Book completed

[eve_prime]

Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, by Nicole Seymour. She starts from the point that mainstream environmentalism operates on a sort of emotional binary: awe and wonder on the one hand, looming catastrophe and considerable guilt on the other, with the goal of mobilizing people into action. This binary isn't appealing or effective for everyone. There are alternatives, though - playfulness, absurdity, etc., with goals like building community and getting by. In this book she looks at several categories of often obscure works that try these different types of environmentalism. Although I found her ideas rather liberating, I wish she'd taken it a step further and addressed the question of when each approach is more appropriate, but that wasn't within the scope of this book. Also, I have to say that the day I read a few pages of Kathleen Dean Moore before reading some of this book, it was mighty jarring.