Anti-Environmentalism. Resistance to environmental protection in the United States from 1969 until the early 1990s

1969年通过的《国家环境政策法》（NEPA）确立了美国的国家环境政策。在接下来的几十年里，华盛顿特区的中央政府和联邦各州采取了一系列措施，似乎在美国社会中形成了一个相当广泛的共识，认为需要保护环境。然而，与此同时，社会上也出现了一场反对运动，对具体的环境措施甚至环境政策进行整体的批评，并在不同的层面上进行反对。这种新的政治力量通常被称为“反环境保护主义”，它确实聚集了所有不赞成环境保护主义的人，这些人对环境运动及其主张的态度从怀疑到完全拒绝。这一现象在很大程度上被以前的奖学金所忽视，而这一现象正是本研究项目的重点。它认为，反对环境保护措施的抗议是正在进行的关于环境政策的适当数量和适当形式的社会谈判进程的一个重要组成部分。此外，反环境主义已经成为新保守主义的一个决定性特征，这一发展在一开始并不是必然的结果。反环境主义历史的这两个方面将从历时的角度来考察。在四个案例研究中，该项目分析了反环境主义背后的政治、制度和社会行动者，以及他们的主题和自我认知。首先，它考察了美国国会早期反对通过《国家环境政策法》的失败。第二个焦点是20世纪70年代关于核能的争论。第三个案例研究考察了反环保主义者在美国环保主义历史上最具争议的问题之一的观点：关于保护西北美国北方斑点猫头鹰的冲突。最后，该项目探讨了明智使用运动的建立，从而分析了20世纪80年代末美国反环境主义的制度化。这些个案研究将使对重点方面的密切审查与更全面的观点结合起来。通过这种方式，该项目将揭示这一复杂运动的形成，以及在非常特定的历史背景下影响其发展的不同动态。

The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, in 1969 established a national environmental policy in the United States. In the following decades both the central government in Washington, D.C., and the federal states adopted a series of measures and it seemed like a rather broad consensus about the need for environmental protection had emerged in the American society. At the same time, however, a social countermovement arose which criticized specific environmental measures or even environmental policy in its entirety and opposed them on different levels. This new political force was often called Anti Environmentalism and did, indeed, gather all those who disapproved of environmentalism and whose attitudes towards the environmental movement and its claims ranged from skepticism to outright rejection. This phenomenon that has largely been overlooked by previous scholarship is the focus of the proposed research project. It understands protests against environmental protection measures as a crucial part of an ongoing societal negotiation process about the right amount and the adequate forms of environmental policy. Furthermore, Anti Environmentalism has become a defining feature of New Conservatism, a development that, in the beginning, was not a foregone conclusion by any means. Both these aspects of the history of Anti Environmentalism will be examined in a diachronic perspective. In four case studies, the project analyzes the political, institutional and social actors behind Anti Environmentalism, as well as their motifs and, self , perceptions. Firstly, it examines the early, and unsuccessful, opposition against the passage of NEPA in the U.S. Congress. The second focal point is the controversy about nuclear power in the 1970s. The third case study examines the perspective of anti environmentalists in one of the most hotly contested issues in the history of US environmentalism: the conflict about the protection of the Northern Spotted Owl in Northwest America. Finally, the project explores the establishment of the Wise Use Movement and thereby analyzes the institutionalization of Anti Environmentalism in the United States towards the end of the 1980s. These case studies will allow combining a close up examination of focal aspects with a more comprehensive perspective. In this way the project will shed light on the formation of this complex movement and the different dynamics that effected its development in very specific historical contexts.