A Captured Politics

Abstract

Environmental politics as we know it cannot deliver. Politicians might be convinced of the biophysical ‘facts’ of climate change, biodiversity loss, or pollution, but nonetheless fail to decide on the sort of fundamental policy changes these facts necessitate. There is a political inability to work towards futures that are meaningfully different from the present. This chapter addresses this failure as a form of political and imaginative capture. Zooming in on the example of ‘net-zero’ futures the chapter describes the captured futures of environmental politics. Rather than addressing ecological crises as a cultural concern, environmental politics tries to tackle them in a narrowly technocratic fashion, viewing the future as socially, culturally, and politically unchanged from the present. The chapter reveals the concern about this capture from within and shows how ‘targets’ are not met, a just transition remains out of sight, and policymakers have to work ‘with the tap running’: they do not have the means to address the flow of ever new resource-intensive cultural aspirations. The chapter functions as an introduction to the book, outlining its argument in three parts.