Challenging capitalism: Rethinking sustainability in the age of environmental despair

Author: Gubb Marit Stigson

“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy… And to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation – and we scientists don’t know how to do that.” (James Gustave Speth, cited in Ives et al., 2019, p. 208.)

I read this citation in an article found in the mandatory reading for a completely different course, at another university, with a whole other group of students and teachers, the days before I was supposed to give my final presentation at the course Existential Sustainability. 

I see it as a sign of how we sustainability scholars feel desperation, hopelessness, and grief, and in these feelings start searching for new ways to approach our research topics. 

James Gustave Speth is an American environmental lawyer whom in two manifestos called America the Possible (Gustave Speth, 2012a, 2012b) criticises his county’s one-sided focus on economic growth, gradual development from democracy to market-led, oppressive (lack of) governing systems, and highlight its ranking as one of the world’s worst countries to live in, in terms of for example education, economic equality and health. 

At the time I write this essay, it has been twelve years since Gustave Speth wrote his manifestos, and most of us would probably agree that the USA, or the world for that matter, is not performing much better today, not least in terms of climate and environmental action. In a paper that looks exactly at the three decades of failed climate action, Stoddard et al. (2021) thoroughly goes through political, economic, and social reasons for why world leaders are not succeeding in diverting from the negative trends which slowly but steadily drive humanity towards its ruin. The authors observe that: 

“[A] common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.” (Stoddard et al., 2021, p. 654) 

Most people on Earth have never used a SUV

Whilst the paper does not go into depth in discussions of ideology, faith, community or politics, the sections about equity and high-carbon lifestyles touches upon the reasons for why some parts of the global population become, and feel entitled to be high-emitters while most people on Earth have never used a SUV, boarded an aeroplane, or maintained daily consumption of red meat. The answer is of course power asymmetries, and a gradual socialisation into lifestyles which we in the “rich” counties now take for granted, and depend upon, and changing this requires a revolutionary throw-over of our economic and political system. 

In the article Permission to say “Capitalism”, Hall and Davis (2021) bring forth the argument that sustainability scholars need to call “the global economy” by its true name: capitalism, since this is the only way we in sustainability sciences can have an honest discussion about whether this economic system is actually the best option for climate change mitigation. They write: 

“A GGR (greenhouse gas removal) policy is likely to be legitimate and desirable in the eyes of a capitalist state, only if it is easily linked to finance capital and a stable market mechanism can be found.” (Hall & Davis, 2021, p. 5)

What the authors say is that climate action within capitalism will happen only if profitable, regardless of the social and ecological benefits (or devastation if not implemented). Simultaneously, many scholars have criticised the techno-optimistic paradigm, for example by emphasising the extractive practices connected to renewable energy technologies (Dunlap, 2017; Shapiro & McNeish, 2021), the social and environmental damages following low-carbon transitions (Sovacool et al., 2021), the fetishization of technology (Hornborg, 2015), the unrealistic reliance on not yet existing CCS technologies (Carton, 2020) and the masculinist dominance shaping this paradigm (Hultman & Pulé, 2018; Plumwood, 2003). Put simply, what we have done so far is not working, and sustainability scholars need to (continue to) search for alternative approaches. 

In this essay, which is a product of the PhD course Existential Sustainability given at Lund University in Sweden in the autumn of 2023, I give myself permission to say capitalism, and to make the argument that this economic system is in fact not the best option, nor is the techno-optimistic discourse modelling energy transitions. Instead, borrowing the words of Gustave Speth from the citation above, capitalism, and sustainability research performed in this paradigm, fosters selfishness, greed and apathy. In the following text I reflect on the possibility for the concept existential sustainability to counter this defect, by fostering compassion, generosity and care. 

An Existentially Sustainable PhD?

Whenever someone asks me what my PhD is about (and this happens a lot) I hesitate to answer. I know that on paper it is not that complicated. I am doing a PhD in natural resources and sustainable development, in a project researching Gotland’s sustainable energy system transition, with a specific focus on planning perspectives. It is a mouthful, but it is seemingly clear what it is about. I should focus on how to improve regional planning in order to facilitate an energy transition that is socially sustainable. So why am I still twitching when I hear this question, three years into my PhD? 

