This article was written by Professor Mark Everard, IES Vice President, following from his initial 'War of the Worlds' article written in March and a subsequent response. It provides Mark’s perspective and represents personal views of the author to stimulate thought and discussion. It is not an opinion of the Institution of Environmental Sciences as an organisation.
As a membership organisation, we provide a convening space where members can share their views and engage in healthy debate, so if you have a perspective on these (or any other) issues, please get in touch. We intend to publish a short series of papers from different IES members and stakeholders, leading to a discussion event later in the year where members can share their views.
A war of evidence
In March 2025, I published an opinion piece, War of the worlds1, pointing to the diametric and increasing divergence of world views in 2025 geopolitics. On the one hand is the progress we have made with sustainable development over the past half-century seeking, however imperfectly, to reorient society to live within the already diminished carrying capacity of global ecosystems. The countervailing trend is the re-emergence and political reinforcement of a narrow monetarist agenda in which short-term financial profit-taking rules supreme, disregarding the rights of different societal sectors and the capacities of ecosystems to sustain the inevitable pressures we will place upon them through wilful blindness about consequences.
This article delves deeper into the belief systems behind this divergence and the importance of evidence in determining which approach offers humanity a future, contrasting with other directions that undermine our continuing potential to achieve secure and fulfilled lives. We are Homo sapiens – the ‘wise hominid’ – with evolved mental capacities to guide ourselves wisely with evidence and foresight. And, in our armoury, we have science to better guide us to reap the benefits of different ideologies without falling into the trap of fundamentalism or for closed ideologies and mindsets to blind us to the unforeseen consequences of the choices we make.
Conflicting ideologies
The term ‘ideology’ was coined and developed in 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher. The term was most strongly articulated in his five-volume Éléments d'idéologie published between 1817 and 1818. Though today often associated with political science, wherein it refers to political belief systems, de Tracy’s definition of ideology embraces a broader and deeper articulation relating to a set of beliefs or values affiliated to individuals or collectives. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the term principally in a condemnatory manner in relation to the mindsets of ruling elites.
This condemnation though was spoken from a contrasting ideology, known now as Marxism-Leninism and which was to become the communist doctrine established after the Russian Revolution. Whilst, for some, the condemnatory sense remains, the neologism of the word itself conveys a value-neutral ‘study of ideas’ by combining ‘ideas’ and ‘-ology’.
Ideologies appear everywhere. They associate not only with governments and political parties as well as factions within them, but also within companies, the basis for decision-making about allocation or rejection of research and development funding, and the steerage of ‘spin’ in communications through media of all types. Brand identity is another manifestation of ideology, with different brands marketing the idea that certain products associate consumers with lifestyle choices that can range from a statement of status to one of ethically and/or environmentally conscious consumption.
Sustainable development is itself an ideology, founded on an idea of socio-economic development that can succeed in the long term without undermining its social and environmental dependencies. As also described in War of the worlds, so too is a narrow monetarist set of ideas that promote material wealth generation, with a perception that wider ethical and ecological considerations are constraints on a narrow financial model of ‘growth’.
The concept of ideology may be value-neutral, but differing foundational ideologies, and the actualisation of underpinning beliefs and world views into material and societal forms, may be founded in facts and/or beliefs, social and environmental considerations, or else wholly divorced from such groundings.
Open and constraining ideologies
Some ideologies are open, whilst others as constraining.
An open ideology is receptive to learning, even if that learning is uncomfortable, as it provides direction for improvement. Famously, former US Vice-President Al Gore challenged the global status quo with his 2006 book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It2, documenting a suite of linked ‘inconvenient truths’ revealed by temporal trends across a variety of environmental and social parameters all of which conform to an accelerating ‘hockey stick’ trend over time and particularly since the Second World War.
This, and the film that was developed from the book, is one of many examples of ‘wake up calls’ escalating awareness of the need (if not yet matched by proportionate action) for a change in societal habits if we are to continue to enjoy continuing security and opportunity. So too were the revelations and influence of the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment3 and periodic reports by authoritative science-based bodies such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)4 and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)5, not to mention a wealth of regional and local studies demonstrating trends and informing wise responses to live within the carrying capacity of planetary systems.
