Green utopias: 000 imagining the sustainable society Lisa Garforth PhD The University of York Department of Sociology November 2002 Abstract This thesis concernsthe resourcesavailable to us for thinking about better futures that embrace the need for ecological sustainability whilst remaining open to the enhancementof human well-being. I take a critical approach to the dominant discourse of sustainable development, set out in the World Commission on Environment and Development'sOur CommonFuture (1986), showing the limits of its technocratic, administrative and instrumental orientation to environmental security and human welfare. I go on to examine the possibilities raised by 'deep green' approaches to sustainability. Within this discourse, the future for environmental security and human well-being cannot be basedon current patterns of industrial capitalist development that threaten both the planet's ecology and human survival. In opposition to 'progress', ecocentric philosophy imagines a future built on material sufficiency and locateshuman emancipation in a new and holistic relationship with nonhumannature. Central to the thesis is my argumentthat green utopian fiction offers a distinctive picture of sustainability. Green philosophy boasts a long tradition of utopian thought. However, its theoretical blueprints for change tend to suggestthat the environmental problematic can be solved through the application of abstract reasoning. Drawing on work in utopian studies,I develop a theoretical accountof how literary ecotopias work by stressing the 'experiential' as well as the theoretical dimensions of living sustainably, exploring the prospects for emancipatory ecocentrism through describing the rich textures of an imagined everyday life. Through close textual analysis, I show how ecotopian fictions insist on a reflexive, moral, and politically engagedapproach to the future which contrasts with the extrapolative and managerial visions of sustainable development,as well as the rigid and often excessively 'naturalist' approachesof deep green theory. In doing so, they keep open an intriguing and provocative spacein which novel future possibilities for sustainability can be explored. 2 Table of contents Preface and acknowledgements CHAPTER ONE Introduction: the cloud and the silver lining CHAPTER TWO The dominant discourse of sustainable development 14 INTRODUCTION 14 THE ORIGINS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Our CommonFuture 19 THE'APOCALYPTIC HORIZON'OF ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE 29 The limits to growth 31 'Overshoot and collapse': no-future rhetorics in The Limits to Growth 36 Sustainabledevelopment: recouping a liveable future 42 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THE COLONISATION OFTHEFUTURE 46 Getting growth back in 47 Sustainability as efficiency: the cultural critique 50 Sustainability as a participatory discourse: Local Agenda 21 61 CONCLUSION 70 CHAPTER THREE Radical visions of sustainability: green political thought 72 VARIETIES OF GREEN THOUGHT 74 Environmentalism and ecologism 74 Sub-divisions of radical ecology 78 Autopoietic intrinsic ethics 79 Transpersonal ecology 80 Ecofeminism 81 Social ecology 83 3 Ecocommunalism 85 Bioregionalism 86 Ecocentrism,anthropocentrism and humanism 87 EMANCIPATORY ECOLOGISM 92 STRUCTURES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE 99 A blueprint for survival 100 A sustainableeconomy: the steady-state 103 The limits to growth redux 103 Scarcity and sufficiency 105 The political economy of sustainability 112 First principles: ecocentric ethics Isociopolitical institutions 112 Centralisation or autarky? 114 Living in place: the sustainablecommunity 118 Bioregionalism 119 Embeddedness:the ecological community 120 CONCLUSION 122 CHAPTER 4 Utopia: Imagining sustainability 126 INTRODUCTION 126 ECOLOGISM AND UTOPIA 127 The usesand abusesof utopianism: deep green theory 127 De Geusand utopias ofsufficiency 132 SUSTAINABILITY AND THE FICTIONAL UTOPIA 141 Three ecotopianfictions 142 Green themesin sciencefiction 148 THEORISING THE GREEN NARRATIVE UTOPIA 154 Reading fictional utopias: some definitions and devices 155 Utopias systematicand heuristic 157 The critical utopia 159 Two theories of utopianism 162 Cognitive estrangement 162 The experiential dimension 165 CONCLUSION 169 4 CHAPTER 5 Ecotopian reflexivity: apocalypse, progress and pastoral 171 INTRODUCTION 171 Apocalypse and agency 172 Progressand pastoral 174 'FORWARD, INTO THE PAST?'THE DYNAMICS OF HISTORY IN WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME 186 The 'future perfect' 187 On living in a 'crux-time' 195 UTOPIAN REFLECTIONS: PACIFIC EDGE 199 Utopian reflections 1: Tom 201 Utopian reflections 2: Oscar 205 GENRE AND HISTORY IN AL WAYSCOMING HOME 209 Utopian reflections: Pandora 211 Time, history and progress 214 