Maurie J. Cohen

“The Death of Environmentalism” Introduction to the Symposium

The American environmental movement has been struggling for more than a year to digest the strong critique offered by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in their widely disseminated treatise “The Death of Environmentalism.” Their essay accuses organized environmentalism of framing key issues in overly narrow terms, of failing to connect with everyday public concerns, and of inadequately responding to the challenges of conservative political interests. This article briefly summarizes the essays key arguments, retraces some relevant history pertaining to the past decade of environmental policy making, and highlights some of the areas in which this work touches on topical issues within the environmental social sciences. The article ends with a brief overview of the other contributions that make up this symposium.

Consumer Credit, Household Financial Management, and Sustainable Consumption

Over the past decade, sustainable consumption has emerged as an issue of growing international prominence. Policy initiatives to facilitate more environmentally and socially preferable household provisioning have typically emphasized materials and energy efficiency. While this approach holds the prospect for some notable short-term gains, experience suggests that longer-term improvements are likely to fall short of expectations and trigger unanticipated rebound effects. Effective policy programs need to acknowledge the social and financial dimensions of consumer decision making and become more attentive to the role of households as catalysts of production. From this perspective, consumer payment systems take on special significance. In particular, the prevalence of credit cards and the accumulation of consumer debt in the USA and other advanced countries have been important drivers of economic growth in recent years. This paper highlights the linkages between consumer credit and sustainable consumption and discusses the structural changes in lending practices that account for the popularity of this payment system. While unsatisfactory conceptual models and inadequate data make it difficult to advance any definitive assessment of this relationship, it is possible to outline the basic elements of a research agenda in this area.

The future of automobile society: a socio-technical transitions perspective

Automobile society has been triumphant for a century. While this success is often ascribed to entrepreneurial tenacity and indefatigable demand, it is more correctly credited to auspicious political, economic and cultural trends. The macro-scale factors responsible for the entrenchment of automobility in developed countries are now moving in reverse direction. A socio-technical transitions perspective emphasises how declining industrial influence, stagnating wages, growing income inequality, increasing vehicle operating costs and changing sociodemographics are now undermining the foundations of automobile society. Three expressions of this process are considered: claims that transport planners are engaged in a ‘war’ against the automobile, emergent evidence that vehicle use is reaching saturation (the so-called ‘peak car’ phenomenon) and apparent disinclination of youth to embrace automobile-oriented lifestyles. Although these developments suggest some instability in the socio-technical system, the lock-in of key features and the paucity of practicable alternatives suggest that declarations of a pending transition are premature.

The New Politics of Consumption: Promoting Sustainability in the American Marketplace

Abstract While mainstream policymakers in the United States have to date evinced little interest in sustainable consumption, this does not mean that a political agenda designed to highlight the adverse impacts of consumerism has failed to take root in the country. In fact, a considerable number of activities are occurring that are broadly consistent with the aims of sustainable consumption. Inchoate though these efforts may be, there are indications that some proponents are beginning to link up and to forge a more readily definable social movement. The following discussion considers these multifarious expressions in accordance with a tripartite typology: social and political protest campaigns, lifestyle reinventions, and public policy initiatives. Of notable interest is that efforts to problematize consumerism do not stem from environmental concerns, but instead evolve out of public unease regarding such issues as working hours, leisure time, and family life. This situation raises questions about whether the common range of concepts associated with sustainable consumption accurately captures political initiatives in the United States to forge a link between declining well-being and mass consumption.

A Social Problems Framework for the Critical Appraisal of Automobility and Sustainable Systems Innovation

Over the past three decades, critical assessment of the automobile has evolved from a focus on the technical inadequacies of the internal combustion engine to a more comprehensive appraisal of the sociotechnical system for providing mobility. The following study charts the evolution of this discourse by focusing in particular on the way in which the Worldwatch Institute has interpreted the various problems of the motorcar during this timeframe. There are now indications that a more thoroughgoing systems view of automobile dependency is developing predicated upon three problem dimensions: fuel use, urban congestion and sedentary lifestyles. The analysis presents a social‐problems framework for beginning to conceptualize more sustainable modes of mobility in the post‐automobile era.

