UNSUSTAINABLE

A behind the scenes look at how corporate and financial actors enforce a business friendly approach to global sustainability In recent years companies have felt the pressure to be transparent about their environmental impact Large documents containing summaries of yearly emissions rates carbon output and utilized resources are shared on companies social media pages websites and employee briefings in a bid for public confidence in corporate responsibility And yet Matthew Archer argues these metrics are often just hollow symbols Unsustainable contends with the world of big banks and multinational corporations where sustainability begins and ends with measuring and reporting Drawing on five years of research among sustainability professionals in the US and Europe Unsustainable shows how this depoliticizing tendency to frame sustainability as a technical issue enhances and obscures corporate power while doing little if anything to address the root causes of the climate crisis and issues of social inequality Through this obsession with metrics and indicators the adage that you can t manage what you can t measure transforms into a belief that once you ve measured social and environmental impacts the market will simply manage them for you The book draws on