Is the non-principle of “sustainability” about to collapse under the weight of its own mushy contradictions? News this week from the seemingly unrelated areas of biofuels and health policy provide some hope. It was inevitable, however, that, just as the old socialism imploded because it simply didn’t work (except for its rulers and their hangers on) so the new socialism would also grind to a halt.

Sustainability has been smuggled into the policy lexicon as an Orwellian dumber-down of debate. Who would promote unsustainability? It has become the weasel word and policy tic of our time. Corporate chieftains, politicians, consultants and public intellectuals all bow the knee before this founding concept of environmental Newspeak. Its origins as a subversive political principle lay in the United Nations’ Brundtland report, which coined “sustainable development” as a counterattack against the resurgent forces of free-market capitalism in the late 1980s. Designed to induce a warm fuzzy feeling of stewardship of the planet, the poor and the future, its true meaning was hinted at by the fact that it was hatched by a bunch of self-confessed socialists, led by Gro Harlem Brundtland and Canada’s own Maurice Strong. Sustainability was the new “S” word, behind which lurked all the power lust and exploitation of economic ignorance that had given the old “S” word its power. Before, that is, the old “S” word had collapsed in a heap.