Captured Futures: Rethinking the Drama of Environmental Politics

Environmental politics ’as we know it’ cannot deliver. Despite all efforts, politics is unable to bend the ecological trends. Maarten A. Hajer and Jeroen Oomen argue that this is because environmental politics is ’captured’. This capture doesn’t just express itself in lobbying or a lack of political will, but in a capture of the imagination: we seem unable to imagine futures that are meaningfully different from the present. Examining environmental politics as drama reveals how all actors play their particular roles in this capture: scientists funnel narrow policy futures through their models; activists adopt politically expedient language; and policymakers look for safe, technologically-sound ’win-win’ solutions. All are captured in a regime of ecological modernization that entertains too-narrow a solution space. For Hajer and Oomen, this is cause for concern: we have entered ’a radical age’ in which persistent policy failure leads to increased suggestions to engage with speculative geoengineering technologies in a desperate attempt to safeguard the future. On the other hand, they point at the growing societal backlash against environmental policies.

Yet in the third part of the book, discourse and dramaturgical analysis appear as a reason for hope, sketching an alternative perspective on environmental politics. It suggests that a new, more cultural approach to environmental politics could have more leverage on the societal imagination. Combining this with the formulation of new discourses and using alternative ’dramaturgies of change’, Captured Futures highlights how to find more effective and more inspiring ideas about how to approach the future and, ultimately, liberate environmental politics.

Maarten A. Hajer, Distinguished Professor of Urban Futures, Utrecht University, Jeroen Oomen, Assistant Professor, Utrecht University

Maarten A. Hajer is Distinguished Professor of Urban Futures at Utrecht University. Previously, he was Professor of Public Policy at the University of Amsterdam and served a term as Director-General of PBL - the Netherlands Assessment Agency. Hajer is the author of The Politics of Environmental Discourse (OUP, 1995) and Authoritative Governance: Policy Making in the Age of Mediatization (OUP, 2009). Hajer is a regular curator of exhibitions and a member of the UN’s International Resource Panel.

Jeroen Oomen is Assistant Professor at the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University, where he focuses on the social, cultural, and scientific practices that create societies’ conceptions of the future. His main research interests are climate politics, geoengineering, and social theory, specifically where it concerns questions of sustainability. Oomen is the author of Imagining Climate Engineering: Dreaming of the Designer Climate (Routledge, 2021). He has also published on environmental politics, futuring, and governance, both for academic and general audiences, and regularly contributes to public media, museum exhibits, and activism.