Global Warming and Global Politics
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Abstract
In their respective chapters Peter Wehling and Jobst Conrad argue that up to the present the debate on sustainability has neither triggered a fundamental reorientation in the modernityand modernisation-oriented discourse of contemporary sociology, nor offered any solutions for the social, economic and ecological problems of late modern societies. Fritz Reusswig tries to give meaning to the idea of sustainability by sketching 16 ‘syndromes’ of (unsustainable) global change. Wolfgang Sachs highlights the conflict between the social and ecological dimensions within the concept of sustainability, and points towards the increasing replication of the unsustainable) north/south divide (as rich/poor) within the industrialised northern societies. Christoph Görg (on the concept of ‘sustainable use’ of nature) and Karl Bruckmeier (on global NGO-networks) argue that established institutional structures and power relations represent insurmountable obstacles on the path to genuine sustainability. Their concern is confirmed by Thomas Kluge and Jens Dangschat, who focus on local water regimes and the ideal of the sustainable city. Finally, the last three chapters (Günter Warsewa, Roland Bogun, Eckart Hildebrandt) concentrate on individual life-styles and explore the potential for and effect of often demanded life-style changes. All three articles come to the conclusion that the life-style approach to sustainability is hardly promising; firstly because the life-style concept itself is highly ambiguous and controversial among sociologists, and secondly because for most individuals there is very little scope for ecological adaptations of the personal way of life. The more or less evident message that is echoed in many contributions to this book is that contemporary societies are indeed going through a phase of radical structural change, but that this is by no means the long desired ecological transformation of late modern society. On the one hand such a transformation is obstructed by normative problems with the concept of sustainability. On the other hand the ongoing process of economic globalisation provides a framework of conditions which are extremely adverse to sustainability. Contrary to the idealist notion that ecological issues have to be discussed and resolved in close connection with social issues, the industrialised countries will, for the foreseeable future, confront their ecological problems and limitations by a strategy of ‘more of the same’ for the rich and social exclusion for the poor. Although most of its contributors are trying to be very positive about sustainability as a new developmental goal and ideal, the book amounts to a powerful statement that in both sociology and political practice, sustainability has not yet arrived and is not even on its way.