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This chapter argues that the environment must be elevated to a position of prominence, not secondary to war and terrorism. For this to happen, scientists must be more effective in communicating environmental concerns so that the public consciousness can be galvanized into action. While the current focus on protection of biodiversity and the establishment of parks and reserves is important, it is inadequate by itself in preserving functional ecosystems.

This chapter addresses transgenic salmon, and then explores the marketing of the patented AquAdvantage salmon and the current resistance from within the salmon aquaculture industry. It also considers the competitive pressures favoring adoption of this technology and the countervailing forces that act as a brake on the technology treadmill. The scientific uncertainties, public perceptions, and competing discourses about transgenic salmon are described. Observations about regulation-centered conflicts that will likely be the focus of social resistance are presented, which is facilitated by the aquaculture industry's reluctance to embrace commercial production of transgenic salmon. A/F Protein must address salmon farmers' concerns both about efficiency reductions due to triploidy and about the costs of licensing and other expenses. Salmon farmers identify two dangers to the industry posed by environmental concerns about transgenic fish. The arguments about risks from escaped genetically engineered fish show the scientific uncertainties associated with deployment of transgenic salmon.

The Introduction looks at the start of the political right wing campaign to link immigration to environmental concerns. It also examines how American debates over environmental impacts of immigration raises important questions about the relationship between nature and the politics of social exclusion. It also points out the manner in which conceptions of nature are imbued with cultural assumptions and how this impacts how people look at environmental policy. It reflects on how the author’s analysis over how environmental restrictions and their opponents seek to reconfigure sovereignty is heavily influenced by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. It examines how struggles over sovereignty are dispersed throughout social life, imbricated in claims to knowledge, scientific methodologies, social norms, and political strategies. It concludes by pointing out how like all methods, discourse analysis has its limitations, but the author’s analysis does reveal the multiple channels through which nature and sovereignty come to intersect.

This chapter analyzes the relation between the issues of ethics, culture, and environmental concerns in India. It reviews the contribution of some of the main thinkers and activists to environmental ethics and highlights the contribution of the environmental movements to creating awareness of environmental concerns and influencing public policy. This chapter also argues that developed countries have the moral responsibility of ensuring greater equity in sharing the costs of cleaning up the world and in promoting sustainability.

This chapter explains how narratives of environmental concern that derive from particular Minority world contexts are not truly global. Popular images of an apparently depopulated pristine nature, such as the earth from space or the solitary polar bear, are quite literally distant from the lives of the majority. Yet, they are considered by many as foundational to galvanising environmentalism into a purportedly ‘global’ movement. This kind of affluent Minority world imaginary is problematic in several respects. Images of depopulated pristine nature conceal the fallacy of nature culture dualism, rendering invisible the vast differences within and between countries in human nature interdependence, and how children and families understand, value, and are put at risk by their environments.

This chapter discusses an analysis of two examples of innovative social movement development proposals that were adopted as public policy in Brazilian Amazonia. It analyzes the factors that led to the emergence of the successful bottom-up policy proposals, social justice, linking of environmental concerns, and land rights. It also addresses the limitations and dilemmas of scaling up alternative grassroots development policies within a state power structure that is resistant to change and is dominated by agro-business interests.

This chapter analyzes the relation between the issues of ethics, culture, and environmental concerns in India. It reviews the contribution of some of the main thinkers and activists to environmental ethics and highlights the contribution of the environmental movements to creating awareness of environmental concerns and influencing public policy. This chapter also argues that developed countries have the moral responsibility of ensuring greater equity in sharing the costs of cleaning up the world and in promoting sustainability.