When I was accepted to my PhD position in December 2020, the first citation that came to my mind was one by the feminist and anti-racist poet and philosopher Audre Lorde. It reads: 

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” (Lorde, 1984, p. 102)

I had the idea that I would go into my PhD studies with this critical approach towards the dominating discourse in energy transition and climate change mitigation which upholds status quo, manipulating us to believe we can continue exploiting the Earth and its inhabitants without limits. Because I (as evidently many of my colleagues) am convinced that there is more to the energy transition, and to climate action and sustainability sciences, than wind power plants, hydrogen pipelines, and EV mobility. I knew I needed to argue for revolution if I were to respect myself in this process. 

Then came bureaucracy of graduate studies, research with Covid-restrictions, teaching, ethical review applications, Russian aggressions, depressions, and growing fascism in Sweden. Mine, and many others lives came to be about surviving, and in the spring of 2023, I had a personal and professional breakdown. My closest supervisors confronted me, saying that whilst I did all I was asked to do, they did not see me in my work. I think I already knew this, but it was to some extent a relief to have them confirm it. It was around this time I applied to the course Existential Sustainability. 

When googling existentialism most definitions refer to some kind of subjective reflection on one’s being in the world, and some elements of feelings and beliefs, be it religious or something close in nature. While there probably exists a scientific definition I have yet to discover, I have decided to mix-and-match freely and define it somewhat like deep reflection and contemplation of one’s being in the world, with respect for- and keeping sacred humans, more-than-humans, and nature. 

Existential sustainability then encourages me as an energy transition scholar to look for answers beyond the technological, “economically sustainable” (according to capitalist logics), solutions, and instead ask how we could transform our energy systems and societies in ways which not only reduce emissions, but also improves social and environmental conditions at large. Because the current world order does not just heat up our planet and destroy our ecosystems, it also makes people depressed, alienated and resentful. 

A Self-Destructive Society 

In a text on social acceleration, Rosa (2003) present examples and explanations of the acceleration of life and technologies, caused by capitalism, and how it in an ever-increasing speed brings us closer and closer to mass destruction (he might not be that explicit, but let us not pretend that this is not what he means). This never-ending fear of falling behind, to slide down the slippery slope, be it in economic growth, career, personal accomplishments or technological development, is keeping us from slowing down, reflect, and keep sight of what is important. As Hall and Davis (2021) writes, overworked, and alienated workers are kept passive by capitalist promotion of consumerism. 

At the time I am working on this essay, my brain and body has decided to shut down. My head and joints aches, I do not sleep well, and I have cuts which refuses to heal in both corners of my mouth. Around me the world continues to twist in its agony. About a week ago, the US airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C, in protest of what he named the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. He died to manifest his discontent with the US support for the Israeli government (Geoghegan et al., 2024). 

On Gotland, the Baltic island where I live, hundreds of Gotlanders have signed a petition to stop a military agreement which will allow USA’s armed forces to store (nuclear) weapons on the island (Stenström, 2024), and while the Hungarian parliament approves Sweden’s application to join NATO (Kola, 2024), the Russian threats towards Sweden intensifies (Sandén, 2024). The list goes on. News about the increasingly devastating effects of global warming drown in the stream of other catastrophic events. I find myself cycling to work in what can only be described as an out-of-body experience, breathing the fumes of the fossil cars that carries children to school in the morning. 

I recently did an interview with a colleague who does a PhD in sustainable consumption. She said that one of the most important sustainability practices she does is to take care of her mental and physical wellbeing. She does so by being in nature, cook and eat nutritious foods, trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance. She then added that our current societal system does not allow her to practice this whole-heartedly, and that this is one of the largest hindrances for her to live sustainably (Informant 1, personal communication, January 23, 2024). Indeed, she is lacking time, for walking, for cooking, for contemplating on and appreciating the sacredness of life. Hers and others. 

Mental and physical wellbeing

Maintaining mental and physical wellbeing as a sustainability practice can though be perceived as an individualisation of sustainability, which in turn can be explained by a loss of faith in the ability to change the political. In the latest Swedish “Generation Report”, the Youth Barometer found that generation Z have an increased focus on personal health, the nuclear family (conservative values), decreasing interest in politics, and less faith in the future than former generations. They even state that the youth in Sweden has passed “peak woke” (Ungdomsbarometern, 2023). Whilst this is no surprise, it is still utterly depressing.

