Envisioning World Sustainability Ebook Outline

Summary: This page provides an outline for the proposed ebook, Envisioning World Sustainability. The master essay extends the outline.

WSY Home | Ebook Home | Master Narrative
TOC: HWS Play | Introduction | Anthropocene | Technosphere | Noosphere

Envisioning World Sustainability as a Three Act Play ^

Think of this project as a play in three acts:

First Act, the Anthropocene is introduced as the setting for the action depicted here. The Anthropocene is the name for the period of earth history that we have entered, recognizing the sheer force of humanity on the planet. Thus, earth history and social history converge, setting up the underlying dynamic of Social Ecology. This adds distinctive loft and depth right at the start.

Second Act: The Technosphere is the next big idea. This comes straight from The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger, Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford, and The Ecology of Freedom by Murray Bookchin. The Technosphere identifies human domination as the engine of destruction of the Anthropocene. Operationally, this puts the imperative for economic growth up front from here on. The potential for human development in harmony with nature as second nature ( Bookchin in Biehl) clashes with the politics, economics, and ideology of physical growth in the scale of matter and energy. The dramatic climax is found in the Second Act.

Third Act: Resolution, most likely collapse of the carrying capacity of Earth, with a severe restriction in human numbers and quality of life. But there is a saving grace (Holderin): the Noosphere emerges out of networking of collective human intelligence, social learning on a global scale. Within the context of the Noosphere we can discuss such topics as (1) the political economics of World Sustainability; (2) the Social Ecology that offers an alternative to growth and to centralized systems of rule; (3) a strategic sustainability that charts a feasible course that heads toward World Sustainability. Otherwise, the lights go out.

The brief synopsis is explained in a working master narrative.

I. Introduction to World Sustainability ^

1. Preface: Lays out intent, mission, style, tone, voice, and introduces the image of sustainability as magnetic north, a metaphor that intends to overcome petty divisiveness.
2. Why hacking world sustainability: improvisation, flexibility, adaptability
3. The Anthropocene introduced for development in next major division
4. Need for a global ethics that distinguishes ends (Telos) from means (Technos, politics, economics)
5. Hallmarks of HWS: comprehensive (Triple Bottom Line), urgent, depth (philosophical orientation), strategic
6. Centrality of the political economy of growth, linking to the important Meadows critique of growth as continued by many others, such as Bill McKibben

II. The Anthropocene ^

1. Introduces another big theme, Earth history: geosphere ==> biosphere ==> noosphere. The Anthropocene starts with the Industrial Revolution (burning of fossil fuels), but intensifies at the end of World War II with the Age of Acceleration. (Humanity may have crossed the crucial tipping point around 1985.)
2. The institutional regime spawned at Bretton Woods in July 1944 formalizes the acceleration of globalization, but has been itself inverted. Nationalism has been undermined by economic globalization. The commodification of the entire planet has intensified. Neoliberalism has been installed as the operating system of human exploitation.
3. The notion of sustainable development as defined by the Brundtland Commission Report, Our Common Future (1987). The grand idea of sustainable development was corrupted by co-optation by corporate interests at WSSD in J'Burgh in 2002. The U.N. process last manifest itself at COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009 --- a degeneration that makes the Anthropocene even more problematic and has betrayed the promise of sustainability defined by Brundtland.
4. Quick round-up of conditions of humanity and Earth that define a global crisis. There is no attempt at raw empiricism, but a summary of trends around climate change, Peak Oil, Peak Water, land and biome degradation. The usual stuff. (Here, my accompanying web site will monitor and report changes.)

III. The Technosphere ^

1. The term Technosphere comes from Lewis Mumford but was most trenchantly developed by Martin Heidegger as instrumentalism at a species and global level: means dominate ends, Technos over Telos. Later, Murray Bookchin used the concept of domination as a critique of modernity as the engine for Social Ecology, merging freedom and ecology. The term identifies the global crisis as an intensifying human preoccupation with physical growth within the framework of globalization.
2. Overshoot: Human inhabitation has burdened the Earth such that Earth's carrying capacity has begun to fray. The shorthand for this is: Welt > Erde, or worlds (human habitation through culture) exceed Earth's capacities to support life. But overshoot is rooted in the unrelenting assault by the Technosphere. Bioengineering is thus just another Technos that reinforces the essential dynamic.
3. The human exploitation of nature is not sufficient to understanding World Sustainability. Domination and hierarchy are foundational. This provides a segue into the social realm often neglected by a strictly scientific treament of sustainability. The oppression of women remains central to understanding domination and World Sustainability. Class- and race-based exclusion has been exacerbated by globalization and increases inequality.
4. The limits, perversity, and futility of economic growth makes these themes operational. The doctrine and institutional regime of neoliberalism must be critically examined. At this point, the regimes and the imperative for economic globalization becomes essential to this project.

IV. Resolution: The Noosphere, Social Ecology, Strategic Sustainability ^

1. The overarching idea of the noosphere: from geosphere to biosphere to noosphere. The noosphere evolutionary grounds by which a vision of reinhabitation of the Anthropocene can be identified.
2. Our language will be couched in terms such as telos, phusis, poesis, technos, and polis, which the language of the originary social ecology as concieved by Murray Bookchin.
3. The new operating system of economic globalization that attempts the alchemy of inverting a destructive tendency into a means that has the potential to support World Sustainability. The basic model is from the writings of Karl Polanyi.
4. Public Policy for World Sustainability, as unlikely as that sounds after the recent COP15 failure in Copenhagen and the collapse of the U.N. process that includes Brundtland: The rules of the game must support sustainability even though World Sustainability must always be decentralized --- no global government scheme will be promoted here. Tobin Tax on financial speculation, anyone?
5. Strategic Sustainability: Time, perhaps two generations, is short and a reactionary push back can be expected as World Sustainability gathers momentum. The author's experience as an advocate planner at the regional level and as a labor union president has steeped him in preactical strategic thinking. This will come to bear here as an essential payoff of all of the above.

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