As an issue, the environment is complicated. First, it is layered. Secondly, it is multifaceted. As a result, political scientist John A. Duerk has assembled an interdisciplinary anthology composed of accessible studies to generate conversations that will yield greater understanding of the many environmental challenges that we face. The layers explored herein are philosophy, politics, and policy. Philosophy concerns the ideas that inform our values. Politics involves the conflicts that emerge amid the conditions we must navigate. Lastly, policy encompasses how public and private actors respond to everything from regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to changes in consumer attitudes. Regarding the different facets, this work is intended to be an entry point for anyone who would like to learn more about issues such as the land ethic, the environmental impact of clothing production, climate change, the placement of bike lanes in cities, water usage, and artist depictions of the wilderness. Let the conversations begin…

The need for solutions to environmental problems is urgent. Expanded environmental research and knowledge, along with interest in environmental issues, has focused attention on the social, political, and practical aspects of environmental problems. Environmental Political Philosophy searches for common environmental goals, values, and policies in society. An essential undercurrent in political theory about the environment is that such issues are not questions of efficiency or technology. They cannot simply be addressed through knowledge of processes and mechanics of nature, by boosting or targeting research, or by allocating of resources and development of technology. Neither can they be resolved solely by increasing civic understanding and mounting environmental campaigns or requiring endless eco-friendly actions. A crucial element of environmental political philosophy is highlighted through the studies in this volume, which address the question of what constitutes efficient action or effective decision making. Praxiology commences with empirical orientation, but does so by maintaining the important sense that in the evaluation of actions and policies, ethical considerations must be employed in conjunction with effectiveness and efficiency.

A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.

Revised to include new discussions on climate justice, green political parties, climate legislation and recent environmental struggles.

Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists--including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing--and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.

The need for solutions to environmental problems is urgent. Expanded environmental research and knowledge, along with interest in environmental issues, has focused attention on the social, political, and practical aspects of environmental problems. Environmental Political Philosophy searches for common environmental goals, values, and policies in society. An essential undercurrent in political theory about the environment is that such issues are not questions of efficiency or technology. They cannot simply be addressed through knowledge of processes and mechanics of nature, by boosting or targeting research, or by allocating of resources and development of technology. Neither can they be resolved solely by increasing civic understanding and mounting environmental campaigns or requiring endless eco-friendly actions. A crucial element of environmental political philosophy is highlighted through the studies in this volume, which address the question of what constitutes efficient action or effective decision making. Praxiology commences with empirical orientation, but does so by maintaining the important sense that in the evaluation of actions and policies, ethical considerations must be employed in conjunction with effectiveness and efficiency.

In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.

This collection offers a sympathetic but critical perspective on contemporary ecological political theory, and gives proposals for a reorientation of some of its key aspects.

This textbook is at the forefront of its field and is an invaluable resource for undergraduates studying politics and environment studies. The most comprehensive book on the subject, this new edition has been expanded and revised.

This book provides the most detailed and comprehensive examination to date of the impact of environmentalism upon contemporary political thought. It sets out to disentangle the various strands of Green political thought and explain their relationship to the major Western political traditions. Environmentalism and Political Theory represents the consolidation of a new field of political inquiry that is destined to become an increasingly important component of political studies and political reporting worldwide. An interdisciplinary study that builds bridges between environmental philosophy, ecological thought, and political inquiry, this book employs a range of new insights from environmental philosophy to outline a particular Green political perspective.