The Cities ofMind and Man 215 Stone Telling's story 218 CHAPTER6 Ecotopia 224 INTRODUCTION 224 STRUCTURES OF SUSTAINABILITY: THE STEADY-STATE 227 POLITICAL AUTONOMY AND DECENTRALISATION 242 EMBEDDEDNESS: UTOPIA AND (RE)INHABITATION 253 CONCLUSION 272 CHAPTER 7: Conclusion: the 'phantom studies' of the sustainable society 274 Bibliography 279 5 List of figures Fig. 1: The 'heyiya-if' 255 Preface and Acknowledgments This thesis began with the simple and, I once thought, rather straightforward observation that reading literary utopias was infinitely preferable to reading ecological philosophy as a way of exploring green ideas. The developmentof the argumentsthat follow was in large part motivated by my curiosity about why that might be the case. In some ways, perhaps,I find myself no further forward: the process of reading and the pleasures it yields remain mysterious; I have rememberedthat, as a sociologist, generalising from my own experience is an untenable and unreliable epistemological option; and I have even grudgingly learned to acknowledge that some people might prefer theory to novels. But I have begun to clarify, I hope, the distinctive qualities of some important discoursesthat contribute to our understandingof how we live with nature, and how we might do it more carefully and gracefully in the future. It did all begin with the novels, though, and for that reason I'm indebted to the work of Marge Piercy, Kim Stanley Robinson and especially Ursula K Le Guin for giving me something to think about. I gratefully acknowledge the funding of the Department of Sociology, and the support of Professor Steven Yearley, my supervisor, without whom this project would never have been started. I also thank Andy Tudor, without whom it almost certainly would not have been finished. Thanks are also due to all my family for their unflagging faith and support, to Kristen, Derrol, Martin and Mandy for coffee, encouragementand insight, and lastly to Chris, who put up with it. Parts of Chapters 2,4,5 and 6 have previously been published in my essay 'Ecotopian Fiction and the SustainableSociety' in (ed) John Parham (2002) The Environmental Tradition in English Literature Aldershot; Ashgate. 7 CHAPTER ONE Introduction: the cloud and the silver lining At some point in the late sixties and early seventies,the Western world began to be confronted with what has become known as the 'environmental crisis'. Thanks in part to new and sophisticated global monitoring techniques and the outsider's perspective made available by pictures of the blue planet hanging in space,the pressurethat human societies were putting on the earth's biophysical systems began to become common knowledge. The intensity of this early manifestation of environmental consciousnesshas faded somewhat; some would argue that we have turned our attention to other matters, others that the crisis in ecology has been absorbedand normalised. Nonetheless,we now live with the shadowof ecological breakdown and the possibility of catastrophiccollapse. The consequencesof two centuries of industrial expansion are visible just about anywhere you look: in the landfill sites that store up the detritus of consumer capitalism, in the polluted lakes and rivers of Eastern Europe; in the heated debates over the development of nuclear reactors to fuel another round of industrial development, and in the degraded air quality and absence of green spacesthat define many urban conurbations. It might seem that when we consider what we know about the physical state of the world and the way we live with it, the future seemseither an unthinkable or an utterly miserable prospect. Whether framed in terms of the sudden, dramatic disasters associatedwith nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, or the slow, steady decline implied by current scenarios of global climate change, it appears that things can only get worse. And indeed, a brief look at the history of environmental thought since the late sixties will turn up a good deal of doom and gloom, a lot of catastrophicpredictions, and a pervasive feeling that the end, one way or another, is nigh. At stake is the survival of both the human speciesand 8 the earth itself. What is perhaps less obvious is that for the last quarter of a century, environmental discourseshave been equally concernedwith recouping a better future from what look at first glance to be rather unpromising materials. Alongside the threatenedenvironmental apocalypse and the growing concern over unsupportablerates of resource depletion and pollution, a range of voices have been insisting that not only can the earth be saved, but that the environmental crisis can prompt a reconceptualisationof the good life for human societies. It is these attempts to find routes out of the environmental crisis, to map the possibilities of better, greener,futures, that