DAAP Faculty Member Teaches and Lectures On "Is Green the New Black?"

DAAP's Adrian Parr has just returned from Canada where she taught and publicly lectured on the topic "Is Green the New Black?" She was also interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that country's version of the BBC.

Earlier this year, the University of Cincinnati's Adrian Parr came out with a new book, "Hijacking Sustainability," published by The MIT Press.
Hijacking Sustainability

And, already, the book is leading to teaching and public lecturing opportunities, specifically a just completed week-long stay at the University of Calgary in Canada.

While in Canada, Parr, who holds a dual appointment as an associate professor in both UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, led four seminars for architecture students exploring themes addressed in the book: how corporations and organizations have repackaged and relabeled their practices as "sustainable" for the benefit of bottom lines.

She also delivered a public lecture in Calgary's downtown and was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that country's version of the BBC. The title of that lecture: "Is Green the New Black?"

In both her book and the lecture, Parr addressed how the idea of sustainability has gone mainstream. It's even hip, and that's good, she acknowledges.

However, as larger numbers of individuals, citizens and consumers have embraced environmentalism, she also argues that the goals of the environmental movement have been co-opted by corporate interests, government and the military who lay claim to "sustainable" practices and goals to advance their profit-maximizing opportunities while, in reality, doing little to operate in accord with environmental principles or address social inequities.

While Parr served as a teacher and speaker while in Canada, she also claims she learned a lot:"I'm still getting e-mails from those who attended the public lecture, people who were from all walks of life. For instance, one pointed out that a carpet manufacturer acknowledged as an eco-friendly manufacturer is using toxic glues on the backs of those carpets."

She added, "There were definitely prickly issues raised in the seminar and public lecture. Calgary's economic foundation is based upon oil. In this regard, it's a mono-economy. To point out that the area's water shortage is aggravated by the fact that it requires five barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil from the region's oil sands is something that's going to be very challenging for some to hear. Since my goal was to start dialogue versus a monologue, it was a challenge for me to be appropriately challenging to the status quo in a way that wouldn't simple be tuned out."

But it was a challenge that paid off. For instance, Parr recalled one student in her seminars who persistently questioned that sustainability could ever be more than an aspiration.

She stated, "His point of view was understandable, especially since he was form a part of the world suffering a great deal of environmental degradation. His own family there had been disempowered by the situation, suffering ill effects but unable to do anything about it."

At the end of Parr's stay in Canada, that student had come to the point of view that environmental changes can be made, but any group seeking that change must start out at the local level.

And that is one of the themes within "Hijacking Sustainability." Some corporations and groups use the terminology of environmentalism, but their practices are the very opposite of being socially and environmentally responsible. This is a "green washing," according to Parr.

Leadership and advancement of sustainability and its core principles is likeliest to come from those committed to solving the challenges in a specific local area because they are the ones living in that area and most affected by environmental change specific to that region.