Perspectives on American environmentalism

Environmentalism – defined broadly here as activism aimed at protecting the environment or improving its condition – is facing significant challenges in the United States (US). Confronted with new, enormous environmental risks, facing fierce opposition from a two term Bush administration, and accused –from within its own ranks – of a death-like lack of vision, stagnation and shortsightedness, modern US environmentalism appears to be in rough if not fatal condition. This special issue explores the challenges to environmentalism in the contemporary US. It suggests that for a corpse, the American environmental movement has been quite energetic the past few years. From the growth of state and local groups, to the development of a variety of alliances and approaches, to critiques of the federal government's lack of policies and competence, to participation on the international stage, environmentalism in the US remains very much alive, active, and vibrant. Clearly, American environmentalism is not dead, nor does it need to be put down in order for something else to take its place. The grandiose claim to the contrary made by political public relations specialists Shellenberger and Nordhaus (2004), while spurring a much-needed era of reflection, was simply myopic. We thank them not for killing off environmentalism, but for prodding us to rethink it (if not always in the way that they insist we should).

In any event, American environmentalism has never been a single entity, and could not be put to death so easily. Importantly, the ‘environmental movement’ to which we refer includes not only the professional, mainstream interest groups focused on national environmental policy, but also the multitude of additional groups, organisations, and networks – from mainstream to environmental justice to radical environmentalisms – at the local, state, regional, and global level. It is an incredibly varied set of networks of people and organisations with a variety of origins, ideas, discourses, structures, strategies and tactics. 1 These ideas, structures, and tactics are constantly reviewed, rethought and revised in their particular contexts, as individuals, organisations, and larger networked movements take stock of goals and accomplishments – or the lack thereof. That process continues. Certainly, as many critics have noted for years, some of the larger mainstream environmental groups, based in Washington, DC and focused on the regulatory arena, tend to lose sight of the big picture, and the interests and passions of various parts of the public. That neglect is illustrated most recently by their attempt to address climate change with a concentration on measuring parts-per-million of various pollutants. But focusing on a singular weakness to declare that an entire movement should die is like pushing someone with a cough into the grave. More fruitful, surely, is to reflect, analyse and reconceptualise the status quo and the development of new tactics, strategies and priorities. That is precisely the aim of this set of essays.

Through this set of reflections, critiques and perspectives, we find American environmentalism(s) that are, indeed, as limited as those traditionally the subject of criticism. But we also find parts of the movement that are flexible, attentive to context, innovative, and unpredictable, and which have developed surprising and important forms, discourses, and alliances. Environmentalism in the US is subject to tremendous challenges – including a federal political system that is not only adversarial, partisan, and fragmented, but also – at times – corrupt and incompetent by design. US environmentalism also faces the difficulty of articulating a message that is more thoroughly engaging and able to move beyond its key constituency of traditional environmental activists. And it faces its own unwillingness to acknowledge and incorporate the wide diversity of discourses that could help build and sustain broad cooperation and alliances across its differences. The message gained through these essays is that these challenges can be attacked and surmounted, but only through new conceptualisations and framings, new alliances and arenas, and new forms of movement agency. Our authors present examples of these innovative ways of reflecting and acting already occurring throughout American environmentalism.

This volume will thus not be a lament for the loss of a movement, and it will not be a call to a singular strategy to ‘break through’ to a perceived ideal form of environmentalism. Instead we reflect on a variety of conceptions of, and strategies for, environmentalisms in the American context. Unlike Shellenberger and Nordhaus, we look beyond the adversarial battleground of interest group politics based in Washington, DC; this set of reflections attempts to be much more inclusive in its recognition of the richness of environmentalism in the US. Importantly, the authors here examine the social and political context of American environmentalisms, as well as the variety of discourses that make up the movement and frame environmental issues in diverse ways. Climate change and how to respond will be a recurring theme, but the authors here also address a range of environmental issues and movement groups, from collaborative lands management, to environmental justice, to industrial and energy policy, to groups struggling with radical tactics in the post-9/11 era.

