The Ecological Revolution in European?and International Politics, 1945-1992
Today, it is common to think of environmental problems as worldwide and a topic of international governance. But this was not always the case. In fact, the environment was not considered a concern of national, party politics or international organizations until recently. The historian Joachim Radkau argued that there was an ecological revolution in politics around 1970, when environmental issues became part of national political agendas. National politics in Europe began to grapple with the question of how to balance economic growth, social justice, environmental protection, and the long-term habitability of the earth. Yet did the 1970s really see an ecological revolution, or was the period marked more by continuities with the politics came before it, particularly after World War II? This special course is focused on the rise of environmental politics, that is, laws and government policymaking, social movements, and institutions as they relate to the natural world, and how these interacted in the past. It focuses on the questions: When did environmental politics emerge in their contemporary, political form? What were some of the historical processes that contributed to and hindered their development? Were international environmental politics progressive politics, focused on human liberation, or rooted in older imperial processes of human domination? What role did the Cold War have in the development of environmental politics?