Events Calendar

Sustaining Public Lands under Climate Change and Populism with Joseph Taylor, Professor of History and Geography at Simon Fraser University

Narratives of environmental policy tilt toward a progressive view of history, portraying the arc of events as a seemingly irresistible trend toward ecological enlightenment. Periodic derailments of this employment are attributed to bad actors, especially during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fate of Bears Ears National Monument, which Trump reduced by 85 percent in 2017. Morality takes sides in these stories, but each side thought morality had sided with them against the special interests. This is paradox of environmental advocacy: it is, and has always been, a form populist politics, always taking stands in the name of an abstract People, but actual people tended to complicate what counted as “the greatest good,” both then and now. The history of environmental politics and policy is far messier than popular or scholarly discourse acknowledges. Joseph Taylor will discuss the challenges posed by climate change and populist politics, and how the Bears Ears affair contains within it the seeds of both its successes and failures.