Although intentionally wide-ranging, the essays here all explore three key themes in environmental activism and organisation in the United States. Central is the conceptualisation of environmentalism itself – either proposed or occurring – including discourses, strategies, priorities and, especially, issue framing. The best thing to come out of the ‘Death of …’ argument is further discussion of how the environmental movement in the US frames both the issues at hand and their own discursive responses to them. Second, our authors touch on a changing environmental mobilisation and expanding arenas of activism, from the traditional adversarial interest group politics, to collaborative environmental initiatives, to new alliances, to the rethinking of radical strategies. Finally, our contributors discuss the development and refinement of new forms of agency outside of the mainstream institutional structures. We briefly lay out the broad themes here, before introducing each piece individually.

Conceptualisation

How environmentalists frame their message, what discourses they engage, and how salient this language is to the general public is a central concern of this collection. Phil Brick and Gregg Cawley argue eloquently for the recognition of the fundamental importance of framing and discourse. They demonstrate that the environmental movement needs to recognise that the way ideas are framed is key in developing both issue salience and the possibility of new positions and alliances. In addition, it is not just the substance of the frame but also the way that frames are communicated that is crucial. John Meyer, for example, analyses how the environmental movement embodies different discursive attitudes – some paternalistic and others more populist. He also shows how the way the ideas and frames are communicated by environmental groups can impact their salience with the public. Both contributions examine not just the rationale for, but also the tools necessary to expand public involvement and coalition building to achieve environmental goals.

Also analysing the salience of frames, David Schlosberg and Sara Rinfret discuss what recent shifts in public discourse have enabled conceptions of ecological modernisation (EM), long popular in Europe, to finally become engaging in the American context. Noting the clear limitations to the EM frame, especially its lack of attention to consumption and the public good, their aim is to examine what allowed the discourse to take root in the US. Giovanna Di Chiro reminds us that, in communities most impacted by environmental and social injustices, salience comes with a connection to everyday life and the struggle for functioning communities.

One of the framing insights to emerge through these essays as a whole is a recognition that multiple frames are valid, and can be engaged – and engaging – simultaneously. As Bill Chaloupka argues, we need to be open to what he calls ‘multinaturalism’, or the varied conceptions of the relationship between nature, science and politics. Such a pluralist conception comes from understanding the mixed and contradictory relationship between environmentalism and modernist discourse. A central lesson of this volume is that the ongoing conceptualisation and development of issue frames and discourses, as well as their analysis, remain central to both the environmental movement and its examiners.

Mobilisation

Shellenberger and Nordhaus (2004) argue that the working model of DC-based organisations – participating as interest groups in adversarial negotiations on policies – is to blame for the lack of success of American environmentalism and its failure to mobilise and engage the wider public. 2 However, there are many forms of, and groups within, American environmentalism that have long embraced tactics, strategies, and frames outside of the Beltway mentality and practice. The diverse forms, and targets, of mobilisation in the US context is examined throughout this collection. A number of our contributors discuss political mobilisation at various levels, from the local, to the state and regional, and international – all in addition to, or beyond, the focus at the federal level. In American environmentalism, as in American politics more generally, the arena of action is broad and deep. Meyer discusses the richness and success of collaborative environmental groups in the Western US, and, similarly, Brick and Cawley discuss the importance of local and regional groups in implementing biodiversity plans at a time when the Bush administration's agenda at the national level made the ‘conservation ledger appear rather depressing’. Gary Bryner's piece suggests that environmental groups' success on climate change (such as it is) is found almost entirely at state or local levels. Di Chiro explores parts of the environmental justice movement that thoroughly engage political, economic, and social life at the local level, and Vanderheiden discusses the role of ecotage in mostly local practices and decisions. Finally, Di Chiro, Vanderheiden, and Schlosberg/Rinfret discuss alliances – both actual and discursive – that reach beyond American borders.

The point here is that environmental mobilisation in the US is about more than just federal-level action, and it remains rich, active, and very much alive in a variety of arenas.

