In response to unprecedented environmental degradation, activists and
popular movements have risen up to fight the crisis of climate change
and the ongoing devastation of the earth. The environmental movement has
undeniably influenced even its adversaries, as the language of
sustainability can be found in corporate mission statements, government
policy, and national security agendas. However, the price of success has
been compromise, prompting soul-searching and questioning of the
politics of environmentalism. Is it a revolutionary movement that
opposes the current system? Or is it reformist, changing the system by
working within it?
In Birth of a New Earth, Adrian Parr argues that this is a false
choice, calling for a shift from an opposition between revolution and
incremental change to a renewed collective imagination. Parr insists
that environmental destruction is at its core a problem of
democratization and decolonization. It requires reckoning with
militarism, market fundamentalism, and global inequality and mobilizing
an alternative political vision capable of freeing the collective
imagination in order to replace an apocalyptic mindset frozen by the
spectacle of violence. Birth of a New Earth locates the emancipatory
work of environmental politics in solidarities that can bring together
different constituencies, fusing opposing political strategies and
paradigms by working both inside and outside the prevailing system. She
discusses experiments in food sovereignty, collaborative
natural-resource management, and public-interest design initiatives that
test new models of economic democratization. Ultimately, Parr proclaims,
environmental politics is the refusal to surrender life to the violence
of global capitalism, corporate governance, and militarism. This
defiance can serve as the source for the birth of a new earth.
