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Energy production discourse traps us in a democratic-authoritarian bargain. Promises of increased supply defer ethical and ecological responsibility to technological expertise.
Byrne and Toly 6—*John Byrne, Director Center for Energy and Environmental Policy & Public Policy at Delaware and Noah Toly, Research Associate Center for Energy and Environmental Policy [Transforming Power eds. Byrne, Toly, & Glover p. 1-3]

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury pollution, and biodiversity loss ,2 the origins of many of our least tractable environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also accompanies this system's operations: invented over a century ago, electric light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human beings-almost one-third of the planet's population-experience evening light by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has left intact-and sometimes exacerbated-social inequalities that its architects promised would be banished (Smi l, 2003: 370- 373). And there is the disturbing link between modern energy and war.3 Whether as a mineral whose control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil, see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector's performance, including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing: instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of euphoric technological visions and associated studies of "energy futures" that imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power who ' early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg 1972) capable of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner too c heap to meter” (Lewis Strauss, ctted tn the New York Ttmes 1954, 1955). In reply to those who fear catastrophic accidents from the "magical fire" or the prolifera ion of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize "inherently safe reactors" (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in "sustainable energy alternatives" that constitute a second euphoric stream. Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic, options, "green" energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a result, can overcome current conflicts between energy "haves" and "havenots." 5 In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests (2003: 327, 291 ), "today's nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power to the people" as "micropower meets village power." Hermann Scheer echoes the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a "solar global economy ... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and to safeguard the world's cultural diversity" (Scheer, 2002: 34).6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry and risks disruption of the planet's climate is a product of promises pursued without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and ecological record of the regime's operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key source of social and ecological alienation (I 934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a lifeharming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ... an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations ... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity-here are the enemies. The living organism demands ali fe-sustaining environment. Modernity's formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity's supporters would seek to derail present-tense7 evaluations of the era's social and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which, finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the "democratic authoritarian bargain" ( 1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce "every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus [one] may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority" on the condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption from non-economic social values. The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study in the manner of Mumford's work if a world measurably different from the present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions, this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable energy futures.

The supply-side energy regime produces chronic failure.  Energy becomes an end-in-itself with no social or ethical guidance.
Byrne and Toly 6—*John Byrne, Director Center for Energy and Environmental Policy & Public Policy at Delaware and Noah Toly, Research Associate Center for Energy and Environmental Policy [Transforming Power eds. Byrne, Toly, & Glover p. 20-21] [Gender paraphrased]

The Technique of Modern Energy Governance While moderns usually declare strong preferences for democratic governance, their preoccupation with technique and efficiency may preclude the achievement of such ambitions, or require changes in the meaning of democracy that are so extensive as to raise doubts about its coherence. A veneration of technical monuments typifies both conventional and sustainable energy strategies and reflects a shared belief in technological advance as commensurate with, and even a cause of, contemporary social progress. The modern proclivity to search for human destiny in the march of scientific discovery has led some to warn of a technological politics (Ellul, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c; Winner, 1977, 1986) in which social values are sublimated by the objective norms of technical success (e.g., the celebration of efficiency in all things). In this politics, technology and its use become the end of society and members have the responsibility, as rational beings, to learn from the technical milieu what should be valorized. An encroaching autonomy of technique (Ellul, 1964: 133- 146) replaces critical thinking about modern life with an awed sense and acceptance of its inevitable reality. From dreams of endless energy provided by Green Fossil Fuels and Giant Power, to the utopian promises of Big Wind and