Toward a Political Rehabilitation of Environmentalism

Abstract

At present, the progress achieved by the environmental movements of the 20th century is being challenged or arrested on many fronts. Environmental legislation at the national level has encountered limits to its efficacy, liberalizing trends in global trade policies continue to undermine such legislation, and, particularly in the United States, publics have become increasingly hostile to many aspects of the environmentalist agenda. In his book Community and the Politics of Place, Daniel Kemmis provides a critical analysis of some limitations of contemporary American politics and focuses on the potential role of place in edifying more participatory forms of democratic practice. Kemmis’s book is becoming a foundational work in environmental thought because it speaks to the crises of contemporary environmentalism by presenting an alternative vision of political practice that has the potential to lead to more effective environmental policies while also mending the public image of environmentalism.