ABSTRACT
Liberal progressives see environmental degradation and human-made climate change as profoundly serious problems. Politically, their goal is to defeat the climate-change deniers and others not committed to protecting the environment. This chapter does not probe that conflict, but rather probes the beliefs and understandings of liberal progressivism with regard to different interpretations of the reasons for environmental and climate-change problems, the range of solutions that inhabit liberal progressivism, and the attitudes of liberal progressives to technology. The Enlightenment, industrialization, ecomodernism, and technology are part of the discussion. The chapter also considers the place of capitalism and gender in the liberal-progressive perspective on environmentalism and climate change, as well as the issue of class, which is too often ignored by liberal progressives in the environmental and climate-change debates.
