Environmental sustainability and neoliberalism

In liberal democracies, environmental issues have been entwined with principles of free-markets and neoliberalism. Moreover, issues of sustainability have recently begun to be framed within a business case to create environmental awareness. For example, modern social and environmental reform has followed a managerial and procedural path. Arguably, this approach perpetuates the idea that humanity can control and manage Nature (Hunt, 2020, p. 1).

Yet, the Adani mine in Queensland was stymied for several years. The Labour Party of Queensland changed its stance and approved the mine. It was granted approval by the local state government when it feared for its political future. The environmental dimensions of the Adani mine have been lost within the self-regulatory structures recently developed for environmental management such as the modern corporation, integrated reporting, and the business case for environmental management. I use metaphysical and political arguments to explore how Nature is a necessary condition of humanity’s being-in-the-world.

A part of the metaphysical and interpretivist analysis calls for environmental thinking about whether value in the natural world exists. Appreciating the value in Nature has the potential to inspire commonalities broad enough for all political actors to contribute to political structures. The aim of the commonalities approach is to address the difficulties of modern party-political approaches. In recent work, Taylor has observed:

I think we’re still crippled by many of our policies. We are crippled with the idea that there is such a thing as socialism, a totally coherent solution to all political problems, and that if you think differently you’re on rhe other side; either you’re going further into socialism or you’re betraying it. I think the way to conceive [of] our situation is that we are living through a set of extremely painful dilemmas, and are going to go on doing so. In other words, capitalism is, if you like, the source of a number of terrible dilemmas. We can’t live with it; we can’t live without it. We can’t live without it because it’s tied to certain kinds of growth and so on. (Taylor, 2008, p. 15)

Addressing these dilemmas involves an ethics of ‘community’ which must address ‘new saliences’ and to learn how to see that the environmental and moral dilemmas have changed (Herman, 1996, p. 56). Obviously, ecological concerns have developed a new salience. Interpretivist politics is, in part, about recognising that no indubitable solutions are possible through ordinary time, but that compromises must be made. That is, once we outline not only the type of society we want to live in, and how our basic institutions support that viewpoint.

Interestingly, many Australians used to support Adani because the coal was to support India’s development. But, in terms of Adani, the research underlying this book has revealed that India has loads of thorium and intends to develop a whole new series of thorium, rather than uranium, nuclear fission power plants. As Doherty (2009) observed:

[T]here are Indian advances in nanotechnology that have already increased the efficiency of experimental solar cells to the 35-40 per cent range’. Now India is aiming for 60 per cent.

(Doherty, 2009, np)

Furthermore, the former president of India, Abdul Kalam talked about the tremendous importance of education at every level as we seek to counter climate change. Australia could be thought of as the biggest solar collector in the world. With its small, and relatively educated population, stable political system, and massive resources of metals, we could and should lead the world when it comes to developing and exploiting renewable energy. Sources such

Key themes in accountability research 15 as geothermal, wind, waves, and tides can become a hub for cheap, renewable energy. Focus on renewables will make it feasible to build refineries and new industries here. These alternative directions will need to be framed around a public sphere model where business is part of a technology that can be employed to develop new ideas. As Garnaut (2019, np) argued:

[M]oving to cut emissions further would nurture the three great assets for Australian industrial leadership in the post carbon world economy: globally competitive renewable power; an abundance of biomass for the chemical manufacturing industries; and low cost biological and geological sequestration of carbon wastes.

Obviously, accountability and new environmental policies and structures must be integrated into decision-making processes of modern liberal democracies.