Small-Is-Beautiful Solar, technical excellence powers modernist energy transitions. Refinement of technical accomplishments and/or technological revolutions are conceived to drive social transformation, despite the unending inequality that has accompanied two centuries of modern energy's social project. As one observer has noted (Roszak, 1972: 479), the "great paradox of the technological mystique [is] its remarkable ability to grow strong by chronic failure. While the treachery of our technology may provide many occasions for disenchantment, the sum total of failures has the effect of increasing dependence on technical expertise." Even the vanguard of a sustainable energy transition seems swayed by the magnetism of technical acumen, leading to the result that enthusiast and critic alike embrace a strain of technological politics. Necessarily, the elevation of technique in both strategies to authoritative status vests political power in experts most familiar with energy technologies and systems. Such a governance structure derives from the democratic-authoritarian bargain described by Mumford ( 1964). Governance "by the people" consists of authorizing qualified experts to assist political leaders in finding the efficient, modern solution. In the narratives of both conventional and sustainable energy, citizens are empowered to consume the products of the energy regime while largely divesting themselves of authority to govern its operations. Indeed, systems of the sort envisioned by advocates of conventional and sustainable strategies are not governable in a democratic manner. Mumford suggests ( 1964: I) that the classical idea of democracy includes "a group of related ideas and practices ... [including] communal self-government ... unimpeded access to the common store of knowledge, protection against arbitrary external controls, and a sense of moral responsibility for behavior that affects the whole community." Modern conventional and sustainable energy strategies invest in external controls, authorize abstract, depersonalized interactions of suppliers and demanders, and celebrate economic growth and technical excellence without end. Their social consequences are relegated in both paradigms to the status of problems-to-be-solved, rather than being recognized as the emblems of modernist politics. As a result, modernist democratic practice becomes imbued with an authoritarian quality, which "deliberately eliminates the whole human personality, ignores the historic process, [and] overplays the role of abstract intelligence, and makes control over physical nature, ultimately control over [hu]man[ity] himself, the chief purpose of existence" (Mumford, 1964: 5). Meaningful democratic governance is willingly sacrificed for an energy transition that is regarded as scientifically and technologically unassailable.

Technocratic management makes extinction inevitable—no aff proposal can solve.
Crist 7 [Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University, 2007, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume 141, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Telos Press, p. 49-51]

If mainstream environmentalism is catching up with the solution promoted by Teller, and perhaps harbored all along by the Bush administration, it would certainly be ironic. But the irony is deeper than incidental politics. The projected rationality of a geoengineering solution, stoked by apocalyptic fears surrounding climate change, promises consequences (both physical and ideological) that will only quicken the real ending of wild nature: "here we encounter," notes Murray Bookchin, "the ironic perversity of a 'pragmatism' that is no different, in principle, from the problems it hopes to resolve."58 Even if they work exactly as hoped, geoengineering solutions are far more similar to anthropogenic climate change than they are a counterforce to it: their implementation constitutes an experiment with the biosphere underpinned by technological arrogance, unwillingness to question or limit consumer society, and a sense of entitlement to transmogrifying the planet that boggles the mind. It is indeed these elements of techno-arrogance, unwillingness to advocate radical change, and unlimited entitlement, together with the profound erosion of awe toward the planet that evolved life (and birthed us), that constitute the apocalypse underway—if that is the word of choice, though the words humanization, colonization, or occupation of the biosphere are far more descriptively accurate. Once we grasp the ecological crisis as the escalating conversion of the planet into "a shoddy way station,"59 it becomes evident that inducing "global dimming" in order to offset "global warming" is not a corrective action but another chapter in the project of colonizing the Earth, of what critical theorists called world domination.
Domination comes at a huge cost for the human spirit, a cost that may or may not include the scale of physical imperilment and suffering that apocalyptic fears conjure. Human beings pay for the domination of the biosphere—a domination they are either bent upon or resigned to—with alienation from the living Earth.60 This alienation manifests, first and [end page 50] foremost, in the invisibility of the biodiversity crisis: the steadfast denial and repression, in the public arena, of the epochal event of mass extinction and accelerating depletion of the Earth's biological treasures. It has taken the threat of climate change (to people and civilization) to allow the tip of the biodepletion iceberg to surface into public discourse, but even that has been woefully inadequate in failing to acknowledge two crucial facts: first, the biodiversity crisis has been occurring independently of climate change, and will hardly be stopped by windmills, nuclear power plants, and carbon sequestering, in any amount or combination thereof; and second, the devastation that species and ecosystems have already experienced is what largely will enable more climate-change-driven damage to occur.
