Environmental Politics

This week our class got the opportunity to study and better comprehend the environmental politics. The idea of politics supporting or going against environmentalism involves several different ideologies. In class we talked about 4 different ideal world views. The first perspective is that of a market liberal. Market liberals wish to have a laize faire like economy and highly support economic growth. To market liberals the economy comes first, then then environment. They believe that there must be a certain level of economic growth before environment protection becomes a factor. After a peak growth is achieved, they then believe the environment should be protected.  Next on the list are institutionalists. Institutionalists believe many of the same thing that market liberals believe, however, they are also heavily in support of technology, which can be used to advance the economy and protect the environment. Bio-environmentalists are another ideological group who believe in protecting the environment at all costs. They think that people are the problem and are harming the environment. They are also strongly against economics. The last group are social greens. This ideology strongly supports environmental justice. It believes that globalization destroys livelihoods and should be stopped. They are heavily in favor of protecting third world countries and want developed countries to stop emitting greenhouse gases. Along with the bio-environmentalists they are very skeptical about market liberals as well as institutionalists. This week has been a little confusing for me in the sense that I do not know a whole lot about politics, but i have definitely learned a lot.