The sustainability class How to take back our future from lifestyle environmentalists

According to this scathing critique, the "green dream" on offer from today's "sustainability"- and "resilience"-minded tech and lifestyle brands is nothing but a faddish sales pitch used to peddle pointless "climate solutions" that actually harm the environment rather than help it. Climate policy analysts Kolinjivadi and Vansintjan (The Future Is Degrowth) argue that elites promote such schemes--which in the authors' view comprise today's buzziest climate change solutions, including the "regenerative revolution" in agriculture and "smart cities"--as a way of assuaging their guilt or protecting their own status in the coming climate dystopia (when "smart cities" will come in handy for surveilling the climate-displaced masses). The authors make a devastating tour of such "solutions," poking holes in each one's usefulness, mostly by pointing out hidden carbon emissions in their supply chains or their lack of any carbon reducing effects at all, the latter of which Kolinjivadi and Vansintjan label "green gaslighting" (they joke that tech entrepreneurs who claim they will solve climate change by using gas flares--the natural gas that escapes oil drill sites--to mine bitcoin are "both literally and figuratively" gaslighting). Acerbic and sweeping, the overview ends with bracing advice for how to pick out real climate solutions from the morass of schemes (it boils down to: be skeptical of someone selling something). Readers will come away more savvy and empowered. (Dec.)

The "greener than thou" class is more part of the problem than part of the solution, according to two environmental writers. Kolinjivadi and Vansintjan are deeply committed to the issue of climate change. They are co-editors of the website Uneven Earth, and much of the material in their book is drawn from it. They are particularly angry at the way that sustainability has been co-opted by an affluent elite, who believe that fighting climate change is about buying expensive "natural" foods and products and showing them off. As it turns out, the authors say, many of this elite's favorite purchases actually have a large carbon footprint, although it is not immediately visible to them. Instead, the carbon costs are passed down the line to other people. These elites usually draw their wealth from the tech, finance, and real estate sectors, and they care little about the environmental impact of their occupations, say Kolinjivadi and Vansintjan. The authors highlight what they see as hypocrisy and selfishness, although they save their sharpest barbs for carbon offsets, which they see as financial chicanery designed to hide, rather than solve, problems. The authors explore a number of community projects that focus on grassroots solutions, and though they are admirable, it is hard to see how they can add up to a global answer. Moreover, Kolinjivadi and Vansintjan lose track of their argument when they cite the necessity of economic "degrowth." This is a pity, because Kolinjivadi and Vansintjan otherwise have many interesting things to say, even if they are better at identifying villains than developing alternatives. A powerful challenge to a way of thinking that has turned sustainability into a virtue-signaling lifestyle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.