Trumping Environmental History: notes for today's class

Today is the first meeting of my Environmental History class since last week's election.  And so it seemed right to spend a few minutes talking about the consequences for environmental history, before we turned to the day's topic (the environmental history of northern Canada).

I gave a brief overview of what we know about Trump's environmental views, based on his statements (as fragmentary as that knowledge is, of course).  I then reviewed Ronald Reagan's environmental record as president, as an exercise in seeing what we might learn from history.  And finally, I did a little prognosis, ending, as one must, with ideas about where we might look for positive change (for this I drew on what I talk about regarding climate communication in my Environmental Science and Politics course).

There's been so much written in the last week about the environmental consequences of Trump's victory -- and of course so much remains to be seen.  But I found the following especially helpful: Andrew Revkin's blog post immediately after the election; Jacob Hamblin's excellent discussion of Reagan's environmental record; and David Victor's thoughtful examination of the potential consequences for international climate diplomacy.

At any rate, here are my slides for this part of today's class: