Smith Oliver, Brisman Avi
School of Law, Criminology and Government, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK.
School of Justice Studies, College of Justice and Safety, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY USA.
Crit Criminol. 2021;29(2):289-309. doi: 10.1007/s10612-021-09562-4. Epub 2021 Mar 16.
Our relationship with plastic is complex. While the societal benefits of plastic are undeniable, plastic has also come to occupy a central role within a culture of waste and disposable living that constitutes a significant problem for health and the natural environment. Public awareness of the harms asociated with plastic is high, thanks, in part, to a range of sustained media exposure. This, however, has so far failed to materialize in any significant global reduction in plastic pollution. Meaningful regulatory change that adressess the harms of plastic at the point of production is curiously absent, while some apparent gains have been rolled back-against a backdrop of a global pandemic and a rehabilitation of plastic. This article highlights the assemblage of media, government and corporate interests that performs the role of what we identify as the "Environmental Crisis Industry" ("ECI"), which perpetuates stasis in the face of environmental catastrphe. The ECI manages our anxieties through media discourses of precarity and danger, while at the same time, offering us attainable "solutions" that exist well within the logic of consumer capitalism-in effect, compelling us (at least morally) to become eco-consumers. In this way, the political energy of grassroots climate resistance is "pre-corporated," so to speak, into the product design of major corporations, dissipating the chance of real progressive change in favor of a new green spirit of capitalism.
我们与塑料的关系错综复杂。尽管塑料给社会带来的益处不可否认，但它在一种浪费和一次性生活文化中也占据了核心地位，这对健康和自然环境构成了重大问题。公众对塑料危害的认识很高，这在一定程度上要归功于媒体的持续广泛报道。然而，到目前为止，这尚未在全球范围内显著减少塑料污染方面取得任何成效。奇怪的是，在生产环节解决塑料危害的有意义的监管变革并不存在，而一些明显的成果却在全球大流行和塑料复兴的背景下被推翻。本文强调了媒体、政府和企业利益的集合，它们扮演着我们所认定的“环境危机产业”（“ECI”）的角色，面对环境灾难时维持现状。ECI通过关于不稳定和危险的媒体话语来管理我们的焦虑，同时，为我们提供完全符合消费资本主义逻辑的可行“解决方案”——实际上，迫使我们（至少在道德上）成为生态消费者。这样一来，基层气候抵抗的政治能量可以说是被“预先纳入”了大公司的产品设计中，消除了真正的进步变革的机会，转而支持一种新的资本主义绿色精神。
