What have we learned?

What have we left open, unresolved, or confused?

Where should we go next?

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“Later” was a luxury for previous generations and civilizations. It meant that you could paint the same landscape, see the same animals, eat the same fruit, climb the same trees, fish the same rivers, enjoy the same weather or rescue the same endangered species that you did when you were a kid -- but just do it later, whenever you got around to it.

If there is one change in global consciousness that seems to have settled in over just the past couple of years, it is the notion that later is over. Later is no longer when you get to do all those same things -- just on your time schedule. Later is now when they’re gone -- when you won’t get to do any of them ever again, unless there is some radical collective action to mitigate climate change, and maybe even if there is.

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The move is the latest in a series of administration decisions pushing back thorny environmental matters beyond next November’s presidential election to try to avoid the heat from opposing interests — business lobbies or environmental and health advocates — and to find a political middle ground. President Obama delayed a review of the nation’s smog standard until 2013, pushed back offshore oil lease sales in the Arctic until at least 2015 and blocked new regulations for coal ash from power plants. J. Broder and D. Frosch, NYT, November 2011

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Movement for federal action Shared public goods (trees, parks, air,

living things) Shared responsibility for environment and

each other Movement against federal action

Limited and private goods; individual choice to develop or conserve

No national environmental ethic, only market

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“Death of Environmentalism” Which environmentalism?

Two dynamics Localization

▪ Our jobs▪ Our backyards ▪ Our resources▪ Our ecosystems and landscapes▪ Our rights and sovereignties▪ Justice: locally

Globalization▪ Sustainability of the planet▪ Human existence ▪ Human health▪ Biodiversity▪ Endangered species▪ Free movement of goods and services ▪ Carbon markets▪ Equity: globally

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Local environmentalists Do not want local environmental autonomy to be

subordinated to global imaginations (free trade, endangered species, biodversity, carbon markets)

Want to make their own ethical choices about how to live with nature

Global environmentalists Believe in the power of science to create universal

baselines for environmental policy Want to override selfish local particularism in the name of

global common goods Anti-environmentalists

Question valuations of nature as excessive; advocate different cost-benefit analysis

Object to certain forms of global governance if these are seen as infringing on sovereignty (but not to liberating markets)

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Science Grand narrative: speaking truth to power Splintering: uncertainty, ignorance, precaution

Economics Grand narrative: incentives, efficiency, market (not regulation) Splintering: distributive inequality, inefficiency, imperfect markets

Law Grand narrative: express/enforce the public will Splintering: conflicting aims, lack of public will, international

weakness or imposition (Goldman, Biermann) Ethics

Grand narrative: teach people to do what’s right Splintering: multiple views of rightness

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How to think about human rights in relation to the environment Entitlements

▪ Minimum requirements for all▪ E.g., “right to life” in India includes right to

pollution-free water and a healthy environment Knowledges

▪ Epistemic rights▪ Right to have local knowledge respected, heard,

taken into account (cf. Makah, Havasupai, French anti-GMO farmers)

Imaginations▪ Right to imagine the future and “the greater

common good” (Roy, McKibben)11/30/11 ESPP-78 8

Energy systems for a single planet.

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“You talk very little about life, you talk too much about survival. It is very important to remember that when the possibilities for life are over, the possibilities for survival start. And there are peoples here in Brazil, especially in the Amazon region, who still live, and these people that still live don’t want to reach down to the level of survival.” WCED, Our Common Future, 1987, p. 40).

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Acknowledge multiple rationalities Comparison: cross-temporal, cross-cultural, cross-sectoral

Question the “ought” that accompanies the “is” Framing: of problems, solutions, possibilities

Learn to tell different stories about the past and the future The bad: the undesirable, the avoidable, the

impermissible The good: the attainable, the feasible, the just

Build new environmental imaginaries Constitutionalizing the environment: globally

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Science Participatory science, local knowledge Democratizing the knowledge of global institutions

Economics Beyond the neo-classical paradigm: Ostrom vs Hardin Making equitable markets in non-marketable things (GHGs)

Law Definition of new matters of concern: active legal

metaphysics Extension of rights: individuals, groups, other species

Ethics Questioning whose ideas of “the good” should prevail (Roy) Wider deliberation on public values: indigenous rights;

ethics beyond the nation state

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We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in the apple-treeNot known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.

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