Michael Maniates, "The Living-Green Myth" (Polity Press, 2025) cover art

Michael Maniates, "The Living-Green Myth" (Polity Press, 2025)

Michael Maniates, "The Living-Green Myth" (Polity Press, 2025)

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

 Dr. Michael F. Maniates is a leading scholar in environmental politics and sustainability studies whose work has fundamentally reshaped how researchers and policymakers understand consumption, responsibility, and power in environmental change. In this current book, The Living-Green Myth (Polity Press, 2025), he identifies recurring paradoxes in the sustainable-consumption agenda: the tendency to propose modest behavioral solutions for immense systemic problems, to depoliticize governance, and to avoid confronting growth. He believes the mantra of “buy green, live lean, save the planet” is a con of recent and unseemly origin. It fosters pernicious assumptions about social change, separates individuals from their real power in the world, and fuels damaging consumption. It thrives because it meets the short-term priorities of governments and business, not the long-term needs of the planet's human and non-human inhabitants. Environmentally concerned individuals can make a meaningful difference in the world, and living green is a start. But alone, it can do more harm than good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.