Environmental Politics

Scale and Power

Shannon O'Lear brings a geographer's perspective to environmental politics. The book considers issues of climate change, energy, food security, toxins, waste, and resource conflict to explore how political, economic, ideological and military power have contributed to the generation of environmental issues and the formation of dominant narratives about them. The book encourages the reader to think critically about the power dynamics that shape (and limit) how we think about environmental issues and to expand the reader's understanding of why it matters that these issues are discussed at particular spatial scales. Applying a geographer's sense of scale and power leads to a better understanding of the complexity of environmental issues and will help formulate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The book will appeal mainly to advanced students and researchers from a geography background, but also to social and political scientists who wish to look at the topic from this different perspective.