Captured Futures

Abstract Environmental politics as we know it cannot deliver. Despite all efforts politics is unable to bend the ecological trends. This book argues this is because environmental politics is captured. This capture doesn’t just express itself in a lobbying or lack of political will, but more profoundly in the capture of its ideas about the future, in the inability to imagine futures meaningfully different from the present. Examining environmental politics as drama reveals how all actors play their particular roles: scientists funnel narrow policy futures through their models; activists adopt politically expedient language; policymakers look for safe, technologically sound win-win solutions. All are captured in a regime of ecological modernization that entertains too narrow a solution space. There is every reason to be concerned about this capture. If environmental politics continues to follow the dominant script of ecological modernization, ever-more speculative technologies will appear in a desperate attempt to safeguard the future. Drawing on discourse and dramaturgical analysis, Captured Futures reveals the mechanisms of this capture, explains its persistence and speculates about geoengineering technologies waiting in the wings. Yet in the third part of the book, discourse and dramaturgical analysis appear as a reason for hope, sketching an alternative perspective on environmental politics. A new, more cultural approach to environmental politics could have more leverage on the societal imagination. In combination with the formulation of new discourses and using alternative ‘dramaturgies of change’ this shows ways to liberate environmental politics.