Human alienation from the biosphere further manifests in the recalcitrance of instrumental rationality, which reduces all challenges and problems to variables that can be controlled, fixed, managed, or manipulated by technical means. Instrumental rationality is rarely questioned substantively, except in the flagging of potential "unintended consequences" (for example, of implementing geoengineering technologies). The idea that instrumental rationality (in the form of technological fixes for global warming) might save the day hovers between misrepresentation and delusion: firstly, because instrumental rationality has itself been the planet's nemesis by mediating the biosphere's constitution as resource and by condoning the transformation of Homo sapiens into a user species; and secondly, because instrumental rationality tends to invent, adjust, and tweak technical means to work within given contexts—when it is the given, i.e., human civilization as presently configured economically and culturally, that needs to be changed.

*Their economic framing disciplines debate by treating scarcity and demand as givens.  Developing alternative value systems requires re-framing energy around a sustainable economy.  
Barry 12—John Barry, Reader Politics @ Queen’s University (Belfast) [The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability p. 204-207]

BEYOND THE 'SCARCITY' PRINCIPLE: TOWARDS AN ECONOMY OF SUSTAINABLE DESIRE That a post-growth economy is one characterized by 'abundance', pleasure, and desire, is not something that is immediately obvious or self-evident. Unfortunately it is ascetic notions of less unsustainable lifestyles, and the deliberate misrepresentation of a sustainable society in terms of sacrifice, loss, regress, and totalitarianism, that tend to dominate discussions. Against these negative portrayals, I here argue that a post-growth green economy can be an economy of pleasure. Situated between the affluenza of modern consumerism and the puritanical self-denial of some visions of a sustainable economy lies what could be called an economy of sustainable desire.17 A reason for so characterizing a post-growth economy based on green political economic principles is to directly challenge and offer an alternative to what Steigler terms the 'libidinal economy of capitalism' (Steigler, 2008). To Steigler, 'Capitalism needs to control conduct and in order to achieve this, it develops techniques of capture or captation' (Steigler, 2008: 12). To counter this, strategies to 'release' people from this consumer discipline are therefore required. One strategy to counter this consumer-driven capitalist economy of unsustainable desire, it is proposed here to replace it with an economy of sustainable desire. Rejecting the disciplining notion of neoclassical economics which makes 'scarcity' the organizing principle for the economy, an economy of sustainable desire is characterized by abundance and possibilities for pleasurable, life affirming living. This economy of desire harks back and is explicitly built on the arguments greens and others made in the 1960s onwards to the effect that consumerist culture was not only not appreciably adding to human well-being and quality of life, but in many areas was positively detrimental to human well-being. An economy of abundance is based on the very simple notion that pleasure, life-affirming experiences and practices, do not have any necessary connection with either individualized and/or maximizing material consumption. The best things in life do turn out to be free after all in that it is meaningful relation between people not possessions or income, that are the major determinate of human flourishing. The subjectivities created in and through these post-material forms of pleasurable living are necessarily different from the passive consumer subjectivities created by an increasingly obsolete carbon-fuelled consumer capitalism. It also begins from the (rather obvious) contention that 'scarcity', much like 'abundance', is socially created and politically negotiated, that is, neither are 'given' but both are 'created'.18 As Xenos succinctly notes, 'The simple fact of finitude of anything does not necessarily constitute a scarcity of that thing' (Xenos, 2010: 32). What 'transforms' finitude into 'scarcity' (and associated issues of rarity, price, use-value, possession, allocation, distributive mechanism, and desire) are social relations, how human beings 'see', relate to, and 'value' that which is finite. For the ancient Greeks (and contemporary greens) the problem in politics was not 'scarcity' in the sense of finitude and what orthodox economists would call 'limited supply', but rather the proliferation of desire beyond the satisfaction of need. Hence, the solution of the ancients was to limit desire and acquisitiveness, not to 'overcome' scarcity as it was for modernity (Xenos, 2010: 33).19 The modern economic mobilization of a power/knowledge discourse of 