Last week I read Hanna Eggestrand Vaughan’s PhD thesis draft on values for deep transformations. In her interviews she found that some public servants feel bringing environmental commitments into their work would threaten their neutrality. Environmental concern appeared as a political position, while they saw established ways of working as non-partisan.
But the status quo is not neutral.
This thought has followed me through ESA 2026 in Warsaw, and it connects with reflections prompted by Rethinking Consumption in the Capitalocene, a semi plenary discussion between Marlyne Sahakian and Markus Wissen. The comforts and expectations built into everyday life in wealthy parts of the world including cheap goods, frequent mobility, abundant energy, convenience, endless choice etc. depend on social and ecological relations that remain largely unseen by those who benefit from them.
Extraction happens elsewhere. So does pollution, dangerous work, land loss, debt, displacement and ecological devastation. Some places and populations become sacrifice zones, expected to absorb the costs of lifestyles, infrastructures and economies organised around continued growth and consumption.
These arrangements are culturally specific and historically produced. They reflect colonial histories, unequal power and decisions about whose wellbeing counts. They are maintained through policies, institutions, professional routines, supply chains and habits. Their familiarity can make them seem neutral. It does not make them just.
Yes public work requires accountability, transparency and a commitment to serving people fairly. Yet treating the status quo as neutral already takes a position. An unfair one.
Meme Manisha sent me 😍