Sustainability is one of the most popular political terms in 2025. Only a few people define sustainability when they talk about the trend towards sustainability. This often happens as a habit, in which sustainability is used as a synonym for environmental protection or reliability. Behind this superficial meaning of sustainability, however, a particular political vision can also be hidden.
This political vision of sustainability was significantly shaped in the 1980s by the so-called Brundtland Report.292 The Brundtland Report on sustainable development, entitled “Our Common Future”, was published in 1987 by the UN World Commission on Environment and Development. Five years later, the 1992 Rio Conference of the United Nations took place, at which the so-called “Agenda 21” was adopted to implement the recommendations of the report on sustainable development worldwide.
In the Brundtland definition, sustainability is a lasting development to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This development requires “a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations.”
The somewhat circular definition of sustainability as a description of a secured future and secured needs appears reasonable. From an allegedly conservative perspective, sustainable development is presented as risk-aware development with reference to future generations. With this supposedly reasonable definition, a motte-and-bailey deception is carried out.293 In fact, the second part of the definition demands a global transformation; i.e., a global political agenda: for sustainable development, “the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutions” are to be subjected to a process of change so that they “are in harmony with one another”. This “harmonisation” can be understood as a UN plan to control all resources, all investments, all institutions, and all technologies.
According to the report, both extreme poverty in developing countries is to be overcome and prosperity in industrialised countries brought into line with nature and the environment. It is assumed that the consumption and lifestyle patterns of Western industrialised countries cannot be transferred to the entire world population (of 1987), which is also expected to continue growing. The report warns that the economy must satisfy the legitimate wishes of people without, through capitalist economic growth, exceeding the so-called “ecological limits of the Earth” and thereby endangering the allegedly fragile foundations of life.294 Most people are to change their way of life to prevent catastrophic planetary environmental damage. In doing so, they are to trust the recommendations of the UN Commission (see Experts).295 The demanded transformation for more sustainability is to result in a worldwide roughly equally poor, resource-saving life in which basic needs are satisfied. For this resource-saving, sustainable life, new forms of economy are needed to prevent an ecologically problematic resource consumption.
This transformative UN definition of sustainability is directly connected to the ecological criticism of capitalism (see Climate Justice).
Although there is still no criticism of economic environmental destruction or excessive resource consumption in the original Marxist doctrine, an new-left ecological-Marxist conflict theory about the environment and the market economy emerged in the 20th century. It was argued that a growing capitalist economy requires increasingly more natural resources. Therefore, long-term growth inevitably leads to progressive resource consumption and environmental destruction, as the actual costs incurred are externalised at the expense of the environment.296 For an ecological socialism, the society affected by the negative environmental influences should therefore be granted co-determination rights over the means of production.
Ecology, sustainability, and environmental protection have now become a fixed part of the political mainstream. Especially in rich countries, environmental protection enjoys great political support. However, high air and water quality there was achieved primarily through technical solutions.
Eco-socialist activists ignore the progress made through capitalism-driven technological developments and demand more restrictive measures: to protect the climate, all CO₂ emissions are to be prevented in the near future, otherwise a climate catastrophe threatens. Technical innovations and adaptations are considered insufficient.297 For many eco-activists, it is not primarily about environmental impacts but about political control. Therefore, in addition to fossil fuels, they also reject nuclear power, although nuclear power enables CO₂-low energy prosperity. Instead, wind and solar power are to be sufficient for energy supply.298 The politically prescribed goal “Net Zero” is to propagate a so-called “climate-neutral economic mode” and is to be achieved by the European “Green Deal” by 2050.299 With “climate-neutral” strategies, however, today’s global energy poverty is not combated; on the contrary, it is even exacerbated by a scarcity of fossil fuels. Worldwide, the share of fossil fuels in total energy in 2023 was around 80 per cent.300 Much of what politicians sell as sustainability is, according to the first part of the Brundtland definition, not sustainable because it does not contribute to satisfying the basic needs of present (or future) generations. On the contrary, with the intended scarcity of energy, a stable, secured future is endangered: without affordable and constantly available energy, there can be no economic growth that is urgently needed to secure necessary needs.301 Only with a great deal of Malthusian cynicism can it be considered acceptable to keep billions of people in extreme poverty through a causal reversal.302
Often, with sustainability, the actual focus is not on actual human needs but on control over demand (“ecological resource saving”). Through allegedly ecologically caused scarcities, new forms of “ecological-social” economy are to be justified (see Well-being and Utopia). Such demands for a system change can also be found at the Hot or Cool Institute, which wants to provide decision-makers with scientific foundations for a sustainable future. There, it says about the necessary changes in view of the “sustainability challenge”:
“Behavioural changes are important at all levels, but it is of crucial importance to change the norms, laws, supply systems, and infrastructures that determine individual action. A sustainable change is both an individual and a systemic change.” 303