'scarcity' is vital to understanding both contemporary orthodox economics and modern capitalism. As Illich reminds us, 'Economics always implies the assumption of scarcity. What is not scarce cannot be subject to economic control. ... Scarcity .. . now seems to affect all values of public concern' (Illich, 1980: 123; emphasis added). Within modernity more generally, and under capitalism in particular, we find a similar situation in regards to scarcity as we did in relation to inequality as discussed above. That is, capitalism seeks not to eradicate scarcity in the sense of abolishing it as a concept (as the ancient Greeks did). Rather, it seeks to institutionalize scarcity as a permanent condition, as a 'management tool' to create and govern docile bodies (Sahlins, 1972: 4). It is the permanency of scarcity as Xenos points out that explains the paradox of highly affluent societies (the most materially affluent societies ever seen), also being characterized by the discipline and presence of 'general scarcity'. 20 'Scarcity' (and related ideas of maximization, efficiency, productivity, inequalities as incentives, zero-sum games etc.) has to be created and maintained for it to have its disciplining power as deployed through orthodox economic policies and internalized forms of 'commonsense' economic thinking and acting. For Deleuze and Guattari, 'Lack is created, planned and organized in and through social production ... It is never primary; production is never organized on the basis of pre-existing need or lack. ... The deliberate creation of lack as a function of market economy is the art of the dominant class. This involves deliberately organizing wants and needs amid an abundance of production; making all desire teeter and fall victim to the great fear of not having one's needs satisfied' (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004: 29-30; emphasis added). This fixation on scarcity is one of the main reasons orthodox economics and public policies based on it are skewed towards 'supply side' solutions (Goodin, 1983). Take the energy debate. The orthodox approach is to present this as largely an issue of the security of supply of low-carbon energy with support for nuclear power justified on the grounds that renewable sources of energy leave a dangerous 'energy gap', as the UK government energy report in chapter 3 demonstrated. Nowhere in this narrative is the simple point made that perhaps the issue is not so much a shortage of supply but an excess demand that is, we may be using too much energy rather than not having enough energy. While there is usually some obligatory reference to 'energy efficiency' and 'energy conservation' as important, this framing of the public policy debate over energy futures does not include a space for reducing consumption or considering 'energy descent' as a possible and viable option (Barry and Ellis, 2010). This way of framing the debate would at one stroke enable us to see 'energy scarcity' for what it in fact is-an artificially and asymmetrically created 'gap' based on locking society into a perpetual struggle with exponential rising energy demand. The latter is viewed as 'given' and therefore depoliticized, and so we are presented with a 'Malthusian' situation of energy demand always outstripping (or better still 'threatening' to outstrip) energy production, which 'must' keep up. In short, in the energy debate as elsewhere, the idea of scarcity as the organizing principle of industrial capitalism has to be manufactured and constantly reproduced. Simply put, not to do so would undermine the imperative for continual expansion and economic growth.21 The opposite of scarcity is not material abundance and productivity, as the neoclassical dogma has it. Rather, as Zadak has suggested in his book, An Economics of Utopia, it is 'a liberation from the constraints imposed on our understanding by social, political, and other factors' (Zadak, 1993: 239). And I would suggest, going back to the concepts of sufficiency and 'redundancy' outlined in previous chapters, that these concepts are central in any liberation from the discipline of 'scarcity'. Sufficiency, making 'enough' rather than 'more and more' a central feature of economic activity, does not, as some might suggest, imply a diminution of desire and pleasure. They denote other desires and other ways of meeting and satisfying our desires. And notions of sufficiency and enough-ness, redundancy, sub-optimality, and so on are consistent with a claim that regular and temporary withdrawals from fulfilling desires, such as fasting, frugality (Cato, 2004), voluntary simplicity (Alexander, 2011), refusing to consume and buy and instead making or doing it oneself or with others, public holidays and festivals and other rituals of nonconsumption (Astyk, 2008: 33), or simply slowing down (Berressem, 2009), can actually serve to liberate desire, and in so doing create a new post-scarcity, sustainable economy of desire.

