Abstract
What is sustainable development? Why is it an issue? Ideally, what needs to be done ? and Practically, what can be done? are answered through the Critical theory of Paul Piccone and his colleagues at the journal, Telos, particularly Tim Luke who has made an extended critique of sustainable development.1
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Critical theory means many things, some of which stand in sharp contrast to the neo-Adornian brand articulated in Telos framework. This chapter has kept the journal’s capitalization of the term. Although having the same roots, the Telos version of Critical theory bears little resemblance to the much better known Habermassian variant.
The following three paragraphs are based on Piccone (1978, 48); Piccone (1987/88, 6-8); and Piccone (1991, 34-35).
Piccone (1991, 17).
Marcuse (1965) and Sinfield (1992). As for cycles of overregulation and underregulation, they occur this way: A government (agency, court, legislature) proceeds to adopt more and more regulations to manage what are seen as severe problems of concern. As the number of regulations increase, the regulatory process becomes more timeconsuming and the pace of implementing regulations slows down. The slower the implementation and the faster the growth of problems, the more problems appear unregulated. The more underregulation, the greater the pressure on government to micromanage problems by adopting even tougher regulations. But more numerous and stringent regulations slow even further the pace of implementation, and the cycle begins anew. For a sampling of the literature on micromanagement, see Mendeloff (1988, 1-17); Gregory (1989); and Wilson (1989, 241-244 and 366-368).
Luke (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press). For an early discussion of these issues, see the interchange between Barry Commoner and members of the Telos group in the section on “The Totally Administered Society,” Telos 78 (Spring, 1978), pp. 169-184.
Luke (1995, 207).
Ibid (213).
Ibid (437).
Ibid (271-272).
Ibid (228-229). See also the discussion on “analytic tip” in Roe (1994b).
Luke (Chapter 10).
Ibid (451).
Rubenstein (1993, 585-586).
Salwasser (588).
Levin (unnumbered page)
Meyer and Helfman (571).
Holling (554; highlights in the original).
Even if this system complexity were not real, from a Critical theory perspective New Class ecologists would have very likely invented the concept as a form of artificial negativity to justify their continued work. In this view, major US problems are complicated because they “arise,” not to be solved, but to keep the New Class busy.
Mangel et al (573).
Piccone (1987/88, 7-8).
See, for example, Mooney and Sala, Mangel et al, and Ehrlich and Daily.
See, for example, Meyer and Helfman (570). “Include human motivation by developing linkages with the social sciences, particularly economics, to develop a comprehensive transdisciplinary synthesis,” is how Costanza (580) puts what is a wonderful, albeit unintentional, illustration of New Class artificial negativity at work—as if a major problem with resource managerialism is the need to link human motivation to the social sciences!
Respectively, Mangel et al (574); Meyer and Helfman (569). There is one sense in which sustainable systems and organic communities are similar, i.e., some would describe each as “self-correcting,” though in fundamentally different ways For a few, the appeal of sustainable development is the promise that human systems can mimic ecosystems, in that they both can be self-correcting, i.e., self-sustaining. “Participants,” to one recent conference on ecosystem management, “focused on the need to develop solutions that enhanced the flexibility of the system itself to respond to natural fluctuations and’ self-correct’” (California Urban Water Agencies, “Ecosystem Management: The Bay-Delta Solution,” Final Report (July 1995), p. ES-2. Indeed, it is fairly easy to see in such comments an appeal to systems that need only a minimum of human interventions, New Class or otherwise (for more, see Chapter 4). The “corrections” put into place through organic communities and populism, of course, are nothing without those human interventions.
Lee (561).
Respectively, Mangel (573); Meyer and Helfman (569).
See, for example, Zedier (578); Costanza (580).
See Meyer and Helfman (570); Slobodkin (572).
Slobodkin (572).
Roe (1994b).
Robert Solow, the Nobel economist, captures this persecutory tone when, in his discussion of sustainable development, he complains that “there is something faintly phony about deep concern for the future combined with callousness about the state of the world today” (quoted in Levin, unnumbered page).
See, for example, Pitelka and Pitelka, and Rubenstein. It should go without saying that some ecologists see the “technocratic ideas” that motivate sustainable development (e.g., Lee, 560).
For example, Salwasser (588).
Mangel et. al., for example, equate ecosystems with “renewable resources” (573).
For more, see Roe (1995).
Global warming is discussed in Roe (1994b). 35 Piccone (1991); D’Amico and Piccone (1992).
Ibid.
See Piccone (1991, 38ff) on the importance of territory to organically constituted communities. For a criticism of Piccone’s notion of community, see Fortmann and Roe (1993). For a very Picconesque argument about the difference between community and management, but from a different perspective, see Post (1995, 3-15).
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Roe, E. (1998). Sustainable Development and Critical Theory. In: Taking Complexity Seriously. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5497-4_5
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