Agency

Recent – and not so recent – critics of the environmental movement in the US have lambasted the bias, the lack of creativity, and the professionalism (as opposed to impassioned amateurism) in the mainstream environmental groups (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004, Gottlieb 2005). In essence, they argue environmental groups have become like any other institutionalised interest group, defined by structure and devoid of independent agency. Others, however, have pointed out that there is much more to environmental activism than this type of rote professional and institutionalised participation. In this collection, Chaloupka explains the need to move beyond the political structures and frames brought to us by liberal modernisation, away from ledger and interest group politics and the resentment it engenders, and away from the single-minded task of bringing other aspects and structures of modernism – legalism and science – into a liberal political process. Taking on the limits of modern liberal politics from a different angle, Di Chiro argues that environmental justice, for example, is not about policy adversarialism, but rather a different sort of agency focused on the social reproduction of communities, and the ability of individuals to participate in, and contribute to, this functioning. 3 The adversary is not simply the politician on the other side of the aisle, or the lobbyist arguing against you, but more broadly those institutionalised practices that threaten the everyday life of the community.

Many of the authors here discuss the development, and importance, of coalitions and alliances themselves as an important form of political activism and agency. For Brick and Cawley, the formation of such alliances is the result of the development of salient frames; for Meyer, they are the product of a populist and participatory politics that is not single-mindedly focused on influencing federal institutions. And for Schlosberg and Rinfret, alliance building on an issue like climate change is a way to strengthen and expand the discussion of policies beyond weak managerialist responses and into stronger and more thoroughly reflexive politics.

Still, while the resentment of, and move beyond, standard liberal institutional politics is both necessary and occurring, Gary Bryner's essay reminds us of the power of institutional structures (especially interest group politics and the adversarialism in engenders) to shape agency. Thus, as much as our contributors discuss the limits of existing federal policy-making structures and practices, engagement with those structures and practices is still very much a necessary part of the political life of movements.

Outline of the issue

We start with three papers tracking the (re)conceptualisation of core ideas and strategies defining US environmentalism. Phil Brick and Gregg Cawley's essay on ‘Producing political climate change: the hidden life of US environmentalism’ is, as the authors note, not about movement revitalisation through more engaging tactics, nor is it about coalition building to expand relationships and links. Instead, they focus on the way that the environmental movement frames issues in ways that enable the public to interpret current events in an environmental way, and in a way that brings support. Beyond the ledger model of who gets what, this approach, they argue, captures most of the actual work that movements do.

Brick and Cawley address the importance of ideas, arguing that movements have members by virtue of the fit of ideas. Here, they follow the work of Tesh (2000) on the influence of environmental movements on conceptions of science. The hidden life of a movement is in ideas, consciousness, values, and individual behaviour, as well as the creation of what Brick and Cawley call a ‘discursive commons’. Movements need to ‘focus on revising ideas and meanings as a way to make new/different positions possible’.

This focus on ideas and meanings is linked to the development of coalitions and alliances. Such relationships don't just happen, but are, following Hajer (1995) discursively constructed. Social movements ‘thrive in the context of discursive openings’; creativity is key. Brick and Cawley call for the development of mutually attractive ideas before coalitions are possible. In essence, discursive creativity leads to a discursive commons, which then enables coalition building. (This process is also inherent in the later essays by Di Chiro on environmental justice and social reproduction, as well as in the Schlosberg/Rinfret discussion of what was required for ecological modernisation to take hold in the US.)

Coming full circle, the argument of Brick and Cawley is that creative, commons-building discourse(s) then reshape policy discourse and impact ledger politics. Environmental frames have the potential to lead to ‘conversion’ actions. Brick and Cawley discuss the environmental movements' use of the terms biodiversity and climate change – both of which have been increasingly successful. Climate change, for example, is a ‘discursive bridge’ which connects a range of ideas and events. Certainly, the growth of these discursive frames comes at the same time as frustrating losses in the realm of adversarial ledger politics, at least at the federal level; but such frames lay the groundwork for broader change in both public discourse and later policies. It should also be noted that the framework certainly has impacted state and local policies, in a way that has moved beyond the party partisanship of most of the George W. Bush years.

