Sustainability and the rationalisation of the environment¹

Abstract

Sustainability is the way to overcome the ecological crisis, but as it is presently conceived it will be merely an extension of the general process of rationalisation. Green thought has identified rationalisation as the expression of an orientation to everyday life which has led to the ecological crisis. This is principally the domination by experts and technocrats and through scientism the exclusion of normative debate from social and political life. Therefore, sustainability will fail to overcome the very problem it is supposed to solve. Beck on reflexive modernity and Giddens on de‐traditionalisation analyse the conditions for transcending the constraints of rationalisation. De‐traditionalisation requires the active consideration of ‘how to live’, which necessitates the asking of normative questions. To Beck the ecological crisis produces the conditions for a critique of the existing social order. This critique provides the possibility of an ‘ecological democracy’ in which through ‘practical reason’ normative issues as well as problem solving are dealt with in a non‐reductionist manner thus allowing the creation of universal interests. Given that sustainability is the universal interest, such a process will generate individual and collective commitment to more sustainable ways of living.