engleski

Collapse-free future or material wealth: what do Europeans want?

Avoiding a whole-scale collapse of the civilisation supporting ecosystems within this century will require a change in the social metabolism (civilisation’s material throughput), as well as in expectations and aspirations, behaviours and attitudes of the majority of the global population. For some, this is a question of modifying aspirations and focusing on those whose realisation is most sustainable and most valued in the long-term period (developing world) ; whilst for others this is a matter of sacri∫ce of existing material manifold of wellbeing, a reduction in extraction of environmental resources and dumping of waste. In this context, European societies, having the highest level of material and social development, carry a signi∫cant strategic role in exemplifying the future as sustainability-oriented or oblivious to whole-scale collapse. By comparing “objective” development and environmental impact indices, with population’s attitudes across a range of European countries, we aim to elucidate possible links between society’s objective potential to transform its practices and material throughput to those more suitable to a globally just long-term sustainability, and its population’s support for the required social transformations. Our paper primarily aims to test the respective populations’ agreement ; that is, the prevalence of support for some of sustainability-compatible strategies against the dominant prosperity thesis, which claims that greater national wealth is the best predictor of population’s environmental and development concerns. We rely on data from cross-country social surveys that will be used (EVS, ISSP) to map trends among European populations’ attitudes.

sustainability; social transformation; prosperity thesis; Europe; ISSP

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