Alternative: reject the aff in favor of social and critical analysis of energy production

We must begin with a social critique and analysis of the modern energy regime.  Ethical criticism of the existing energy regime cultivates alternatives to technocratic consumption.
Barry 12—John Barry, Reader Politics @ Queen’s University (Belfast) [The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability p. 284-290]

'Dissident' is perhaps a better and more accurate term to apply to greens than 'revolutionary', since while both share an opposition to the prevailing social order, revolutionary is clearly more antagonistic rather than agonistic, to use the terms indicated in chapter 7. Dissidents seek to direct a self transforming present in a more radical direction, whereas revolutionaries typically seek the complete destruction of the existing order and then the construction of a new one. Greens as dissidents also begin from an acceptance of the inevitability of key aspects of this transition-primarily around climate change and the end of the oil age-and thus see an answer to 'what is to be done?' in terms of managing and shaping that inevitable transition, rather than building/re-building. Dissident also seems less extreme and dogmatic in its critique and its demands, than those who advocate full-blown revolution. And given what was said in chapter 3 and elsewhere about the link between creativity, flexibility, and adaptive fitness, it would be odd for green politics to be dogmatic revolutionaries animated by a sense of the hopelessness of working within and through contemporary institutiohs or that there was nothing worth preserving within and from the contemporary social order. Green dissent could perhaps be (wrongly) described as somewhere on a continuum between 'reformism' and 'revolution', a form of 'creative adaptive management' to create collective resilience in the face of actually existing unsustainability.1 In his essay 'The Power of the Powerless', Vaclav Havel uses the story of a greengrocer who unthinkingly displays his 'loyalty' to the regime by displaying a Communist Party slogan in his shop. This the greengrocer does 'ritualistically, since this is the only way the regime is capable of acknowledging his display of loyalty' (Havel, 1978: 45). In a similar way, being a dutiful consumer and not questioning economic growth could also perhaps be regarded as the way in which loyalty to a dominant capitalist, consumer regime is ritualistically displayed, enacted, and affirmed. It is for this reason, if not only this reason, that one completely misunderstands consumerism, consumption, and being a 'consumer', if one views it solely individualistically as some economic-cum-metabolic act. As a public display of loyalty, consuming is first and foremost a collective act, an individual joining others in a shared activity and associated identity. So while critics such as Fromm are correct in highlighting the distinction in consumer culture between 'being' and 'having' (Fromm, 1976), what these analyses often miss is that consumption is also an act of'  belonging' and identity affirmation (Keat, 1994; Jackson, 2009b).It is for this reason that a refusal to consume is so damaging to the modern political and economic order and why to consciously choose not to consume is perhaps one of the most politically significant acts one can do in a consumer society. And one that, the continual performance (or rather non-performance) of which, further marks one out as a dissident, part of 'the great refusal' to use Marcuse's term (Marcuse, 1964). That is, to question economic growth under consumer capitalism is to be 'disloyal' to the prevailing order. While for Havel living in what he calls the 'post-totalitarian' communist regime is 'living a lie', I do not want to go so far and say that life in contemporary consumer capitalist democracies is in the same way to 'live a lie'. Rather what I would like to dwell upon is Havel's notion of'living within the truth' and what this can offer for green dissidents. For Havel 'living within the truth ... can be any means by which a person or group revolts against manipulation: anything from a letter by intellectuals to a workers' strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration, from refusing to vote in the farcical elections, to making an open speech at some official congress, or even a hunger strike' (Havel, 1986: 59-60). Though clearly written with the then communist regime in mind, Havel's call to 'live in truth' is equally pertinent to consumer capitalism. As he puts it: The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well; it appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accoutrements of mass civilization, and who has not roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society. (Havel, 1978: 62; emphasis added) Silence is of course a