Introduction

This chapter outlines the structure and thesis of the book while introducing the concept of “ecopiety”―a shorthand term used in this text to refer to practices of environmental (or “green”) virtue. The chapter also introduces the reader to the book’s featured “sightings” of ecopiety, as observed mostly in and through NorthAmerican consumer marketing and mediated popular culture. This book argues that the fundamentally individualized, free-market, privatized, voluntary approaches currently marketed as adequate to addressing our monumental environmental challenges are not only wholly inadequate to the task but indeed can be counterproductive in the worst possible ways. Ecopiety, as marketed, is both too dourly restrictive in some ways and grossly facile in others. It simultaneously asks too little and too much, making pious actions taken on behalf of the environment grim, unappealing, onerous “duties or obligations,” on one hand, while on the other, it offers superficial, perfunctory modes of practice that are byandlarge insignificant in terms of scale and scope of impact. The author proposes alternatives for creative cultural paths into the future, as conjured by a variety of environmentally themed popular media works, practices, and narratives.

The Twenty-first Century

The economic and social challenges of the twenty-first century in the quest for sustainable development are multiple. On the positive side, good progress was achieved in setting clear targets and the results that eventually came with them. Human longevity, poverty reduction, overseas development assistance, and the fight against corruption all show progress. In other areas, the future is less certain. Some tools, including free trade, have reached unprecedented heights in creating economic growth. Ensuring that this is always a tool for good, by avoiding damaging subsidies, for example is necessary. An equally big challenge for free trade is ensuring that distributions of benefits are more equitable. The challenge will also be in accepting that although voluntary measures, ranging from those for ethical consumers through to those for responsible corporations, are commendable and can produce good results in some instances, there are limits to how far voluntary approaches may go.

Adoption of voluntary approach: Can voluntary approach generate collective impacts for China achieving ambitious energy efficiency targets?

China has a fast growing economy in the past three decades that not only contributes to a rise in welfare but also to major energy, resource and environmental problems. Traditional command-and-control approaches are focusing on laggards instead of the forerunners and on sanctions of polluters that are not yet complying with standards. These policy approaches are ineffective to mobilize the potential capacities of cleaner production. This study is conducted in three phases of feasibility studies, demonstrations and up-scaling of adoption of voluntary approaches in China for achieving ambitious energy and environmental targets. The results show that voluntary approach is a proven collective impact approach for China achieving ambitious energy targets. As compared to the energy and environmental targets set by authorities, more than 10%–20% higher targets of energy efficiency and environmental performance can be achieved by adoption of voluntary approaches. The study has concluded six successful factors that are crucial for China adopting collective impact approach of Voluntary Agreement in the field of sustainable production. Those six factors are: (1) a common agenda with shared vision for improvement, (2) co-create with trust, (3) continuous communication based on trust and common motivation, (4) backbone support and facilitation, (5) incentives and sanctions and (6) monitoring, data verification and evaluation. This study provides a good example for China developing and implementing more flexible, public–private-partnership oriented, cost-effective and collective impact policies that could facilitate China achieving high sustainability in industries.