( copied across from http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/environmental-news-discussion-forum/13840-i-do-call-myself-sustainability-thinker.html )

I think the recent shift in sustainability thinking - from a concept grounded in development theory, epitomised by Brundtland, Agenda 21 and Millennium Development Goals, to "oooh, carbon dioxide, we're all gonna die" - is a dangerous one.

This shift occurred about two years ago; think 'Revenge of Gaia' (James "Grim Jim" Lovelock) and IPCC FAR S4PM. At this point, climate change had been on my professional agenda for about 5 years, in terms of energy efficiency and adaptation. Suddenly, sustainability was all about reducing CO2 emissions. In the UK, sustainability consultants no longer needed to know about Agenda 21: the title was reduced to the level of buliding services engineer and carbon bean-counter.

Now, take a step back. With current fever over GHGs, we forget what was achieved during the 1990s. The internet age brought communication between activists to an unprecedented level. This culminated in the Seattle protests of 1999, http://www.globalissues.org/article/46/wto-protests-in-seattle-1999.

I have heard it said that 911 and it's aftermath - reduced liberties, increased military spending etc - was orchestrated to quell this uprising of the proletariat. Certainly, it was a good excuse to introduce another scary and pointless war - the "war on terrorism". What gets me is, Rajandra Pachauri was installed at the IPCC early in 2002. Thus, while the world's attention is focused on Iraq, Pachauri et al have 5 years to bribe, cajole and otherwise convince many organisations, scientists and media organisations about the urgency of climate change.

Yet another fear agenda: no-one has said it so far as I'm aware , but this is a 'war on carbon'.

The mechanism of this agenda is complicated (obviously), and the way in which this knowledge spreads among peoples, countries and institutions and - importantly - elites is being studied by some academics.

We must not forget that the world has been aware of the rise of China and India for a long long time. I once read a paper that had a quote from some English Lord around 1875, along the lines of "Once China has organised herself along the lines of modernity, she will overshadow all previous Empires".

Are the powers of the world - not simply the US, we must also remember the Commonwealth, World Bank, IMF etc, all ultimately run by the West - simply going to let go of their power? Well, of course not, as evidenced by the rise and fall of all Empires, which are usually accompanied by very severe wars. Why should it be any different this time?

We live in a world where the post-WWII organisations - UN & Bretton Woods - are failing. The monetary system that started in 1971 is also failing. The world is organising itself along new lines: global governance, and the various forms it may take, has been discussed among academics for a long time, are we to believe that the various elites in the world are not also aware of this?

Take this quote from Oran Young, discussing the effectiveness of institutions, written in 1992:

"I use "hegemony" to mean a structure of values and understandings about the nature of order that permeates a whole system of states and non-state entities. In a hegemonic order these values are relatively stable and unquestioned. They appear to most actors as the natural order. Such a structure of meanings is underpinned by a structure of power, in which most probably one state is dominant but that state's dominance in itself is not sufficient to create hegemony. Hegemony derives from the ways of doing and thinking of the dominant social strata of the dominant state or states insofar as these ways of doing and thinking have acquired the acquiescence of the dominant social strata of other states."

"Hegemony expands and is maintained by the success of the dominant social strata's practices and the appeal they exert to other social strata - through the process that Gramsci described as passive revolution. Hegemony frames thought and thereby circumscribes action."

(Oran R. Young "The effectiveness of international institutions: hard cases and critical variables"
in Rosenau & Czempiel "Governance without government: order and change in world politics" Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Hegemony frames thought and thereby circumscribes action... Is it not possible that this carbon agenda - a very specific agenda created even before the "scientific consensus" emerged in 2007 - is being used to serve the interests of dominant structures of power? After all, the main players in this are Britain, Germany and the US. What do they have in common?

Oooookaaaay! All that said, I am not scared by this, I more concerned that well-meaning people are being led up the proverbial garden path, and that this agenda distracts us away from what I consider to be more important, which is feeding, clothing and educating the world's children (all this must be done with consideration for their traditions in mind; I advocate women's agency, not the brainwashing of children to Western ideals).

I also do not believe there are too many people on the planet. Some scientists are producing scary looking graphs, but for example take CO2 out of the ecological footprint, and we are not stretching the biocapacity that far. (ecological footprinting, btw, has a significant proponent in the WWF, which has connections to House of Windsor and Exxon. Hmm...).

Ok I think this has gone on long enough, if you've even got this far! The military-industrial complex won't win, there are too many of us and technology is advancing too rapidly. I hope people begin to realise soon that there's enough food for us all, we CAN feed, clothe and educate everyone, and not everyone needs to be dragged into Western economic systems. The world is not about to end; yes, we humans impact on the planet, but this is only bad if you mentally separate humans from nature. Evolution is driven by struggle.

Trade is as old as humanity, and if we can hold on to our freedom to trade perhaps we can overcome all tyranny...

Ok, my girlfriend just burnt my soapboax...