Is there something distinctive about environmental social movements - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Today, many people are enjoying clean water, protected forests, catchment areas and fresh air even in industrial areas that were previously under heavy pollution all thanks to the environmental activism. It follows that environmentalism today has gained much success in encouraging people to adopt more environmental friendly products, methods and reducing dumping of wastes in the environment in advocating for “green living”. In the last two decades, many organizations and activism groups have spent millions of dollars in fighting against global warming in industrial and economic activities (Shellenberger & Nordhaus, 2010). As a result, environmentalism has become a common topic in forming political ideologies to support different efforts and goals towards “saving the world” (Goodwin & Jasper, 2003). With these dynamics and the great success that environmentalism has achieved today, the report will investigate the unique aspects of social environmentalist groups and their approach to environmentalism. The paper will include examining how different social movements in developed and developing world have managed to advocate for environmentalism. It is vital to investigate the approaches used by both the past and current environmentalists, in understanding how their different approaches influenced environmentalism and the role of class and political processes in informing discussions of different social green movements. Class in the current society has the capacity to mobilise political resources and constructing an environmental discourse that may lead to success of their ideologies. The report will also analyse environmentalism by comparing social environment movements and their performance (Ray, 2009). Using distinct cases in both developing and developed countries, the report will indicate some major differences that characterise green social movements and their approach towards environmentalism. Generally, the report will show that there are greatly varying social movements across the globe mainly driven by social, political, academic or other interests towards environmentalism. Class and cognitive knowledge Class and cognitive knowledge are two aspects that have manifested in environmentalism, especially in developing countries. Knowledge has great relation to both economic and social class of people and since the aspect of class is critical in determining how different people will mobilise political resources, it affects how people construct knowledge about environmental issues (Forsyth, 2001). This means that in both developing and developed countries, the reality of having different classes of people with different powers to mobilise political decisions may result in individualised socialism, where different people interpret environmentalism depending on individual benefits. However, there are growing academic activities across the globe in consolidating a united front towards environmentalism. The first argument in the academic cycles is that environmentalism has to be a continued process that includes all despite their political ideologies in facilitating the growth of green social movements (Forsyth, 2001). Another approach is that most academicians view environmentalism as a global problem, and that the threat will have equal effects to all despite their social of political standing. Bostrom (2010) further ...Download file to see next pagesRead More