Course Description
Summary
Responding to climate change and other contemporary environmental crises (biodiversity loss, looming water shortages, toxic pollution, etc.) necessitates swift and serious action that continues to be undercut by a rearguard anti-environmental movement. What are the ideological roots, the political economic forces, and the organizational forms through which anti-environmentalism has advanced? Grounded in the United States, but taking frequent forays abroad, this course will chart a history of the anti-environmental present. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to: environmentalist critiques of early modern/liberal thought; the history of extractive and chemical industry political activism in the early-to-mid 20th centuries; the rise of organized anti-environmental movements in the 1970s and early ‘80s; and the growing linkages between anti-environmentalists and far-Right organizations.
