Environmental History as Sustainability Science

Abstract

Industrial civilization exerted global dominium during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is now undeniably suffering a deep crisis, its foremost myths gradually collapsing one by one. Industrial growth has visibly failed to close the gap between rich and poor countries, clearly revealing its inability to connect economic growth, industrialization, and wellbeing. Social inequalities have not been solved either. Although they receded during the peak of Fordism, inequalities are currently surging again, reaching even a growing share of rich country populations (Milanovic in World Dev 31:667–683, 2003 and La era de las desigualdades, 2006; Acemoglu and Robinson in Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty, crown business, 2012). In stark contrast to misery and violence, the countless commodities offered on markets—now boosted by globalization—are fostering feelings of deprivation globally, thrusting migratory movements and endangering the positional privileges of affluent countries. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of political organization that accompanied industrial capitalism are clearly showing signs of exhaustion. Indeed, substantial shares of sovereignty are being continuously transferred to the realms of transnational decision-making. Meanwhile, small cultural communities, reacting to globalization, are regaining their political identities. The orthodox paradigms of science—together with their hegemonic core of scientific-technological rationality—have undergone an irreversible crisis that is also affecting dominant values.