John Meyer's central question in ‘Populism, paternalism, and the state of environmentalism in the US’ is how environmental groups actually engage the public, and he draws a contrast between two different types or modes of engagement that are identified by the ‘rhetorical assertions, attitudes, and associations that underlie public discourse’. If Brick and Cawley are about discourse and movement framings, Meyer is about the nature and presentation of that framing process – how groups present their frames to the public. He argues that one can use the political concepts of paternalism and populism to understand different ways movement groups communicate with, and attempt to engage, the public. Paternalism certainly has a long and distinguished history in American environmentalism, from Muir and Leopold, through deep ecological claims, to the current righteousness of Shellenberger and Nordhaus. But this paternalism privileges a universalised discourse and a singularity of the environmentalist idea. Populism, argues Meyer, also has a long history, but it emphasises local, rooted, and particularised knowledge and discourses.

Environmental justice and collaborative environmentalism serve as examples of environmentalisms that recognise fallibility, ambiguity, and the local/collaborative nature of knowledge and discourse. According to Meyer, environmental justice activists are often wary of the ‘environmentalist’ moniker because it represents a particular type of paternalistic knowledge of the environment. On climate change, the mainstream groups' perspective that the issue is thoroughly complex and intangible (for example, Pope 2005) ‘invites a paternalistic response’ – and parts of the mainstream movement have developed strategies accordingly. Conversely, a preexisting paternalism in the movement helps to interpret and frame climate change in that way as well. The approach assumes the need for a top–down education and approach. Paternalism is about a fearful and shocking education, delivered, for example, by Al Gore in An inconvenient truth.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus famously critique the science-based paternal approach of the mainstream environmental movement, and lament a lack of contact with the public on issues that are salient to everyday life, work, and aspirations. But they fall into their own paternalistic patter by calling movements that do just this – the environmental justice movement, for example – local and parochial. Meyer helps illuminate this key contradiction and hypocrisy through his contrast between paternalism and populism. He also illustrates the type of discourse that can make environmental issues like climate change more salient to a broader, populist, audience. So Meyer attempts to show how the framing or discourse of the movement, emphasised by Brick and Cawley, has been embodied in both problematic and promising ways.

According to Bill Chaloupka's essay ‘The environmentalist: “what is to be done?”’, Shellenberger and Nordhaus offer a necessary and helpful political judgment. The focus of American environmentalism has been on ledger politics, the win or lose of interest group battles at the heart of modernist political structures. For Chaloupka, however, the issue is even larger than the limits of ledger politics; it is another example of environmentalism's problematic and contradictory relationship with modernist politics more generally.

Environmentalists support many aspects of modernism – science and adversarial interest group politics, for example – while abhorring other aspects, such as bourgeois amenities and conspicuous consumption. They embrace science, while challenging the modern mastery and abuse of resources made possible by that same scientific approach. Certainly, different environmentalisms have divergent understandings of modernism, Chaloupka argues, but underneath are some shared modernist aspects of all environmentalist culture. Environmentalists enjoy their own sense of moral superiority and scientific authority. They have, Chaloupka argues, the surety (or paternalism, as Meyer might call it) of the modernist mind, which has kept them from fully understanding the resentment on the right. In fact, this resentment of environmental aims, even as they are articulated in the modernist public interest, is part of the environmental identity. Failure to pay attention to their calls is perceived as irrational, but not unexpected.

