Abstract

What is sustainable development? Why is it an issue? What needs to be done? What can be done about it? These questions increasingly preoccupy policy-makers, resource managers and the public. This note parses the four questions through that brand of neo-Adornian Critical Theory often referred to as “the theory of artificial negativity” because of its emphasis on the drive of government to rationalize itself and the dominant ideology by means of internal opposition. Always functionally and sometimes intentionally, bureaucracies engender counter-bureaucracies, each having a vested interest in keeping “opponents” around as a way of perpetuating themselves. These so-called opponents, be they government versus the environmentalists, Left versus Right, or the welfare state versus those who would run it better, are part of the same techno-managerial elite that believes it has the solutions to manage its way out of the increasing complexity of the system.