`Save the Earth' or `Manage the Earth'? The Politics of Environmental Globality in High Modernity

Abstract

This article explores Roland Robertson's formulations on globality - or consciousness of the world as a single place - within the context of contemporary environmental politics. For the purpose of this analysis, two kinds of environmental globality are proposed, namely, `ecocentric globality' and `instrumental globality' which are deployed in two types of environmental discourses, associated with two different philosophical and epistemological traditions. Whereas ecocentric globality is based on a romantic construction of the Earth as a living being, and stresses a moral obligation to protect it for its own value, instrumental globality conceives the planet as a system of resources, to be utilized for the maintenance of consumer culture - to ensure the long-term survival of the industrial mode of production. The author's key contention is that, as the global economy becomes more integrated and discourses of developmentalism and economic rationalism more pervasive in high modernity, instrumental globality becomes the dominant form of globality in environmental politics.