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

1969年《国家环境政策法案》（NEPA）的通过确立了美国的国家环境政策。在接下来的几十年里，华盛顿，华盛顿特区的中央政府，联邦州采取了一系列措施，美国社会似乎对环境保护的必要性形成了相当广泛的共识。然而，与此同时，社会上出现了一种反运动，它批评具体的环境措施，甚至整个环境政策，并在不同程度上反对它们。这个新的政治力量通常被称为反环境主义，事实上，它聚集了所有不赞成环境主义的人，他们对环境运动及其主张的态度从怀疑到彻底拒绝。这一现象在很大程度上被以前的学术界所忽视，这是拟议的研究项目的重点。本组织认为，反对环境保护措施的抗议活动是关于环境政策的适当数量和适当形式的持续社会谈判进程的一个重要组成部分。此外，反环保主义已经成为新保守主义的一个定义性特征，这一发展在一开始并不是一个必然的结论。这两个方面的反环保主义的历史将在一个历时的角度进行审查。在四个案例研究中，该项目分析了反环保主义背后的政治，机构和社会行为者，以及他们的主题和自我认知。首先，它审查了早期，失败，反对国家环境政策法在美国国会的通过。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激烈的争议问题之一：关于保护西北美洲北方斑点猫头鹰的冲突中的观点。最后，该项目探讨了明智使用运动的建立，从而分析了反环保主义在美国走向20世纪80年代末的制度化。这些案例研究将允许结合密切的重点方面的审查与更全面的观点。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力。

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.