John Barry
Professor of Green Political Economy, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast. Main reseach interests, politics, economics and ethics of sustainability/sustainable development, green moral and political theory, green political economy, vulnerability, resilience; civic republicanism and green politics, Irish/Northern Irish politics, Q Methodology, sustainable energy politics and policy.
His blog 'Marxist Lentilist' is at http://www.marxistlentilist.blogspot.com
Phone: 0044 (0) 2890 972546
Address: Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action
School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
25 University Sqaure
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast
BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland
His blog 'Marxist Lentilist' is at http://www.marxistlentilist.blogspot.com
Phone: 0044 (0) 2890 972546
Address: Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action
School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
25 University Sqaure
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast
BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland
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This paper is a personal reflection on how academia should transform itself, indeed remake and reimagine itself in the context of the Anthropocene/Capitalocene, and the intersections of the climate and biodiversity crisis with growing inequality and injustice within and between societies. What is our responsibility as trusted sources of knowledge production and dissemination? Should we become more activist oriented and more engaged in informing the public about the causes, consequences and solutions to our worsening predicament as groups like Extinction Rebellion, Faculty for Future and the Climate Justice Universities Union suggest? How do we transform academia starting from the difficult assessment that as current constituted universities play a key role in the reproduction of unsustainability? This they do, for example, through maintaining (or in some cases actively promoting) research, development and employment links with extractive and polluting industries and by uncritically teaching unsustainable perspectives and practices, including the ‘common-sense’ positive neoclassical economics perspective on the (ecocidal) pursuit of indefinite economic growth. Yet, as highly resourced and influential institutions, universities have an inherently transformative potential, should those resources be redirected and redistributed to progressive social and ecological ends that challenge, rather than support, our unsustainable political and economic status quo. As workers within these institutions, academics and researchers are therefore faced with a choice: to be agents of this reproduction or to be advocates and activists for radical transformation and change.
infrastructural and mainly urban development, encompassing, inter alia, land
use, spatial planning, energy planning, and includes the achievement of
economic, cultural and environmental goals. This chapter mainly discusses
planning debates within the UK and Irish contexts. The first question which
serves as the starting point of this chapter is to ask if the objective of economic
growth is now ecologically unsustainable, socially divisive and has in many
countries passed the point when it is adding to human wellbeing? The second
is how growth and planning are both currently dependent upon a fossil fuel
energy system which, like the growth economy it fuels, is now ecologically
unsustainable, socially disruptive, produces multiple problems from ill-health
to extractive injustice and the creation of ‘sacrifice zones’, and ultimately
constitutes a risky energy basis for a sustainable economy? Simply put our
societies and conventional planning processes are dependent upon (some
might say addicted to) GDP measured and endless economic growth and
carbon energy, both of which have passed thresholds indicating we need to
replace them. Which of course raises the addition question: if we accept or
consider the exhaustion of endless growth and our continuing carbon energy
dependence, what replaces them? And what is the role for planning in both
that transition and the possible purpose of planning in a post-growth and
post-carbon context? These are the main concerns of this chapter.
How do we face the prospect of devastation with a creative and moral imagination?
Is there the possibility of radical hope and survival in the face of cultural collapse?
Can breakdown lead to breakthrough?
And why might hope be better than optimism about the future?