Chaloupka asserts that environmentalists have been inattentive to their own flaws and incapable of introspection, which is why the Shellenberger and Nordhaus critique hit the movement so hard. In essence, Chaloupka's critique is that movement groups are unaware of the discourses in which they are immersed, so sure are they of the truth of their position. The lesson here is that environmentalists in the US must recognise that politics is about contestation, resentment, and so instability. They must understand the potential of what Chaloupka calls a ‘multinaturalism’ or the varied conceptions of the relationship between nature, science, and politics. Here, the lesson is one of recognising the value of multiple discourses. It is important, for example, to focus on legalism – rights and regulations and the adversarial political system in which they are embedded. But, crucially, ‘what is to be done’ is for the movement to stop and reflect, to reconceptualise, and to establish a vision, or multiple visions, of what we want and how we should focus.

We then move to three essays that not only examine and analyse particular discourses or framings of American environmentalism, but also link this framing and conceptualisation to the theme of movement mobilisation. These include an exploration of a fairly mainstream discourse and framing along the lines of the relatively tame idea of ecological modernisation, a more community-oriented discourse of environmental justice, and some more radical discourse surrounding ecotage. In each, the authors examine the link between discourse and mobilisation.

For Schlosberg and Rinfret in ‘Ecological modernisation, American style’, the focus is on a particular discourse popular with environmental groups in the European Union (EU), but less so in the US – that of ecological modernisation. It could be argued that the interest group competition and adversarialism that characterises the US has kept ecological modernisation from being adopted; a more cooperative and corporatist approach has been linked to the popularity and success of the discourse in Europe. But aspects of ecological modernisation are finally taking hold in the US. In exploring just why this is so, Schlosberg and Rinfret claim that discursive links with both security and consumerism have made the difference in mobilisation around the idea.

There has, in the past few years, been a shift in the relationship between environment and security discourses. Whereas security has been used almost entirely to block environmental initiatives and proposals over the years (and continues, as in the reaction against ecotage after 9/11 discussed by Vanderheiden), it is now possible and attractive to use the security discourse to argue for major shifts in US industrial and energy practices. It is a newly engaging and salient discourse in the spheres of both the state and civil society. Energy security as a discourse has a range of supporters, from the Pentagon to media pundits to politicians on both sides of the isle at every level of government. Environmental groups such as NRDC and Sierra Club took advantage of the salience of the security issue to reframe climate change and energy concerns with security discourse. It is particularly important, argue Schlosberg and Rinfret, that this frame has salience in both the governmental realm – security is a key imperative of governments – and in the public realm, with the growth of concern for energy security.

Consumerism, on the other hand, has salience in an obviously goods-oriented American public. The growth of the availability of green products is again engaging and quite salient; it has an impact on everyday life, and on one's image (and projection of that image). As Sterling (2007) puts it, the goal in the US can be to ‘glam’ our way to survival. While this begs the question of the sustainability of consumption, the point is that the greening of goods is finally on the agenda in the US.

Still, other salient elements of the discourse of ecological modernisation have been left out of its popularisation in the US. There remains the potential to link with environmental justice and populist discourses through more focus on the nature of production and democratic inclusion in the development of sustainability, climate change, and energy policies and reformed practices. There is also the potential of linking to a discourse of the legitimacy of the state itself – something the Bush administration has faced in the overwhelming disapproval of its positions on energy and responses to climate change.

Di Chiro offers another essay initially framed in response to the limits of Shellenberger and Nordhous' ‘Death of …’ argument. She compares their critique to the same type of concerns about the women's movement. But Di Chiro examines the more vital parts of both movements, and examines the linkage of environmental and women's concerns in a more strategic, relational set of groups, foci, and discourse. She insists that one of the problems of the prognosticators of Death is that they focus only on a small portion of the environmental movement, and deny the range of groups, movements, and discourses that have deep ties to human rights, social justice, and sustainability – in particular groups in the environmental justice movement. Di Chiro's focus is on coalition politics, but not simply about groups that work together. Instead, the evidence exemplifies Brick and Cawley's assertion that coalition action follows the development of a gripping and engaging narrative. Di Chiro makes quite clear the need to move from reframing to actual mobilisation and innovative action on the ground. The framing Di Chiro examines is one that brings environmental and women's concerns together under the banner of the social reproduction of communities – the battle to preserve the practices of everyday life. As Di Chiro notes, coalition politics is about articulation and joined-up thinking (Agyeman et al. 2003). The foci are engaging and cross-cutting. They are coalitions that began, as Brick and Cawley note, from a shared set of mutually attractive ideas. No one forced environmental and women's movements together; groups simply came together under a shared understanding of the threat to everyday life and the functioning of the community, and developed innovative and productive actions to reflect those concerns.

