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"A sustainability apartheid is emerging. More than ever, urban residents want to be green, yet to cater to their interests, a green-tech service economy has sprung up, co-opting well-intentioned concerns over sustainability to sell a resource-heavy and exclusive "lifestyle environmentalism." This has made cities more unsustainable and inaccessible to the working class. The Sustainability Class is about those wealthy "progressive" urbanites convinced that we can save the planet through individual action, smart urbanism, green finance, and technological innovation. Authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan challenge many of the popular ideas about environmentalism, showing that it is actually the sustainability class itself that is unsustainable. The solutions they propose work to safeguard an elite minority, exclude billions of people, and ultimately hasten ecological breakdown, not reverse it. From Venice Beach, Los Angeles, to Neom in Saudi Arabia and beyond, the authors explore with biting humor how investors around the world are rushing to capitalize on going green. By contrast, real-world examples of movements for housing and food production, transport, and waste management demonstrate how ordinary people around the world are building a more ecological future by working together, against all odds. In doing so, they show us how sustainability can be reclaimed for everyone. Sustainability isn't about vibes and superficial green facades. It's about building people power to reimagine the world."--
About the author
Vijay Kolinjivadi is an assistant professor at the School for Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is also a co-editor of the website Uneven Earth. The co-author, with Aaron Vansintjan, of
The Sustainability Class (The New Press), he has been published in
Al Jazeera,
New Internationalist,
Truthout, and
The Conversation. He lives in Montreal.
Aaron Vansintjan is the founder and co-editor of Uneven Earth and co-author of
The Future Is Degrowth. He has been published in
The Guardian, T
ruthout, openDemocracy, and
The Ecologist. The co-author, with Vijay Kolinjivadi, of
The Sustainability Class (The New Press), he lives in Montreal.
Summary
An original argument that environmental sustainability has been co-opted by the urban elite, along with examples from around the world of ways we can save our planet
With more urban residents interested in living sustainably, we have seen the emergence of a green-tech service economy premised around a kind of “lifestyle environmentalism.” Concerns over sustainability have been co-opted to sell a high-tech urban lifestyle, causing cities to become more unequal and unsustainable, cementing the elite’s status, and excluding the working class, racial minorities, and women.
Focusing on what they term the “sustainability class”—a woke and wealthy set of urbanites convinced that sustainability can be achieved through individual actions, green and “smart” development, and technological efficiency—authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan challenge many of the popular ideas about saving the planet. It is actually the approach of the sustainability class itself, the authors argue, that is unsustainable; improving eco-efficiency within a capitalist, growth-oriented system will neither save us nor lead to true sustainability.
Vivid and conversational but also challenging, The Sustainability Class explores how, from Los Angeles to Hanoi, and from Google’s “smart city” in Toronto to Abu Dhabi, investors all over the world are rushing to capitalize on going green. By contrast, using real-world examples of housing and energy strategies, food production, transport, tourism, and waste management, they show how ordinary people around the world are truly building a more ecological future through collective organization in their everyday lives. In doing so, they reclaim ecology and true sustainability for everyone, so it is no longer just the domain of an elite who seek to devise more sophisticated ways to shift the costs of their “greener than thou” lifestyles onto the rest of us.
