Sarah McFarland Taylor is Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University, with affiliations in Environmental Policy, American Studies, and Communication. Her work links religion, media, and environmental ethics. She traces how ecological concern circulates through consumer culture and mediated storytelling, often taking on moral or even spiritual dimensions. Rather than dismissing these forms as superficial, she attends to the ways people encounter environmental responsibility through brands, images, and lifestyle practices. At the same time, she remains attentive to their limits, asking whether consumer-oriented expressions of care can meaningfully address structural ecological crises. Her reflections bring together questions of belief, affect, and practice, suggesting that environmentalism increasingly operates as a cultural formation shaped by media logics as much as by science or policy.
