PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs

Öz

To many observers, President Trump’s administration is a real environmental nightmare and represents a serious retrograde step for international cooperation on climate change. As this study argues, however, his zealous anti-environmentalist stance is not something new in American environmental history and can be regarded as the continuation of anti-environmentalist dynamics in U.S. politics since the 1980s. The study starts with a brief historical analysis of American environmentalism since the 1980s, then examines the battles on environmental protection and climate change during the Presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump in order to shed light on the future direction of U.S. environmental policy. Its focus is on climate change as the indicative and most encompassing issue of the day. The intention of the study, which covers the related discussions until summer 2018, is to understand the background and rationale behind policy responses rather than to comprehensively list individual policy decisions.