consequence and precondition for this demoralization, and what power requires under consumer capitalism is passive and silent acquiescence as much as active participation. For Havel the re-appropriation of individual responsibility is something to be actively striven for. This reverses or balances the usual focus on rights and freedoms with which often 'progressive' critiques of consumerism are couched. In Havel's response to what Tim Jackson amongst others has called 'The Age of Irresponsibility' (Jackson, 2009b ), also connects with some of the green republican arguments outlined in chapters 6 and 7, not least the stress on both the recovery of the good of politics and the centrality of the individual citizen as a moral being and not just or only a consumer (or producer/worker or investor). As Jackson notes, 'the "age of irresponsibility" is not about casual oversight or individual greed. The economic crisis is not a consequence of isolated malpractice in selected parts of the banking sector. If there has been irresponsibility, it has been much more systemic, sanctioned from the top, and with one clear aim in mind: the continuation and protection of economic growth' (Jackson, 2009b: 26; emphasis added). The struggle Havel describes from the 1968 'Prague Spring' between 'the system' and 'the aims of life' (Havel, 1978: 66) resonate green concerns of the degradation of natural life-supporting systems and the undermining of conditions promoting human conviviality, quality of life, and well-being (Barry, 2009b; De Geus, 2009, 2003; Jackson, 2009a). What Havel goes on to say about political change and strategy in the context of a consumer culture is pertinent and important for those seeking a transition away from unsustainability, 'Society is not sharply polarized on the level of actual political power, but ... the fundamental lines of conflict run right through each person' (Havel, 1978: 91; emphasis added). This is a profound point, namely that it is difficult, if not impossible, to simply analyse actually existing unsustainability as an oppressive totalitarian regime in which there is an identifiable 'them' dominating 'us'. Under consumer capitalism, debt-based consumption, and so on, we who live in these societies are all implicated in its continuation. And while of course there are identifiable groups and institutions (such as large corporations, financial wealth management firms, the leadership of mainstream political parties, key agencies of the nation state such as departments of finance, global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMP, and what Sklair has called the 'transnational capitalist class') who do benefit more from actually existing unsustainability, we have to face up to the fact that 'ordinary people', that is, everyone also contributes (unequally of course) to the 'mundane' operation of global capitalism and the exploitation of people and planet. The recognition of this is but another way of drawing attention to the fact that capitalism, the common sense of neoclassical economics, and so on have achieved 'full spectrum' domination of hearts and minds, such that capitalism, and realistic critiques of it, need to be viewed as cultural (and indeed psychological) projects. It is for this reason that I canvassed the Transition movement in chapter 3, since it adopts an explicitly cultural and psychological approach. Of course such cultural and psychological critical analyses are not exhausted by this movement and these cannot be a substitute for oppositional political struggle. This 'cultural turn' in green politics is, to my mind, linked to the 'postscarcity economics of sustainable desire' outlined in chapter 5, and is premised firmly on a notion of human flourishing that lies beyond production, 'supplyside' solutions, 'competiveness', and increasing 'labour productivity'. This notion of flourishing is not anti-materialist. Let me make that abundantly clear, it is not an ascetic renunciation of materialism for its own sake, as if material life is intrinsically unworthy or does not express valued modes of human being. Thus I do not accept the Fromm-inspired view that materialism or indeed material consumption is simply a mode of 'having' and not 'being'. After all, the critique should be directed at consumerism and overconsumption, not materialism or consumption per se. At a basic level one can see how communism and consumerism are two 'regimes of truth' -to return to the Foucauldian language used in chapter 4 imposing their version of the truth, exacting payment, compliance, and subjectivity from their client populations, quelling, distracting, and undermining dissidents, and using different but also some shared techniques to continue. And the appropriate dissident, progressive attitude, and strategy against both is, for Havel, ultimately an ethical one, an ethical and