Environmental Studies - Anti-Environmentalism

Catalog description

This class seeks to understand the rise of anti-environmentalism and climate change denial as they evolved over time in the latter half of the twentieth century and the first two decades for the twenty first century in America. Taking a historical approach, it will examine the environmental opposition from both a chronological and a thematic perspective. It will touch on such developments as New Left anti-environmentalism in the late 1960s, the origins of anti-environmentalism during the so-called “environmental decade” of the 1970s, the “Republican Reversal” of the 1980s, and the rise of the “merchants of doubt” who played an instrumental role driving the opposition to climate change.