Zoos may be able to promote conservation by communicating the need for conservation to their visitors, and particularly by creating concern about the animals. Conversations among zoo visitors have the potential to highlight the value of nature and to promote affection and empathy for animals, along with a sense of connection. Psychological research suggests that concern for others, including animals, is higher when they are perceived as more similar to the perceiver. Zoos can, and do, utilize their exhibits to promote a sense of similarity and connection to animals among visitors. We present a study in which observers of a capuchin monkey exhibit were asked to consider either similarities or differences between the monkeys and humans. Those looking for similarities attended to different attributes of the monkeys, focusing on faces and on behavior, whereas those focused on difference emphasized physical characteristics. Compared to a control condition, both groups showed greater environmental concern; providing information about human implication in environmental threats, however, increased concern among the control group. We conclude that carefully designed zoo exhibits and signage may increase care and concern for animal conservation, but that determining the best combination of information to present is a complex task.

This chapter considers the role of religion in the environmental protection debate. Religion is still a very persuasive force in international discourse. At the global level, religion remains to be recognized as having a fundamental influence on the development and practice of international law. The role of religion as a catalyst for environmental concern is now becoming more obvious with the links between conservation and religious obligations being united by many theological thinkers. The chapter ends by looking at the limitations of the religious view. Importantly, not everybody subscribes to the religious view.

This chapter discusses eco-deconstruction. It highlights two guiding questions: (1) Might not an econstruction—a living, developing, and materially informed deconstruction—find itself quite at home thinking through the quandaries of environmental concern? (2) Might not environmentalism provoke a certain materialistic mutation within deconstruction? This can be argued both ways—that environmentalism finds itself in an often problematic and aporetic space of posthumanistic displacement where deconstruction is particularly well equipped to offer guidance. Equally, environmental concerns can embolden deconstruction to embrace what can be called a strategic materialism, or the essential interruptibility of any and every idealization. Moreover, deconstruction's critique of presence leads effortlessly to the strange temporalities of environmentalism. The dangers people currently face are from the accumulated impacts of past practices.

Corrib gas was discovered in 1996 and its developers and some politicians originally presented it as a panacea for the socio-economic woes of rural, west Mayo. However, the reality of the project has had an opposite effect and Corrib gas has become synonymous with social upheaval, remaining un-produced eighteen years after discovery. This chapter traces the emergence of the Corrib gas conflict (1996-2005), discussing the gas discovery and the consortium's interactions with the community living in the area designated as a home for the onshore gas processing terminal and pipeline. As the consortium progressed their plans for the project, local people began to develop concerns about its location on health, safety and environmental grounds. Utilising interview data from the range of stakeholders associated with the development, this chapter illustrates the diversity of opinions towards the project and ascertains the basis of growing opposition. This chapter lays the foundation for the overall book, illustrating how flaws within the state and oil companies' approach contributed to the emergence of a conflict around the onshore location of the project, the escalation of which is examined in detail in the following chapter.

Over the last few years, environmental concerns have grown around the world. During this same period, one religious leader has called people's attention to this ecological and social situation. The worldwide leader of the Orthodox Churches, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, has persistently proclaimed the primacy of spiritual values in determining environmental ethics and action. The Introduction presents some of the contributions to this volume.

This chapter discusses the responsibility of individuals, groups, and countries for rising emissions leading to climate change. The ethics of climate change require judgments to be made about the relative claims of different individuals, groups, and countries. The environmental concern begins with the family and the home, steps out into our local community, and then takes account of the nation state. The recognition of partiality has an implication for the attempts to address global warming. Partiality suggests that we should address climate change primarily because it is in our self-interest to do so. Ethics need to be grounded in human nature and the circumstances that pervade today, rather than in some future utopia. Progress on this level requires a rejection of the Kyoto-based carbon-production approach and a serious shifting of the burden toward the developed countries.

This chapter examines two “Small Towns, Big Projects” experiences, which refer to large energy projects located in small communities, as well as the problems arising from such mismatches. The first project discussed is the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant in Wiscasset, Maine. After a generally successful two decades of operation, the plant ran afoul of safety concerns and the economics of power production. It ceased operation in 1997, leaving the community with significant clean up burdens. The second is the Intermountain Power Project (IPP), a coal-fired electric generating plant in rural Millard County, Utah. The IPP began production in 1986 and remains in operation today. However, it faces environmental and cost concerns faced by all coal-fired plants in 2016.