Sustainability Through Unsustainability? Unintended Consequences and Emancipatory Catastrophism

Abstract

It is common knowledge among social scientists that, far from being the consequent outcome of linear processes, the modern age is the age of side effects, characterized by unintentional developments and paradoxical results. A prime example of this is the well-known dynamic of Faustian Power, which eternally wills evil yet eternally works well, given that sometimes the full realization of certain (objectionable and dangerous) values, exacerbating their contradictions, may lead to their (beneficial) failure. It is exactly in this regard that Ulrich Beck recently wrote about the concept of “emancipatory catastrophism”—conceived as the positive reformation of modes of thought, lifestyles, consumer habits, law, economy, science and politics (i.e., a reformation of capitalism as a whole) triggered by such negative things as climate change and global environmental crises. In this light, commonplace “good” might be conceived as being the by-product of “bad” premises. Beck’s idea is that Anthropocene issues have the potential for instituting an effective transformation of modern societies—a transformation that is long overdue but that previously seemed impossible. From this perspective, this chapter aims to explain how the global climate risk could actually usher in a rebirth of modernity; that is, how certain desirable social phenomena (e.g., environmentalism, sustainability, ethical activism, degrowth, etc.) may be engendered as a consequence of some destructive developments, initially as mere reactive responses, then like full-blown autonomous phenomena. By emphatically linking emancipatory catastrophism and unintended consequences, this chapter shows that “sustainability through unsustainability” is a mechanism that is paradoxical only at first sight, having, instead, a sophisticated theoretical rationale as well as a certain amount of sociological appeal.