Social reproduction is an intersecting discourse. It is about preservation of environment, and the preservation of, at the core, the reproductive capacities of the community, from the literal reproduction of women exposed to toxics, to the more broad reproduction of social practices, cultures, and traditions. Di Chiro follows attempts by numerous other examiners of the environmental movement (Ageyman et al. 2003) to expand environmental frames and discourses to encompass the concerns of environmental justice and the environmentalism of everyday life. Sustainability, in this frame, is about sustaining communities and cultures along with their surrounding environments. The intersection is what is appealing. Environmentalism, here, is about living – and about the recognition of living, engaging, and mobilised environmentalisms.

So the discourse of social reproduction is, on the one hand, already the type of discourse in the environmental movement that is engaging, imaginative, populist, and plural. On the other hand, the point of Di Chiro's argument in the context of the other essays in this volume is that such a discourse could also be attractive more broadly. Certainly, a recognition of these concerns as a potential frame or discourse is more valuable than their dismissal, which is the approach of Shellenberger and Nordhaus. 4

In his essay on ‘Radical environmentalism in an age of antiterrorism’, Steve Vanderheiden, in turn, offers a set of reflections on how the link to another discourse has spurred an irrational reaction to radical environmentalism and mobilisation. As ecotage (ecologically motivated sabotage) involves damage to property, it is easily linked to a broader fear of terrorism. Radical environmentalism has become a victim of a reconceptualisation that has marginalised a whole section of the environmental movement by linking them with terror. Vanderheiden tells the story of how the federal government and states broadened the concept of terrorism to include acts of property damage previously understood as vandalism. This charge extends to more than actual physical damage; even an economic threat like a boycott is now encompassed under the terrorism label. This is an outright attack on a tactic. The aim of those on the right was to use this linking discourse to undermine the tactics, mobilisation, and agency of radicals, and taint even the mainstream with the terror brush.

The central question for Vanderheiden is how radical environmentalism can react to this labelling. Here, there is a tactical dilemma linked to the discursive shift. Should the movement reaffirm the tactic of ecotage by emphasising the distinction between property-focused direct action and genuine terrorism? Or should it forfeit the tactic, concede that the discursive link has been made, and move on to other tactics? Such a defeatist move, argues Vanderheiden, risks driving radical activists to the very tactic that the right accuses them of. 5

The development of direct action tactics by Earth First! was a response to an ineffectual and timid mainstream movement – an early critique of structural limitations of the interest group, ledger politics, Beltway adversarialism levelled by many now. Radicalism was a way to expand the dialog, and make activists in such mainstream battles seem ‘reasonable’. So the tactic was part of a discursive move to expand the range of environmentalisms and open space for interest group politics to work – at both the public discursive and legal realms. While this expansion came with a recognition of the validity of multiple approaches, it also came, at times, with the righteous moral certainty and vanguardism of a modernist paternalism. Vanderheiden explores just what may be lost by the movement with the possible loss of the tactic of ecotage – and the larger strategy of radical environmentalism.

Bryner also focuses on mobilisation and tactics, but of a different sort. His piece highlights the formidable institutional pathologies shaping environmental mobilisation and activism. In ‘Failure and opportunity: environmental groups in US climate change policy’, he reminds us that as much as we can insist on discussing discourse, framing, or a politics beyond ledger politics, politics-as-usual continues. Simply put, environmentalism cannot ignore the institutional constraints of ‘old-school’ interest group politics and American adversarialism.

Bryner reviews the distinguished and successful history of environmental movement groups organising as interest groups in the American political arena; they have been, at times, very good at pushing for specific pollution abatement policies and working with legislators and regulatory agencies. Mainstream groups have been particularly successful at blocking anti-environmental proposals and at retrenchment when under attack.