What it says is that we as a society has failed to make our children feel they are an empowered part of it, and instead having them turn inward, shielding themselves from their community to protect their private interests. One could name this individualism, but truly it is loneliness, and it is a sign that we live in an increasingly dysfunctional society which fails to care for its members. 

I recently read in the newspaper that mental illness amongst children and youth in Sweden has doubled since the 80’s (Croona, 2024). More than a decade ago, the increased mental health issues were acknowledged and connected to capitalism by Mark Fisher in his book Capitalist Realism (2011). Fisher writes: 

“I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill? The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high.” (Fisher, 2011, pp. 37–38)(Emphasis in original)

Mark Fisher committed suicide in January 2017, and much like right wing media has tried to imprint mental illness or even “oddity” to Aaron Bushnell to brush over his radical action to protest against the US support to genocide as an act of individual “madness” (Abel, 2024; Levin, 2024), Fisher’s suicide is on his Wikipedia page explained by long time depression (Wikipedia, n.d.). But after reading Capitalist Realism, I would rather, drawing on Fisher’s own reflections on depression in capitalist societies, say what caused his death is highly political.

Indeed, we have mounting proof that the current world order is not only causing the escalating climate and environmental crisis, followed by increased geopolitical conflicts, starvation and spread of diseases. It also makes people, even us living in places less affected by, and actually benefitting from global inequalities, feel like shit. 

Compassion, Generosity and Care as Sustainability Practice

Coming back to the citation by James Gustave Speth, the issues related to climate change goes far beyond what we as climate scientists can do with the resources at hand. Most of us probably agree that renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, and other technological solutions are to some extent necessary for dealing with the more tangible problems regarding global warming, but the social and existential issues are wicked and complex. Where the technological and economic questions ask what investment in renewable energy technologies will generate profit and reduce emission, or how permission processes can become more streamlined and lead to more public acceptance, the existential ones ask about the meaning of life, our relationships to other humans and more-than-humans, our respect for the Earth and relations to ecosystems. When energy transition studies are reductionist, existential sustainability studies are holistic. But what would happen if a PhD student researching sustainable energy transition went out to ask people “what is the meaning of life?”? 

Back in 2021 when I began my PhD studies, I met the person who later became my fiancée. He happened to be an aspiring church musician and the son of two parents working for the Church of Sweden, and I soon found myself in a social and spatial context I had not really been part of before. It is not that my fiancée and his family, or the people they work with, are always deeply immersed in conversation about faith and religion, but spending more time in religious space had me considering new perspectives on sustainability studies. 

Before this, my gateway into critical and revolutionary thinking had been more explicitly political, influenced by Marxist, socialist, and feminist ideology. I still identify with these ideologies but I have lately tried to explore more spiritual and existential thinking, both in my private life and in my research. 

An interesting observation I have made is how far away the Church of Sweden, and the members I have encountered, seem to be from both practical and existential sustainability. The Church of Sweden is famously criticised for their unsustainable forest management, and when the parish in Visby where I live host sustainability focused events, they bring up recycling and EV-charging infrastructure rather than respect for God’s creation, or mutual care for all living beings – the latter being reflections I would say are of a more existential and spiritual nature. It might be my prejudice of how I though practicing Christians would think and act, but it could also be perceived as a sign of how neoliberal, individualistic, and techno-economic rationality seeps into institutionalised religion too. As Fisher writes: 

“Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.” (Fisher, 2011, p. 15)

The same goes for any and all ways religion is used as an excuse for violent interventions, where one that digs deeper will probably find geopolitical conflicts (quite likely aggravated by climate change) being the driving force rather than the defence of certain faith. 

