an ethical test about whether humanity can learn to live in harmony with its natural environment or will forever remain “fallen”. It is a test whose outcome depends on that everyone subjects themselves to the same epistemology and accepts the finite character of our planetary existence ([85]:47). This is not to ridicule. Political ecologists speak with the seriousness of seeing the other side of global capitalism; child labour, maimed workers, and animals shackled in factory farms only to provide new sensations to a small privileged minority. Firm in their belief that these privileges can never be extended to everyone and that capitalism is not possible without exploitation [3]:66), political ecologists demand

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nothing less than that people, and in particular the global elite, “repent” and fundamentally change their behaviour. According to political ecologists, present attempts toward ecological modernization have either already exhausted their full potential or are seeing sharply falling marginal returns [29]:222). Even if some gains in environmental performance are possible in particular sectors, it is argued that they will quickly be offset by losses in others. As much as the Environmental Kuznets Curve may hold for some indicators such as sulphur emissions, political ecologists have amassed a vast amount of statistics to show that the eco-efficiency of rich countries remains insufficient to compensate for their higher consumption rates [80,89]. Based on this analysis, it is not surprising that political ecologists see mass consumption society as inherently unsustainable and seek its rapid demise. Some have been brave enough to acknowledge that this will require sacrifice [52], others have remained focused on painting glossy pictures of what a post-growth world would look like [42]. Yet, and perhaps even for the majority, slowing down modernity is not so much a choice as it is a necessity given that the present order cannot last; “[t]he next era will be one of living within our means, one way or another” ([69]:2). 5. Problems of coordination and motivation For all their apparent differences, the two paths to sustainability discussed in this article share some remarkable similarities. First and most importantly, they are both dependent on sustained international coordination. While it was possible for France and Great Britain to share the costs of developing Concorde, breaking free from the postConcorde world would probably require massive public investments on a scale far beyond the means of any single nation or even group of nations. Similarly, little would have been gained if only a few “ethically conscious” countries would attempt to slow down modernity unless China and the United States would also follow their example. Since it is far more likely that at least some countries would cling to the modern paradigm (in particular by military means), any reversal of modernity seems to require a global ethical shift of unseen proportions. This leads to the second similarity, namely shared radicalism in the face of harsh political realities. The long hope of political ecologism has been that once the global environment begins to rapidly deteriorate, support for eco-radicalism will automatically materialize. While recent work by Stephen Gardiner may offer a somewhat more realistic view on this “saved by disaster”argument [34], the worsening economic crisis has provided new fuel to the belief that people will soon realize the unsustainable nature of the current world system [35]. Such an analysis probably underestimates how deeply entrenched the logic of capital accumulation actually has become and how universally shared its aspirations are, especially as billions of new consumers in Asia are entering the world market [58]. On the other hand, the radicalism of the first acceleration track may seem no less utopian in a post-Concorde world ruled by neoliberal logic and deprived of public purpose. Yet, it is important to recognize that while a reversal of modernity would require deep

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changes in attitudes and behaviours, an acceleration path would draw on the momentum of existing processes, most notably globalization. An instructive historic parallel can perhaps be found in the social democratic response to the horrors of Dickensian capitalism. Instead of demanding that capital owners assume their moral responsibility for the exploitative nature of capitalism and subjected themselves to the same socialist epistemology, social democracy famously recognized that the positive-sum nature of capitalism could be used to drive social progress ([11]:47) and that greater equality would also be in the interest of capital owners as it would provide both a market for their products and a more educated workforce. If that was the great compromise of welfare capitalism in the twentieth century [10], something similar seems called for to overcome the great inequalities generated by the present unguided form of globalization [66,73].

