Birth of a New Earth - by Adrian Parr (Paperback)

About the Book

Adrian Parr identifies the emancipatory potential of environmental politics both inside and outside existing structures and within opposing paradigms. Ultimately, environmental politics is the refusal to surrender life to the violence of global capitalism and militarism. This defiance can serve as the source for the birth of a new earth.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Parr's work brings unique and worthwhile ideas to the table, particularly in her discussion of broadening what we think of as the environment and what is affected by environmental and climatic change.--Robert Sorrell "Cleaver Magazine"

Provide[s] a deeply critical perspective on the systematic cultivation of environmental misuse, misplaced priorities, and deliberate deception. Appropriate for graduate libraries and scholars seeking the broad critiques of mainstream environmental thought.-- "Choice"

"Environmentalism" will not survive this book. It will be frustrating and disappointing for many readers to discover that their good deeds to save the planet can be useless and even counterproductive; they may be nourishing the machine producing environmental degradation: global capitalism, corporate governance, and militarism. But they will also discover in this book stimulating windows to emancipatory imagining and transformative politics that really care for Mother Earth.--Gustavo Esteva Figueroa, author of The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto

Adrian Parr's marvelous book Birth of a New Earth does not simply argue that capitalism, neoliberalism, and militarism are incompatible with environmental concerns but also provides concrete examples of how to overcome this incompatibility, which is the cause of our greatest natural, political, and social emergencies. Parr calls upon activists and intellectuals to forcefully resist false policies that claim to foster global sustainability in favor of radical interventions that, one local step at a time, will truly save the world.--Santiago Zabala, author of Why Only Art Can Save Us

As Adrian Parr suggests in timely fashion, imagination may be the best weapon we have in the fight against environmental destruction, as useful as a new engine or a bigger windmill.--Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Birth of a New Earth is one of those rare and brilliant books that critiques the ongoing destruction of the environment in a writing style that is lyrical, compassionate, and as accessible as it is informative. Parr masterfully weaves together a language of critique and possibility and in doing so makes a convincing case for environmental and economic justice on a global scale and offers a powerful argument for rethinking the meaning and practice of politics.--Henry Giroux, author of America at War with Itself

This is a prescient book, one that not only provides a rigorous and critical analysis of emergent environmentalisms but also charts how imaginations of a "new earth" can be forged at the limits of liberal democracy. In this sense, the book is as much about the political as it is about the environmental. It is a must-read for our times.--Ananya Roy, author of Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development

About the Author

Adrian Parr is Dean of the College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Birth of a New Earth (Columbia, 2017) and The Wrath of Capital (Columbia, 2013), among other books.