The bargaining phase and academics.

“Ecological Modernisation”, “(Ecologically) Sustainable Development,” “Stakeholder Engagement,” “Adaptive Governance,” “Co-design,” “Distributed Governance,” “Strategic Niche Management,” “New International Economic Order,” “New World Order,” “New Public Management,” “Social innovation,” “deliberate social-ecological transformations ,” “earth systems management,” “environmentally conscious manufacturing,” “closed loop” “circular economy” “steady-state”.   

I am sure you can come up with some of your own. The list goes on and on and on.  All magic incantation.

We are like the sorcerer’s apprentice, desperately word-salading out the spells in the hope that one of them will tame the beast, the “juggernaut” as Anthony Giddens called it in his book “The Consequences of Modernity.”

The juggernaut; the twins of 1) a cerebral cortex full of powerful abstraction and 2) opposable thumbs for gripping a femur or a space station.  Both in the service of a lizard’s brain, in a ‘civilisation’ that two hundred years ago, after binge-ing on occupied land, stumbled on fossil fuels.

What a species.