Crisis and continuity of capitalist society-nature relationships: The imperial mode of living and the limits to environmental governance

ABSTRACT This article aims to better understand the discrepancy between a relatively high level of awareness of the ecological crisis on the one hand, and insufficient political and social change on the other. This discrepancy causes a crisis of what we call the ‘Rio model of politics'. We approach the problem from the perspective of the concept of ‘societal nature relations' (gesellschaftliche naturverhältnisse), which can be situated in the framework of political ecology and, in this article, is combined with insights from regulation theory and critical state theory. The empirical analysis identifies fossilist patterns of production and consumption as the heart of the problem. These patterns are deeply rooted in everyday and institutional practices as well as societal orientations in the global North and imply a disproportionate claim on global resources, sinks and labour power. They thus form the basis of what we call the ‘imperial mode of living' of the global North. With the rapid industrialisation of countries such as India and China, fossilist patterns of production and consumption are generalised. As a consequence, the ability of developed capitalism to fix its environmental contradictions through the externalisation of its socio-ecological costs is put into question. Geopolitical and economic tensions increase and result in a crisis of international environmental governance. Strategies like ‘green economy' have to be understood as attempts to make the ecological contradictions of capitalism processable once again.