SDG Detail

Environmental Politics

None

Project description

Politics determines not only which particular faction holds power, but the parameters upon which contests for power are conducted. At present, the desirability of economic growth is the universal consensus principle that actors across the political spectrum and national borders agree upon despite their disagreement on the shape that this should take and the beneficiaries of it. This principle overrides any other consideration, including environmental protection and restoration, regardless of the political beliefs of the leader or party in question. This course undertakes a term-long discussion of how the assumptions and practices of politics, policy, and activism would be changed if the protection of the environment was the central organizing principle of the international system, with particular attention to theories that challenge conventional ways of organizing society, economics, and politics