Modern Environmentalism presents an entirely new introduction to the history of ideas about nature and environment and how these ideas relate to modern environmental ideologies. The explosion of important writing on the environment since the appearance of the David Pepper's Roots of Modern Environmentalism , is interpreted and synthesised in this new account. Examining key environmentalist ideas within their social and historical context, the book illustrates how environmentalism revives issues and problems that are part of long-established political, economic, social and cultural debates. Placing science at the centre of the society/nature debate, the author traces the development of the 'classical' scientific view as the major constituent of our cultural filter, and how scientific 'truths' about nature have become divorced from their social and ideological context. Moving to the heart of the environmental debate from different radical environmentalist viewpoints, the author addresses questions of social change and how the desired ecological society can be established.