“Post-sustainability”: The Emergence of the Social Sciences as the Hand-Maidens of Policy

Abstract

The background to the current financial crisis and the problems ­surrounding policies to combat climate change through transitions out of dependence on carbon are examined. This review provides an example of how the quest for sustainability has invoked new policy tools, and the limitations of these tools in accounting for human behavior and agency. After providing a critique of current sustainable development policy, I suggest that there are fundamental flaws in the way policy has addressed both agency and structure in relation to climate change. I argue for a need to draw away from the path dependence that has served to define mainstream policy initiatives focused on individual consumer behavior, and argue for a stronger recognition of structural inequalities at the international and national level, as the cornerstone of an alternative, more sustainable, political stance. If we have now arrived at a “tipping point” on climate change, then we need to address the problem of decarbonization through an approach that goes well beyond market “mechanisms,” and requires both social and political mobilization.