• Wikipedia entry for 'environmental contract'
• Article on the environmental contract by David Miliband and Douglas Alexander for BBC News Online’s ‘Green Room’
• Entry on David Miliband's blog covering the environmental contract
• Article on 'environmental citizenship' in the Goodenough series
• Report of the Sustainable Consumption Round Table, I Will If You Will
• Government's Sustainable Development website 
• Sustainable Community Action wiki   - Linking up community action for sustainability worldwide

‘Until the last ton of fossil fuel has burnt to ashes’: One Planet Living and Political Philosophy (Defra - Science Strategy Team)

The idea is know as One Planet Living. It’s rather simple really: if everybody in the world lived as we do in the UK, we would need three planets to support us. It is often presented as the latest fad in Green political thought. In fact, its an idea that dates back several centuries.

Some of the greatest philosophers – while using different language – were aware that resources are scarce; that we have to reduce consumption lest we rob future generations of their livelihood and more.

Do we need philosophers to tell us that? Indeed, what could we possibly learn from the philosophers? Often they seem like dinosaurs who stalk the political scene seemingly impervious to the natural selection of new ideas. But sometimes it is as if they speak through the ages; as if they have somehow – and perhaps inavertedly - glimpsed a timeless truth.

The environment is no exception. Great thinkers like Max Weber, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke were all acutely aware of ‘green’ political issues. Although they lived in societies very different from our own.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the Whig politician who became the patron saint for one-nation conservatives, famously described “history a pact between the dead, the living and the yet unborn” (1).

At a time when we are debating the idea of ‘an environmental contract’, it provides food for thought that philosophers in days gone by believed that the present generation must act as stewards of heritage, on behalf of our ancestors and to the yet to be born generations.

Edmund Burke was not alone in writing and thinking about the environment. John Locke – the ‘Father of Liberalism’ and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), the Swiss thinker who more than anyone else inspired the French Revolution were equally concerned about the environment and about our tendency to deplete the natural resources.

Like practically all the classical philosophers, Rousseau was no armchair theorist, but a thinker who was practically engaged in everyday policy-making. Writing about deforestation in a blueprint for a new constitution for Corsica, Rousseau stressed that the inhabitants of that small Mediterranean island should “establish in good time a policy for the forests and regulate felling in such a way that it equals consumption” (2).

In what could be seen as a precursor to modern responses to environmental critics a la Bjørn Lomborg, Rousseau conceded that at present “the island abounds with wood suited for building material as well as for fuel”, but, he went on to say,

“One should not exhaust this abundance and leave the usage and the cutting to the proprietors. In the same measure as the population grows and the cultivation multiplies a rapid devastation of the woods will take place” (3)

Of course, circumstances were rather different in Europe before the industrial revolution. Every epoch faces its own problems. We cannot – and should not- extrapolate Rousseau and Burke’s thinking to the challenges of our own time, but the thinking of the classics provide inspiration and show that we are not the first generation to be concerned about scarce resources.

When promoting the film An Inconvenient Truth,former US Vice-President Al Gore recently noted that we wanted to establish environmental concerns as an issue that cut across party-political divides.

What is particularly interesting for those who look at the environment with the eye of the political philosopher, is that concern for the environment in general, and scarce resources in particular, came from all across the political and ideological spectrum; from the right as well as from the left

Burke became the godfather of modern conservatism, Rousseau inspired social democrats and John Locke was the father of liberalism. Yet, whatever else separated them they were in agreement that the Earth’s resources are not inexhaustible. Three ideological traditions; one concern for the environment

“In the beginning all the World was America”, wrote John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government (4). Not geographically, of course, but in the sense that the World had seemingly unlimited resources. But even at the end of the 17^th Century, Locke was aware that resources were not limitless.

Rather than being an apostle of unlimited growth and material greed, Locke in fact stressed that individuals only “had a right to appropriate each one to himself, of the things of nature, as he could use” (5)

A quote does not establish a fact! We need not change our own behaviour just because classical thinkers from different ideological traditions shared a concern for the environment. But the consensus among great minds on the environment is an indication, perhaps, that one-planet thinking is not an ideological idea but concept which should unite us in a quest for meeting the challenges.

Given this pedigree, it is puzzling – to put it mildly – that the environmental thinkers of the present day pay scarce attention to the thinkers of yesteryear. To be sure, it could be that the views of the classics are obsolete and deserve to sink into oblivion. But it is equally possible, that their thoughts can inspire us in our endeavours to come up with solutions for our current problems.

More than 100 years ago Max Weber viewed the achievements of advanced industrial society mostly as a Pyrrhic victory where the conquest of rationality came at such a high cost to human society that all individuals were subordinated to the cold pursuit of capital gains. Presciently, he forecast that mechanical and machine production might one day exhaust itself. Or, as he wrote in his famous book The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism:

“Tied to the technical and economic conditions at the foundation of mechanical and machine production, this [modern economic order] determines the style of life of all individuals born into it not only those directly engaged in earning a living. This pulsating mechanism does so with overwhelming force. Perhaps it will continue to do so until the last ton of fossil fuel has burnt to ashes” (6).

The thinkers from yesteryear do not solve our problems, but they point out that concern previous generations too were aware that we cannot – environmentally speaking – live beyond our means. If nothing else, the philosophers tell us that it is high time to heed their warnings.

References

1. Edmund Burke (1791) reflections on the Revolution in France, London, Penguin, 288

2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1764) ‘Projet sur la Constitution pour la Corse’ in Bernard Gagebin and Marcel Raymond (Editors) Oeuvres Complétes du Jean-Jacques Rosseau Vol.III, Paris, Gallimard, p.928.

3. Ibid.

4. John Locke (1790) Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.301

5. Locke, Two Treatises, 294.

6. Max Weber (2002) The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, 3^rd Edition, Roxbury Publishing Co, LA, p.123.

MATT QVORTRUP 2006-09-13At its heart the shared ground between conservatism and green ideas is in scepticism towards ever-increasing progress. By contrast, Enlightenment theories of liberalism and socialism share a notion of unending progress based on the accumulation of material goods. Such theories have no concept of enough.

This version of the good life and progress is understandable, since material deprivation for masses of people is still in living memory in industrial countries and is a living reality for millions in developing countries. But endless material progress on the model of advanced industrial countries cannot be applied to the rest of the world because it is simply unsustainable at a global scale.

If the Greens are to consolidate their gains and expand, they need to recognise that part of their message is a conservative one. It is deeply attractive to certain conservative instincts and this should not be a matter for embarrassment but for celebration.

The image of green politics as left-wing and radical not only drives away potential supporters, it more importantly straitjackets new politics into old categories.