Unsustainability

The increasingly number of crises in rapid succession has a somewhat eschatological quality. We have known for a long time that our non-sustainable model is no longer tenable. Yet many climate activists and sustainability researchers insist that a socio-ecological transformation can still prevent the worst.

This promise, Ingolfur Blühdorn argues, fails to recognise the reality of late modernity. The eco-emancipatory project of transformation is defeated by its own logic and internal contradictions. According to Blühdorn’s diagnosis, this double-sided unsustainability leads to a new modernity beyond liberal core values such as majority and participation. This development has been underway for a long time but is not yet considered a major catastrophe.