But, as noted by Bryner and several other authors, these groups have failed to generate the broad ideas and frames and related policies that would bring more public support. On climate change, for example, Bryner demonstrates that most groups' favoured approach (focused on the regulatory arena and emission reductions) has proven quite limited and lacking in imagination and engagement. Here he agrees with the particular criticisms levelled by many, including Shellenberger and Nordhaus.

Movement groups embedded in the interest group process tended to blame their failures on the industry's power arrayed against them, partisanship, as well as the abuse of the concept of scientific uncertainty to block public support. But they neglected the broader critique that climate change is not simply about parts-per-million or regulatory statutes. If a major restructuring of contemporary life is necessary, interest groups of the environmental movement were simply not up to the job.

While the limits of the interest group approach are clearly laid out, Bryner certainly does not advocate that environmentalists abandon that approach. Rather, the aim is to develop additional, complementary frames to engage the public more, to create not only vision, but good policy as well. This aim is already being accomplished at the state and local level, as noted by several of our authors.

Finally, Bomberg and Schlosberg conclude by placing US environmentalism in comparative perspective. Whatever the distinctive features uncovered in this volume – and there are many – US environmentalism is part of a global phenomenon encompassing activism and mobilisation on an international scale. Thus the concluding essay examines the volume's three themes –(re)conceptualisation, mobilisation, and agency – with a focus on the questions of what is distinct in American environmentalism, and what is shared, especially with groups in the European context.

Bomberg and Schlosberg suggest that different cultural, historical and institutional trajectories help explain the varying priorities and styles of environmentalism found on either side of the Atlantic. In particular, they highlight a unique American institutional setting that both constrains and empowers environmental actors in the US. But they also outline the shared concerns, challenges and opportunities facing environmental movements in the US, Europe and beyond.

Clearly, American environmentalism(s) remain vital, active, and very much alive. Within the US context, environmental activists and groups remain the source of a wide and rich variety of frames, discourses, and forms of mobilisation. Reflection and reconceptualisations of the movement must certainly go beyond the narrow judgments of death, or the promotion of singular discourses and courses of action. We certainly do not claim that what follows encompasses all of the approaches to American environmentalism(s), or even all of the reflections on conceptualisation, mobilisation, and agency; but the examinations of the authors in this collection illustrate some of the breadth of these perspectives. With these in mind, our understanding of the environmental movement in the US context can be seen as more positive and hopeful than a myopic study of the mainstream groups and their limited focus. Certainly, environmentalism in the US has a long way to go to reach the idealist desires of a thoroughly public ecology based in the common good (Luke 2005), or the ‘post-ecology’ era in Europe (predicted by Blühdorn and Welsh 2007). The point here is to add to the very lively conversations and perspectives that continue to inspect, and inform, this crucial movement.

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank all of the contributors to this special issue for their creativity, diligence and patience. They would also like to acknowledge each other for critiques, advice and support. Finally, considerable thanks to Louise Maythorne for her editorial assistance.

Notes

1. Many of these additional parts of the movement were, unfortunately, either ignored or attacked by Shellenberger and Nordhaus. For overviews of American environmentalism, see Bosso (2005), Duffy (2003), Gottlieb (2002, 2005), and Rothman (1998); for critiques of the exclusions of Shellenberger and Nordhaus, see the debate in Grist (grist.org), especially Blain (2005) and Gelobter et al. (2005), as well as Luke (2005) and Cohen (2006).

2. As Cohen (2006, p. 75) notes, this was not a particularly newsworthy claim, as many have made the point before.

3. For more on environmental justice defined as community functioning, see Schlosberg (2007).

4. Unfortunately, they continue their myopic, incorrect, and counterproductive critiques of environmental justice in their recent book (Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007).

5. Radical environmentalists might take heart from a recent analysis by Olson (2007), who argues that fanaticism is integral to democratic achievements.