Sustainable development, still most elegantly defined by the consensual 1987 Brundtland Commission as “...development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”6, is an inherently open ideology. What are the needs of humanity, both now and those that may arise in the future that may not be currently known but for which it is vital to provide a platform of security and opportunity? And how are needs met in a world in which people are intimately interconnected with planetary processes and resources?
What is the status of, and trends within, the supportive ecosystem, and how might that inform strategic decision-making that sustains security and opportunity whilst also guiding modification of enterprises to profitably provide the means for people to meet needs ranging from basic biophysical requirements to higher tiers of need now and tomorrow? Environmental, social and other sciences along with societal discourse have a vital role in shining a light on these open questions.
By diametric contrast, other ideologies are closed. A closed ideology rejects inconvenient truths by overlooking or burying them, or else branding them as revolutionary or, in the modern era, as ‘fake news’. It ignores such factors as market and environmental indicators, public health and opinion, distribution equity and other metrics that conflict with the ideology.
Some ideologies throughout history and into the present are aggressively repressive, rejecting or actively suppressing all conflicting alternatives. Sadly, history abounds with examples of blinkered ideologies, and with their unfortunate consequences. Chairman Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Leap Forwards’ of 1958–1962 imposed inflexible ideas of collectivised agricultural and manufacturing models, rejecting ages-old proven systems and contributing to the starvation of tens of millions of Chinese people, leading on to perception of intellectuals as the greatest enemy to the state under the Great Cultural Revolution (1966 and 1976) cumulatively resulting in the deaths of an estimated 65 million Chinese people through execution, imprisonment or forced famine7.
The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was driven by the similarly inflexible imposition of collectivised agriculture allied with massive investment in heavy industry depleting the agricultural workforce, with the brutal silencing of dissent under Joseph Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’ (1936 and 1938) sequentially suppressing opposition in the political arena, military high command, and extending onwards to intelligentsia and other professionals and ultimately selected ethnic minorities. These examples are reiterated in repressive regimes founded on closed ideologies driving the Inquisitions of medieval Europe, Adolf Hitler’s ‘Third Reich’, South Africa’s apartheid era and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Intellectual, gender and other rights, faiths and other ideas contrary to a narrow ideology have been brutally suppressed under these and many other regimes driven by closed, authoritarian ideologies. The millions who lost their lives under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Hitler, and others bearing a grim warning to humanity of the dangers of a closed ideology blind to facts and consequences.
Contrary to these repressive examples, initiatives such as the 1948 UN Declaration on Human Rights8, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)9 and a wide range of intergovernmental conventions on wetland conservation, transboundary pollution, trade in endangered species, persistent pollutants, action on climate change and more have formulated consensual multinational frameworks around open-minded ideologies in response to emerging threats of a global nature. In many nations, we have seen statutory erection of protections of rights relating to gender, disability, faith, sexual orientation, age, freedom of speech and of association and other factors that have become cemented in law as ‘protected characteristics’.
Ideology and opportunity
This is not to say that ideologies are bad things. As we have seen, sustainable development is an ideology framed by desirable progression to a world in which security and opportunity for all is enabled through working in greater synergy with the supportive capacities of planetary ecosystems. The defining issue though is one of fundamentalism.
Though the term ‘fundamentalism’ may often be most closely associated with religious beliefs, it is also another concept with wider application and ramifications relating to inflexible interpretation of dogmas or ideologies. Religious intolerance as well as many instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’, in which the champions of powerful ideologies execute pogroms against perceived outsiders or opponents, have a bloody history. Perceived infallibility is not the sole province of religions; it is seen in fundamentalist politics too. At a lower level, rejection of good ideas held by opposing left-wing or right-wing political parties means that resolutions and the rule of good common sense is lost in public policy.