"Spirituality seems to be alive and kicking"

In her dissertation thesis Wild Enchantments in the Anthropocene, Brissman writes: “[W]hile religion appears to be in decline or on the retreat, conversely, spirituality seems to be alive and kicking.” (Brissman, 2021, p. 49). Indeed, I seem to know more people who openly call themselves witches and priestesses and carry out ceremonies to sanctify Mother Nature than I know people who practice institutionalised religion and pray to God/s. Regardless of it being religion or spirituality, in my thoughts I keep returning to the practice of keeping sacred nature. Or life, community, humans and more-than-humans. In the day and age of late capitalism, nothing seems to be sacred. 

An example from my own field of research is the conflict of interest (or of capitalist, economic rationality versus the right to practice indigenous traditions) that occurs when the “green industries” located in Sápmi colonise indigenous, sacred land with wind power plants to produce “clean energy” for their factories. The development of state policy to “optimise herding”, and sterile calculation of weight and economic worth of per kilogram slaughtered reindeer (Johnsen et al., 2017), which can then be used to assess the impact of wind power plants on herding, is as far from sacredness you can possibly get. 

A woman I once met in one of my feminist communities told me “What is a fact is not necessarily the truth.”. I think this applies to the colonisation of indigenous herding land in how the fact that reindeer meat production might be marginally affected by a wind power plant, but the truth is that the sacred relation between the Sami and their surrounding environment will be destroyed. 

My friend Elin Bååth is the author of Häxans Handbok till Revolutionen, (The Witch’s, Handbook to the Revolution) (Bååth, 2022), a book to guide its reader in how to reconnect with the sacredness of the Earth and its beings, and to practice the revolutionary actions of compassion and care. Elin and I met through feminist activism, and while I have somewhat lost my feminist compass throughout my PhD journey, I am starting to retrace my academic and political background. 

Indeed, capitalism and techno-optimism is gendered, as explained by Hultman and Pulé in Ecological Masculinities (2018) where they identify how despite being “ecological”, masculinist ideals still permeate climate and environmental politics, maintaining capitalist, techno-optimist status quo. In  an article by Wanner (2015), the “greening” of a capitalist economy is critically examined, and the idea of “sustainable growth” dismissed. Wanner (2015) concludes his paper: 

“To shift to green or sustainable societies requires more radical transformative changes which the discourse of green economy/growth is designed to prevent. […] and for moving towards green societies rather than just green economies is a civil society engagement through political activism.” (Wanner, 2015, p. 36)

In the same way the citation by Audre Lorde emphasises the inability to create real change within existing structures, the Wanner citation highlight another of my beliefs; that science is political, and that science can be activist. As sustainability scholars, we carry a responsibility to use the privilege of our position to challenge powerful discourse, to see potentially different realities, and to promote them in any way possible. In the perspective article where I found the citation by Gustave Speth, the authors write: 

“The condition of people’s inner worlds ought to also be considered a dimension of sustainability itself. Compassion, empathy and generosity, for example, are personal characteristics that mark individual expressions of sustainability.” (Ives et al., 2019, p. 208)

Compassion, generosity, and care towards ourselves and others are practices which need time, space and community. This has no place in late capitalism. This has no place in an ever-accelerating society (Rosa, 2003). This has no place in the continuous exploitation and extraction of the Earth which comes with fossil- and renewable energy (Shapiro & McNeish, 2021), and this has not place in the technofetishist faith in technological development as saviour of humanity (Hornborg, 2015; Hultman & Pulé, 2018). For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (Lorde, 1984, p. 102). “Green growth”, “clean energy”, “decoupling” and “sustainable business” are the capitalist master’s tools, and they will never solve the climate crisis (Hall & Davis, 2021; Wanner, 2015). 

An existential sustainability looks both inward and outward (Ives et al., 2019). It becomes enchanted by the beauty and magic of nature and its inhabitants (Bååth, 2022; Brissman, 2021). It creates pockets of time and place for contemplation, spirituality, and community (McClymont, 2015). 
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The assignment for this essay was to start reflecting on the concept existential sustainability. What this did to me was to give me space and time to write down my thoughts and feelings from three years of graduate studies in the field of energy transition at a technoscience department. I have full respect for the fact that I am at the beginning of approaching some of the knowledge traditions I mention in this essay, such as ecofeminism, decolonisation, psychology and theology, and that I have much to explore in future writing. But for now, I am grateful for the opportunity to think and write creatively in a pocket of peace, and I look forward to developing this text in the future. 

References

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