ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the greater substance of environmental skepticism. It is tempting to say that environmental skepticism is all about protecting simple profiteering or distributional interests. It traces the dimensions of the skeptical convictions that are represented in the skeptical literature. The chapter explores the civic rejection of environmental concern as a legitimate public interest found in the counter-movement. The counter-movement rejects distributive justice claims that come from the wreckage of Industria as a way to protect this world capitalist-system. Finally, the chapter examines the counter-movement's ontological, or essential ways of being, through its desperate defense of a crumbling modernism and C. B. MacPherson's possessive individualism. This is important because it tells us something of the range of commitments held in the environmental skepticism counter-movement, and because it also tells us something about how ecology touches on a range of emotions and identities in world politics.