6. Ambivalence Lacking the political commitment needed for either an acceleration or deceleration of modernity, we risk soon encountering abrupt environmental changes that will make all coordinated political action extremely difficult. Already today, as we are suffering from the consequences of an entirely virtual financial crisis, can we see how difficult it can be to maintain rationality and public discourse in hard times [45]. As much as the two paths to sustainability outlined above are ideal types, they also point to the radical political commitment needed for their realization. Yet, any “fastforward” towards progress and “techno-fix” may simply accelerate the rate of ecological destruction. Likewise, misguided attempts to slow down modernity may lead to international conflict or instigate a “cultural war” that may block all meaningful political action. The problem is that we do not know. The only thing we can do is to try to make an informed decision on the basis of historic knowledge and robust assessments of ecological trends. While many critics of environmentalism have zoomed in on details such as the present rate of glacial decline or the interpretation of palaeoclimatic data, these sceptics are missing the larger picture of a species which has overrun all limits of its planetary existence. As we are living through the end of nature [84], the real uncertainty is not whether humans are capable of causing global environmental change but rather about our political chances of doing something about it. Confronted with the dangers of environmental change, most people will instinctively seek a moderate or ambivalent stance, arguing that we should not overblow fears; that we can still “wait and see”. Recent studies have also confirmed that, in many cases, policy-makers are highly risk-averse and may prefer to “do nothing or little rather than do something which might lead them to be blamed for a failure” ([40]:7). However, the non-linear nature of many biophysical systems and the impossibility of meaningfully evaluating the welfare losses that would result from catastrophic environmental change [63,86], make such an ambivalent stance seem deeply irresponsible in the eyes of the future.

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Finally, what is important to recognize is again the limited time which may be available to make these grand decisions. This is particularly true for any attempt to accelerate modernity since the window during which we in theory possess the technology and resources necessary for space colonization may be extremely short (and not merely by cosmic standards). If “we let that opportunity pass without taking advantage of it we will be doomed to remain on the Earth where we will eventually go extinct” ([37]:319), especially if we can expect abrupt environmental changes to have cascading effects on society as a whole and our ability to maintain civilization. Speculative as this risk of “planetary entrapment” may seem, it is not difficult to imagine how we rather soon will have depleted our local resources without advancing sufficiently in terms of technology to sustain spaceflight operations at the necessary level. Astrobiology, and in particular new evidence obtained by gravitational microlensing which further discredits the “Rare Earth hypothesis” [16], also points to the possibility that planetary entrapment may be the most plausible explanation behind Fermi's famous paradox as in why there are no observations of extraterrestrial civilizations [8,13]. 7. Conclusions Concorde stands out as a particularly unusual symbol of ecological salvation. A retired Anglo-French jet may simply not seem like much of a springboard to the future. However, just like Apollo, Concorde symbolized what human ingenuity can achieve if we put the best of our energies and skills behind it. At the same time, by its abysmal environmental record, Concorde also showed the very ambiguity of progress; an ambiguity which has grown ever deeper as humanity has come to ravage and destroy the natural world on a global scale. Although few doubt the unsustainable nature of our current civilizational trajectory, not many seem willing to sacrifice the comforts of modernity, at least not to the extent that would be required to achieve a sustainable and equitable global ecological footprint. Faced with a pluralist world and starkly diverging epistemologies, we need new narratives that can bridge our differences and provide a sense of purpose and meaning to the human condition. Political ecologists have long hoped that a reversal of modernity and new forms of ecocentric ethics can offer that bridge. Yet, four decades of environmentalism have lent little support to that belief. Instead, many greens have retreated into anthropocentrism, advocating small-scale ecological modernization and an end to “over-consumption” while remaining deeply ambivalent about the very modernity that billions of people are now aspiring for. The aim of this article has been to consider the risks of that ambivalence and to provide a new theoretical language to describe the sustainability crisis. In particular, the aim of the article has been to highlight the risk that humanity will fall short of developing the technology necessary to break free of its planetary entrapment yet not halt the rate of environmental destruction to a degree that would ensure our survival here on Earth. This risk of “falling-in-between” has not been adequately addressed in the existing

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