political life-affirming 'reconstitution of society' (Havel, 1978: 115). That Havel conceives consumer-capitalist and communist societies as comparable can be seen in his view that: traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the autonomism of technological civilization, and the industrial-consumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the post-totalitarian societies ... the omnipresent dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information. (Havel, 1978: 116; emphasis added) Some of the republican elements expressed in Havel's thought centre around 'responsibility' (Havel, 1986: 104). He maintains that the abdication of responsibility in the name of consumer choice-what I have elsewhere described as the reduction of political liberty to a consumer 'freedom of choice' (Barry, 2009a)-weakens the ethical and political capacities of citizens within liberal democracies. Liberal consumer-citizens then become 'victims of the same autonomism, and are incapable of transcending concerns about their own personal survival to become proud and responsible members of the polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its destiny' (Havel, 1978: 116; emphasis added). In this Havel is articulating concerns very close to the type of green republicanism outlined in this book. His concluding comments in The Power of the Powerless also offer suggestive lines for interpreting the Transition movement. In a passage focusing on the contours of what Havel calls the 'existential revolution' that is needed to renew the relationship of humans to the 'human order and cosmopolitan responsibility', Havel notes that the structures needed to make this happen 'should naturally arise from below as a consequence of authentic "selforganization"; they should derive energy from a living dialogue with the genuine needs from which they arise, and when these needs are gone, the structures should also disappear ... The decisive criterion of this "selfconstitution" should be the structure's actual significance and not just a mere abstract norm' (Havel, 1978: 119). A better description of the Transition movement's aims, motivations, and objectives would be hard to find. Havel goes on to describe these new, provisional, and practical structures 'postdemocratic'. He describes the outlines of these 'authentic' political structures in this manner: Do not these groups emerge, live, and disappear under pressure from concrete and authentic needs, unburdened by the ballast of hollow traditions? Is not their attempt to create an articulate form of 'living within the truth' and to renew the feeling of higher responsibility in an apathetic society really a sign of some rudimentary moral reconstitution? In other words, are riot these informed, non-bureaucratic dynamic and open communities that comprise the 'parallel polis' a kind of rudimentary prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more meaningful 'post-democratic' political structures that might become the foundation of a better society? (Havel, 1978: 120-121). Fundamental here, I think, is Havel's call to responsibility and struggle against the prevailing political order when it undermines quality of life, perpetuates injustice, or the denial or compromising of democratic norms. In a similar vein Carla Emery puts it eloquently, 'People have to choose what they're going to struggle for. Life is always a struggle, whether or not you're struggling for anything worthwhile, so it might as well be for something worthwhile' (in Astyk, 2008: 204). Or to phrase it differently: get busy living or get busy dying. WHAT IF WE ARE THE PEOPLE WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR? 289 As argued throughout this book in facing the many challenges of the present time-climate change, peak oil, diminishing forms of social well-being, financial and economic crises, and the ecological liquidation of the foundations of life on the planet-the most important response needed is one which explicitly focuses on imagination and creativity. As W. B. Yeats (long before Barak Obama used a version of these sentiments) suggested, what is needed is for us 'to seek a remedy ... in audacity of speculation and creation' (Yeats, 1926). While 'another world is possible' it can only be possible if it is imagined, and perhaps one of the most persistent obstacles to the transition away from actually existing unsustainability apart from ignorance of the ecological and human costs of our capitalist-consumer way of life-is the stultifying grip of 'business as usual' and its limited and limiting horizons of possible futures for ourselves and our societies. In many respects, our collective inability to respond to 'limits to growth' is in large measure due to limits of creativity and imagination. We cannot, or find it very difficult, to imagine a different social order. For Richard