Sustainable consumption in national context: an introduction to the special issue

Abstract International institutions over the past decade have begun to emphasize the need to reduce the environmental impacts of heavily consumerist lifestyles in affluent nations as a precondition for sustainable development. Originally outlined in Agenda 21, and discussed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, sustainable consumption has now emerged as a definable domain of global environmental politics. At the level of high environmental politics, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have played key roles in reframing environmental deterioration as a consumption problem, rather than a production problem. However, within specific national contexts policymakers and social activists are seeking to engage with the difficult conceptual and political dilemmas posed by contemporary modes of material provisioning. This introductory overview highlights the historical background on the nascent issue of sustainable consumption and summarizes the three comparative case studies that follow: the Netherlands, France, and the United States. The experiences of these countries suggest that the concept of sustainable consumption is quite malleable, and its practical application is shaped by the political culture and policy styles of specific national contexts.

Consumption, Environment and Public Policy

Publisher Summary This chapter introduces consumption, the environment and the policies related to both. It undermines the atomistic and economistic mode of public policymaking in the area of consumption and the environment and builds a richer and more accurate view of consumption. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, consumption has emerged as a significant environmental policy issue. The satisfaction of a seemingly endless stream of consumer desires was identified as a major cause of global environmental problems. With hardly a pause, the newly minted United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development initiated a research programme to examine more rigorously the challenges associated with any attempt to achieve more sustainable consumption. Taken as a whole, these developments mark an unmistakable watershed in the understanding of environmental problems for purposes of public policymaking. Policymakers and consumers have therefore been quick to blame industry for environmental problems. Over the past four or five decades consumers in the richest nations have largely avoided being identified as responsible for the environmentally damaging effects of their consumption practices in part because other targets and explanations have been offered. This distancing has been encouraged by elected officials in the richest countries who have been reluctant to question consumer decision making, aspirations and sovereignty. This chapter folds into the customary materialistic view of consumption a series of more complex and nuanced perspectives on consumption and the environment drawn from the social sciences.

Success and Its Price: The Institutionalization and Political Relevance of Industrial Ecology

As industrial ecology (IE) solidifies conceptually and methodologically, and as it gains visibility and legitimacy in academia, industry, and government, it is important that the IE community periodically evaluate the status of its emerging institutional arrangements. At the same time, industrial ecologists should assess the political relations developing between the field and the larger world. We analyze four institutional criteria: professional legitimacy, viable clientele, entrepreneurial acumen, and occupational opportunities, as well as a more controversial fifth measure‐political relevance. Drawing a comparison with the field of ecology, we argue that efforts to foster IE institutionally can, ironically, conflict with the objective of seeing IE become “the science and engineering of sustainability”. The article concludes by reflecting on the importance of this kind of critical appraisal and on why many observers of the field remain hopeful.

Individual consumption and systemic societal transformation: introduction to the special issue

Maurie J. Cohen, Halina Szejnwald Brown, & Philip J. Vergragt Graduate Program in Environmental Policy Studies, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102 USA (email: mcohen@adm.njit.edu) Department of International Development, Community, and Environment, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610 USA (email: hbrown@clarku.edu) Tellus Institute, 11 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 USA (email: pvergragt@tellus.org) Marsh Institute, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610 USA (email: pvergragt@clarku.edu)

The international political economy of (un)sustainable consumption and the global financial collapse

Adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit and elaborated at the Johannesburg Conference a decade later, sustainable consumption occupies an increasingly prominent political position. Numerous governmental ministries and supranational organisations have produced sustainable consumption plans. However, actual programmatic initiatives have been limited to modest information and education campaigns as policy proposals are constrained by political contexts. Researchers have documented flows of materials and energy, but have disregarded the political and economic dynamics that animate throughput movements. Inattention to factors that propel the global metabolism, scholarship largely failed to anticipate the ongoing global financial collapse. Work on the household economics and macroeconomics of consumption is reviewed and an international political economy of (un)sustainable consumption is developed. Realignment of the global economic order will require renegotiation of the tacit agreements that the USA strikes with its trading partners and the design of more efficacious systems of production and consumption.