Rethinking Sustainability in the Anthropocene

Climate change is provoking a pragmatic turn in our approach to sustainability, resulting in a more pluralistic debate about both the desirable sustainable society and the means by which it is to be achieved. The traditional green approach, founded on a moral view of the socio-natural relationship and inclined to a radical transformation of the current social system, now seems misguided. In this regard, sustainability should be considered as an inherently open principle for guiding social action that also serves as a framework for discussing the kind of society we wish to have. The distinction between an open and a closed account of sustainability aims to reflect this. But, at the same time, sustainability should go beyond the common distinctions between strong and weak versions of the principle, turning substitutability into a much more flexible criterion that puts cultivated (rather than natural and human-made) capital at its centre. Sustainability is thus to be freed from nature. Adopting a post-natural stance with regard to sustainability is a key part of the much-needed renewal of environmentalism itself.