Norgaard the answer to our present ecological predicament is as difficult to achieve as it is simple to express, 'We need a new life story. We need an overarching story that respects a diversity of life stories. Living the story of economic development is destroying humanity and nature and a good many other species along with us. We need a master story that puts our hope, compassion, brains, sociality, and diversity to new and constructive ends' (in Deb, 2009: xxiii). And if we follow Havel, it may be that this new story we need is already here, in the same sense that the eco-feminist Mary Mellor (Mellor, 1995) has persuasively written that the sustainable world, society, or mode of being is not some utopian 'there' but an already living, embodied, engendered 'here' in the reproductive and exploited labour of women, in the 'core' economic activity of caring and sharing and ... flourishing. The Polanyi-inspired attempt to 'reembed' the economy within human social relations can be viewed as a defensive move to protect community from both the formal market and the state. Such protective measures can include the expansion of the social economy, or the efforts by the Transition movement in seeking to disrupt, slow down and re-conceptualize the economy. Such reactive measures could all be thought of as seeking to defend and extend those sustainable practices in the here and now, that is, that already exist within 'actually existing unsustainability'. This is particularly the case with reproductive labour as outlined in this book. Actually it is the neoclassical economic view that is 'utopian' in promoting a fictitious and dangerous imaginary of human life lived at 365/24/7 speed and a way of life completely out of synch not just with human biological but also ecological time. And, it must be recalled, 'Mother Nature does not do bailouts'. As Havel suggests, 'For the real question is whether the "brighter future" is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?' (Havel, 1978: 122). Now there's an intriguing set of concluding thoughts-what if not only the resilient, sustainable way of life is 'always already here', present, and available to us if we so choose-but also if it is indeed the case that 'we are the people we've been waiting for?' And what of the hard greens, where do they and their analysis fit within this book? For it is fair to say that they have been shadowing the book. While I discussed them briefly in the Introduction and made some casual comments about them and their diverse positions and prescriptions throughout, I have not met them head on as it were. So it would be fitting for me to offer my thoughts on the place and status of the hard green position. Are they basically correct? Do I agree with them (from the green republican acceptance of the time-bound and contingent character of all human creations, including civilizations and societies) that they have identified the beginning of the end of our existing capitalist, carbon-based civilization and societies? While I certainly admire their brutal honesty, I baulk at their jump from crisis to collapse, and then from collapse to violence and 'de-civilization' (Elias, 2000; Hine and Kingsnorth, 2010). Their political analyses echo (almost always unwittingly) the eco-authoritarian position of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The hard-green view in being so pessimistic means its pessimism precludes a view of politics as the 'art of the possible', and a view of the inevitability of collapse can and does lead to de-politicized or even anti-political responses. But surely the challenge, as outlined by the green republican project of this book, is to embrace new intelligibilities, ways of being, having, and doing, new identities and subjectivities, and new arts of life, all must be part of a project to avert collapse?2 This is, as I see it, the point of green republican politics as a form of 'anticipatory politics' to challenge the rule of the 'nee-liberal vulgate'. At this present moment, on the cusp of this 'Great Transition', what greens need is to cultivate critical awareness, opposition, and dissent, to have the courage of their convictions in analysing and resisting actually existing unsustainability, and outlining their vision for the transition to a better society, in part to engage, inform, and prepare citizens for the coming changes that will characterize the decades ahead. Greens need to be realistic and cleareyed in their disavowal of naive utopianism, but convinced of its basic conviction that another world is possible, necessary, and desirable. And while on quiet mornings we may hear it coming, its arrival, like all major transitions in human history, will demand political struggle. The battle for hearts, minds, and hands has begun, and my writing this book and you reading it are constitutive of that struggle.