Sustainability and Energy Politics ― Ecological Modernisation and Corporate Social Responsibility

This book explores the fraught politics of energy transitions in an age of climate change. But it does so in a very specific way – through the discourses of ecological modernisation and corporate social responsibility which, Giorel Curran contends, fundamentally shape the practice of sustainability today. Curran investigates whether these prevailing sustainability discourses and practices are up to the task of stemming accelerating social and environmental harms. Against the political economy background of neo-liberalism and globalisation – which significantly shape the power relations of environmental reform today – the author seeks answers to this question through an exploration of several energy-related case studies in several countries. These include the cases of global climate politics, unconventional gas developments and renewable energy transitions, primarily in the United States, Australia and Germany, and several other European countries.

Giorel Curran is Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations and the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University, Australia. Her research focuses on environmentalism, environmental policy and political theory. She has published widely in all these areas. Some of her books include 21st Century Dissent: Anarchism, Anti-Globalisation and Environmentalism (2006); and the edited collections Business and the Politics of Globalisation: After the GFC (with E. Van Acker 2010) and Government and Business in Volatile Times (with E. Van Acker 2013).