Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Conservation Reconsidered: Nature, Virtue, and American Liberal Democracy (The Political Economy Forum)

Product Description The prominent contributors in Conservation Reconsidered establish a fundamentally original view of the conservation movement and the impact of public policy on nature. This collection of essays articulate the belief that the thinkers and actors who helped develop the conservation movement-notably John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold-have been seriously misunderstood by scholars who have analyzed them in the context of contemporary environmental debates. Conservationism, the contributors argue, was a diverse movement dealing with difficult questions about the relationship of human beings to nature in a modern liberal democratic state. The essays place conservationism within the framework of 19th century American political thinkers including Darwin, Emerson, Thoreau and Olmsted, and they illuminate perennial questions about citizenship and our place in the natural world. Conservation Reconsidered takes a new look at what is problematic about the legacy of American conservationism and explores worthy alternatives to the dominant environmentalist thinking of today. Review How muddled and feckless today's most prominent champions of environmentalism appear, when compared with Muir, Pinchot, Leopold, Theodore Roosevelt, Emerson, Thoreau, and Olmstead, the giants of the preservation and conservation movements of a century ago. In revisiting their legacy, Conservation Reconsidered explores the fundamental tensions, challenges, possibilities, and promise of environmentalism today. The conservationists and their critics framed the environmental debates that have endured. With a clarity that has not been improved on since, they defined how we can view our place in nature, and the different objectives we pursue in protecting it. The ten essays of Conservation Reconsidered are informed, serious, thoughtful, and a real pleasure to read. Every serious student of environmental politics in America should begin here, where it all began. r is the .--Peter Huber, author of Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists...a provocative critique of the assumptions about natural resource philosophy and history is 20th century America.--The Quarterly Review Of BiologyConservation Reconsidered may begin to provide for conservatives a way out of the political wilderness.--Claremont Review of BooksThe contrast between the founding conservationists of the Progressive Era and their would-be successors among today's environmentalists is made strikingly clear in this indispensable book. Hats off to Charles Rubin for assembling a collection of thinkers equal to the task of reviving the original conservation tradition.--Steven Hayward Ph.D, author of Index of Leading Environmental Indicators About the Author Charles T. Rubin is associate professor of political science at Duquesne University.