It is, in fact, the absence of thought that is the enemy. Monetarism has its virtues in terms of the efficient working of markets, but only if bounded by awareness of the interdependence of markets and values chains on supporting ecosystems and the rights and choices of those affected by them. Religious ideology can carry moral weight into personal lives and public decision-making if not blinded by narrowness and hatred for what contradicts a restrictive dogma.
Even those perceiving themselves as ‘on the side of the angels’ can fall foul of fundamentalism blinding them to sustainable outcomes, such as eco-extremists closed to alternative world views and willing to inflict harm on people in the misinterpreted name of environmental and social justice. It is also true that the mission of environmental protection or enhancement can get lost in translation though the corporatisation of some environmental work, as seen for example in the critique of some consultancies as well as some NGOs focused on profitability or continuing funding as an over-riding priority beyond driving optimal environmental outcomes.
The role of science
Science has a distinctive role to play in keeping the windows of perception open as an antidote to fundamentalist blindness. For those with open minds, the disruptive power of new knowledge may be challenging but is welcome as a matter of ‘course correction’. For those with closed minds, knowledge threatens constructed or preferred ‘realities’. This is why intellectuals were in the firing line in Mao Zedong’s China and Joseph Stalin’s Russia, not to mention the widespread de-funding and cancellation of working visas and academic tenure in contemporary America, as knowledge challenges fixed dogmas.
Rejection of the threat posed by climate change, ignoring or dismissing both the weight of consensual global science on the matter as well as those who address it in political, media and scientific discourse, is one of many features in post-2025 American politics blinkered to unreconstructed monetarist policies that disregard their wider consequences for future wellbeing.
The setting back of carbon reduction targets along with other environmental protections in the UK and other nations in the name of a ‘growth, growth, growth’ agenda is also a disservice to future generations if clear evidence about the magnitude of threat and the need for timely actions evident from scientific studies are taken seriously. The same principle applies to turning a blind eye to the robust and consistent evidence of precipitous declines in biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, as well as the accumulation of pollutants.
We are not talking here about a ‘pick and mix’ approach to science, clothing preferred ideologies with selective mobilisation of ‘factoids’ such as a focus on uncertainties around detail or areas of disagreement within an otherwise broad and consistent consensus as observed, for example, in the cascading sequence of UNFCCC reports. Rather, there is a need for a balanced and critical approach to all evidence, both supportive and conflicting, to derive a consensual view along the lines of the ‘systematic review’ approach embedded in medicine and increasingly infiltrating other areas of science. Where the evidence is compelling, it is only the blind and self-serving that choose to disregard or deny it.
What future do we want?
Are contemporary political decisions that reject multinationalism and intergovernmental conventions addressing the raft of grave and potentially existential threats at this axial point in human history– climate change, biodiversity loss, human rights abuses and pollution – consistent with responsible governance? Is naïve but ideologically driven rejection of hard-won protections responding to robust environmental facts in the name of releasing short-term financial profitability likely, ultimately, to build a world of security and opportunity for all? And can rejection of measures to counter racial, sexual and other forms of discrimination ultimately lead us to a safer and more stable world?
Let’s be clear that we all want a future that is ‘Great again’. But ‘great’ for whom, and who are the potential losers that surely deserve consideration alongside the beneficiaries? If ‘again’, when exactly was it rosy for all in society? And if referring to the future, what are the factors that need to be considered to underpin continuing ‘greatness’? Surely, practices that marginalise communities and degrade supporting ecosystems undermining the needs of future generations and the processes vital for supporting their needs into the future cannot be part of any sane vision of ‘greatness’?
If we want to build a future that is secure with continuing opportunity for all, we cannot be idle in the face of powerful forces at play today that threaten to dismantle progress made in reforming society over the past half-century. At this juncture in history, this is a time for those who stand for the rights of humanity and the values of the ecosystems that support us to join with a concerted and science-based voice to be strident in championing the now-embattled cause of sustainable development.
As, if we have learned any lessons from throughout history, it is that it is not only what we positively influence but also what we passively sanction through lack of action that defines the future.
