Jenny Price
Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto
(W. W. Norton, April 2021)
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
A short, fun, fierce manifesto for a fairer, more effective environmentalism (with a lot less shopping!).
We’ve been “saving the planet!” for decades now, and the crises have only gotten worse. Many of us—environmentalists included—continue to live deeply unsustainable lives. At home, affluent Americans “buy green”; while at work, they maximize profits with dirty energy and toxic industries that are poisoning our poorer communities.
With brevity, humor, and plenty of attitude, Jenny Price tracks “save the planet!” enthusiasm through strategies that range from ridiculously ineffective (Prius-buying and carbon trading) to flat-out counterproductive (greenwashing, and public subsidies to greenwash). We need to imagine far better ways to use and inhabit environments. Why aren’t we cleaning up the messes we’ve already made? And why do so many people hate environmentalists? Price offers trailblazing answers, along with powerful ideas for how to divest from self-destruction and invest in mutual survival.
Praise for Stop Saving the Planet!
“In this brief, energetic book, Price pleads for a more comprehensive environmentalism, which she defines as ‘in here’ rather than ‘out there.’ The rapidly paced, conversational narrative, loaded with bullet points, sidebars, [and] pull quotes…A fun introduction to a serious topic that should serve as a starting point for further study and action.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Pithy, funny, exasperated, and informed…You cannot read a more important hundred pages than Stop Saving the Planet!”
—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands
“When keeping it real goes right – in this moment of reckoning, Jenny Price calls us out to call us in and does so with humor, insight and an in-your-face attitude that is informed and dare I say, hopeful about our capacity to change how we think, see and “do” green.”
—Dr. Carolyn Finney, author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors
Read Jenny Price’s interview with Public Thinker
Read Kirkus Reviews‘s review of STOP SAVING THE PLANET!
Read Jenny Price’s interview on Grist
Read the AudioFile review of the audiobook edition of STOP SAVING THE PLANET!
Jenny Price is a writer, artist, historian, and author of Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.