Political Ecology is awesome. I should probably wait to make this claim until I have learned a little more about the field, but so far it just makes so much sense. It really hits on almost all the issues that arose with Kraft and the strictly political approach to the environment. One concern I had with the Kraftian analytic approach to environmental policy which I felt like was never fully addressed was that this policy creation does not happen in a vacuum. There are so many external sources and other influences effecting the formation of policy, research into issues, framing of issues, etc. It felt like often times our discussions in class ignored this fact, attempting to talk about environmental policy as an entity unto itself, separate from other governmental policy.

Political ecology, however, seems to focus itself on the idea that there is no singular cause which needs to be investigated or understood; its emphasis on the multi-faceted or interdisciplinary approach to environmental problems just seems like the right approach, and certainly more informative and productive then the approaches discussed in Kraft.

One issue I have with Political Ecology came up in the beginning of the first chapter, on page 5 of Robbins’s book. He writes “any tug of the global strands of the global web of human-environment linkages reverberates throughout the system as a whole.” While I love this approach, I feel like practically it can become problematic. It emphasizes the idea that we are often unaware of the consequences of our actions. Thus even well calculated, researched decisions may and probably do have unpredictable consequences, which makes justifying any action difficult. I understand that this isn’t the intention of this claim, but I believe it logically follows from it.

Despite this, I still am incredibly optimistic and excited to learn more about Political Ecology. It just seems to have the right approach towards understanding the world and the importance and influence of our actions in it.