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Adrian Parr calls attention to the problematic socioeconomic conditions of neoliberal capitalism underpinning the world's current environmental challenges, and she argues that, until we grasp the implications of neoliberalism's interference in climate change talks and policy, humanity is on track to an irreversible crisis.Parr calls out the neoliberalization of nature in the development of green technologies, land use, dietary habits, reproductive practices, consumption patterns, design strategies, and media. She dismisses the notions that the free market can solve and reverse debilitating environmental degradation and that climate change is nothing more than a political ghost emptied of its collective aspirations. Decrying what she perceives as a failure of the human imagination and an impoverishment of political institutions, Parr pushes the sustainability movement to engage more aggressively with the logical and cultural manifestations of consumer economics. If the economically powerful continue to monopolize the meaning of environmental change, she warns, new and more promising collective solutions will fail to take root.
List of contents
AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Business as Usual1. Climate Capitalism2. Green Angels or Carbon Cowboys?3. Population4. To Be or Not to Be Thirsty5. Sounding the Alarm on Hunger6. Animal Pharm7. Modern Feeling and the Green City8. SpillAfterword: In the Danger ZoneNotesBibliographyIndex
About the author
Adrian Parr is associate professor in the School of Architecture and Interior Design and at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Hijacking Sustainability; Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory, and the Politics of Trauma; and New Directions in Sustainable Design (coedited with Michael Zaretsky).
Summary
Adrian Parr calls attention to the problematic socioeconomic conditions of neoliberal capitalism underpinning the world's current environmental challenges, and she argues that, until we grasp the implications of neoliberalism's interference in climate change talks and policy, humanity is on track to an irreversible crisis.Parr calls out the neoliberalization of nature in the development of green technologies, land use, dietary habits, reproductive practices, consumption patterns, design strategies, and media. She dismisses the notions that the free market can solve and reverse debilitating environmental degradation and that climate change is nothing more than a political ghost emptied of its collective aspirations. Decrying what she perceives as a failure of the human imagination and an impoverishment of political institutions, Parr pushes the sustainability movement to engage more aggressively with the logical and cultural manifestations of consumer economics. If the economically powerful continue to monopolize the meaning of environmental change, she warns, new and more promising collective solutions will fail to take root.