The Sustainability Class

How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists

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

“Caring for the environment means reclaiming ecology for everyone.” —from the introduction

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. Challenging many of the popular ideas about environmentalism, authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan show that it is actually the sustainability class that is unsustainable, its solutions working 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.

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Praise

“A powerful challenge to a way of thinking that has turned sustainability into a virtue-signaling lifestyle.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Do you want to attain a sustainable way of life? It’s likely you will end up just reinforcing the hypocrisy of the sustainability class. The only way to avoid this trap is to read this book.”

—Kohei Saito, associate professor at the University of Tokyo and author of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“The struggle to transform society and the economy away from our addiction to fossil fuels, is, as these authors argue cogently, a constant class struggle against wealth and power. They remind us that in that struggle we have the power to say no and the power to say yes; the power to fight and build. Essential reading for the world's transformers.”

—Ann Pettifor, author of The Production of Money

“A scathing critique. . . . Readers will come away more savvy and empowered.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“With lively prose, a keen eye for detail, and razor-sharp political sensibility, Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan have thrown an intellectual Molotov cocktail into the heart of lifestyle environmentalism. After reading this book, you’ll never look at environmentalism the same.”

The New Press

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